Is anyone the least bit surprised
that I liked Power Rangers while
growing up? Yeah, Michael T. Johnson, superhero blogger, SciFi nerd, Fantasy
nerd, comic book nerd, and Anime nerd is also a fan of Power Rangers. If even one person who has read my posts is surprised
by this, I will be utterly flabbergasted. Sure, it was stupid, campy, stupid,
and poorly edited. But, for my childhood… teens… cough-early twenties-cough, it
was a fun bit of craziness that I look back upon fondly. Now that that is out
of the way, let’s get into this review, shall we?
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| It's Morphin Time. If you're a 90s kid, this should give you chills. |
We open to a war on prehistoric
Earth. The heroic Power Rangers just suffered a massive defeat while protecting
the Zeo Crystal, the source of life-energy on Earth. Four of the five Rangers
have been killed by Rita Repulsa, the traitorous sixth Green Ranger. The Red
Ranger and Leader, Zordon, is also heavily injured and probably won’t make it
much longer. He orders his assistant, Alpha 5, to crash their command ship at
his location. Rita appears and gloats about beating her former allies, just
before the ship smashes into the planet. Zordon barriers the Power Coins (the
source of the Ranger Powers) as his last act, as Rita is thrown into the ocean.
Millions of years later, the area
where Zordon made his valiant sacrifice has become Angle Grove. It’s a small
fishing town, with nothing too interesting going on. Local football star Jason
Scott gets into a massive car crash following a botched prank, which ruins his
high school football career, gets himself put under house arrest, and put into
detention for the remainder of the year. This makes him something of a social pariah,
and estranges him from his father. During his first Saturday detention, he
meets Billy Cranston. Billy is a socially awkward teen, and gets picked on by a
bully. Jason, not going to put up with this, slaps the punk across the face and
tells him to back off of Billy. At the same time, cheerleader Kimberly Hart is
also in detention. She’s called away for a moment by her friends, whom
basically tell Kim they’re washing their hands of her. Teenage drama at its…
teenage dramaiest.
Billy is very thankful for Jason’s
help, offers to help him out. Kind of. He offers to hack Jason’s ankle
bracelet, in exchange for Jason’s help with a little project. He also throws
use of his mother’s van for Jason, too. Jason takes him up on the offer. After
disabling the bracelet, Billy has Jason drive him to the Angle Grove Gold Mine.
Billy’s father used to work at the mine, and the two had explored the mine
together when he had time off. After helping Billy lug some equipment, he
ditches the adorkable nerd, and comes across Kimberly whom is swimming in the
mountains. Because reasons. It’s better the excuse as to why our last two
teens, Zack and Trini, are in the area. Zack is just… there, and spends time
spying on Trini whom is doing tai chi on rock. No, they really explain why she
is doing this. The four are all drawn back to Billy after he blows a giant
chunk of rock off the mine. They discover the coins, and dig them out.
Mine security and the cops arrive
moments later, and the teens beat a hasty retreat. While they escape, the teen’s
van is hit by a train. Jason, and the others, awaken at their homes the
following morning. No, they never explain how this happened. The teens also
discover that they now clearly have superpowers, as Jason crushes his sink, and
Billy accidentally smash his bully’s hand. At the same time, Rita’s body is dredged
up from the sea by Jason’s father fishing boat. After breathing fresh air for
the first time in millions of years, she starts to recover. She starts killing
locals and stealing their gold.
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| She's green, and has a thing for gold. |
The teens all reconvene at the
mine, and after testing out their new powers, they discover a secret cave and
Zordon’s ship. They’re drawn inside, and are greeted by Alpha. The friendly
robot is quite happy to see them, as he’s been waiting for the next generation
of Power Rangers to appear for 50+ million years. This gives him a chance to
also revive Zordon. Zordon has been fused with the ships mainframe and now
appears in an awesome wall display. After getting up to speed on things, Zordon
tells the fledgling Rangers that they’ll have 11 days to prep to fight Rita.
After that time, she’ll have the strength to revive her super monster Goldar. Together,
they’ll steal the Zeo Crystal and destroy all life on Earth. The teens leave
and are pretty uninterested in being Rangers, but Zordon convinces Jason to
train, whom then convinces the others to stay.
They have a training montage
against simulated Putties, Rita’s foot soldiers. They rapidly improve, but are
unable to morph into their armored form. Alpha, in an attempt to encourage the Rangers,
shows them their Zords, giant robots modeled after ancient animals. No, I have
no idea how a mastodon and a sabretooth cat got onto the roster in this
go-round, since Zordon was unconscious during the Pleistocene era when these
things died out. Just saying. Zack, being an idiot, takes his mastodon out for
a joyride. He nearly crushes a van of nuns, and then the Rangers. Jason angrily
berates Zack, who fights back. Billy freaks out a little, stepping between them
and morphing for the first time. He changes back, but is unable to change
again. Zordon, angry at their lack of progress in morphing, dismisses them. He
and Alpha discuss how they need the teens to morph, as activating the morphing
grid will allow him to escape his wall prison and be a ranger again. Jason
hears this, and accuses Zordon of using them. He storms off. He and the others
bond a little around a campfire.
Later, Rita attacks Trini at her
house. She flings the new yellow ranger around, taunting her and makes her a
deal. She’ll spare Trini if she leads the Rangers into a trap. Trini tells the
team about what happen, and they go to confront Rita. She gets the drop on
them, and captures the team. She tortures them a little, and gets Billy to
reveal that he had found where the Zeo Crystal ended up. Under Krispy Kreme. I’m
pinching the bridge of my nose in irritation at the product placement. She
drowns Billy but lets the others escape. The teens recover Billy’s body and
brings him to Zordon. Zordon claims there isn’t anything he can do at the
moment. The Rangers resolve to stop Rita, for Billy. Their new resolve awakens
the Morphing Grid. Zordon, obviously, opts to revive Billy rather than himself.
The teens morph for the first time and rush to battle Rita.
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| What even is Goldar? A flying monkey? A Cat-monster? |
Good. These teenagers do actually
have attitude. As the promos pointed out, these versions of the teenagers are
screw ups. Jason is a former football star that made a bad choice and
potentially screwed himself up for life. Kimberly is kind of the same, a
cheerleader that did something really stupid, hence her being in detention.
Billy, who is autistic this go-round, has trouble with social situation and is,
again, adorkable. I especially liked the reasoning as to why he was in
detention, he accidentally blew up his lunchbox. Zordon is a more ‘human’
character, which is good. Brian Cranston is delight, in general, but is great
as this new Zordon. Rita is very creepy, and off putting. It is difficult to
make Elizabeth Banks seem unattractive. This version being a former Green
Ranger added a bit of depth to a character that used to just make monsters and
scream angrily. And, while it’s a bit of a slow burn, I liked the pacing. We didn’t
really get to see too much action in the first half, it was mostly training. And,
while it’s cheesy, it’s the perfect kind of Power Ranger’s cheesy.
The bad is minimal. It’s very
obvious that the ‘main’ characters were Jason, Billy and Kimberly. Zack and
Trini felt very tacked on, as they were just there in the mountains at the
right time because reasons. They do get decent characterization later, but their
introduction is rather poor. I’m not a major fan of what they did to Goldar.
The giant golden flying monkey-cat thing of dubious loyalty, whom often crossed
swords with various rangers is transformed into a generic monster. Not the best idea. Also, there are a few major
plot holes. Like never explaining how the Rangers escaped the initial train
crash, or how/why Rita was suddenly reviving after millennia of being dormant.
Did finding the power coins revive her? Or did Rita just now start to recover,
so the coins ‘called out’ to their new hosts? Never explained.
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| Well.. he IS Gold. And has his precious wings. |
Even though she killed people for gold, I liked her, probably because she looked really good in green. The time has gone, we have to search a lot for these shows online. But, the good part is that there are still nice and knowledgeable shows by Andy Yeatman available on Netflix.
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