What in the Mighty Morphin’ fuck is this?
If the title of my blog hasn’t tipped you off yet- I’m not the most optimistic guy when it comes to Hollywood. I typically think they’re going to operate in a self-interested, if not predictable fashion, and I have a theory that you could probably mathematically calculate exactly what their next movies will be with the right data. That being said, when I heard they were rebooting the Power Rangers, I thought they were taking the piss. I assumed the trailer was just one of those fanmade videos where they snip a bunch of footage together from various movies, with precise placement of audio from the original show to make it seem authentic. I was wrong. After I realized it was legitimate, I hoped they were just making a silly reboot- a grade-A campfest akin to Adam West’s Batman show from the 1960’s. I was wrong about that, too.
So here we are, in 2017, with the umpteenth fucking dark, gritty reboot of an American remake of a Japanese show that had American actors spliced into it between Karate fights, that nobody asked for. This, of course begs the question: just who the hell is this movie for? It’s rated PG-13, so only the cool parents will be taking their kids younger than this to see it. It contains a joke in the first 5 minutes about jerking off a bull (seriously), and there’s some occasional swearing in it. “Shit” is uttered at least once.
I would naturally assume that this is targeted at older millenials- 20 something’s who grew up with the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers show in the 90’s. However, that show was silly, campy, fun, corny, over-the-top, and featured a pre-Breaking Bad-fame Bryan Cranston. Is this an attempt to grab a new generation of kids firmly by their prepubescent necks? Is it simply an effort to dip back into the wallets of the older millenials who grew up with it? If either of those are true, they sure did a hell of a job hiding it amidst all the gritty, grounded realism in a movie about rainbow-colored ninjasuit teenagers fighting purple ooze monsters in between lunch period and Language Arts. In case you need a refresher, this is the series they’re rebooting:
Now for the movie itself. Power Rangers is essentially the same core premise as the show: 5 teens with a ‘tude stumble upon an ancient spaceship belonging to Zordon (played by Bryan Cranston’s naked ass in heavy blue makeup). While initially reluctant to play nice with each other, they must learn the value of friendship and teamwork- for alas, they are but teenagers with attitude. Unfortunately, it’s an hour and forty-five minutes into the movie before we ever witness them don their suits. They spend the first 100 minutes having their run-of-the-mill, done-to-death superhero origin stories set up and squabbling amongst themselves about just who gives the least amount of fucks.
The first 80% of this movie is insufferable garbage, if I’m being honest. The set up is essentially The Breakfast Club– the star football player can’t stop fucking up, so he’s placed into detention with your everyday, athletic, funny, witty, charming, genius… loser outcasts! All but the Red Ranger are social outsiders, dealing with super heavy issues: Pink is a pariah who sent a nude text of her “friend” to a guy, then punched him in the face, so she cuts a bunch of her hair off in the bathroom- how rebellious! Blue is a picked-on nerd, who confesses that he’s “on the spectrum”, and therefor doesn’t understand humor or social interaction (first The Accountant, now the Blue Ranger…go go Super Autism Team!). Black is a squatter who spends most of his time doing karate in the local mining quarry and taking care of his dying mother. Yellow is a punkass girl with a “go fuck yourself” attitude who is definitely the least excited about the prospect of teaming up with these other kids.
All of this would be totally fine if it were confined to the first 45 minutes or so of the movie. Unfortunately, at 90 minutes into the movie, when you’re listening to a highschooler drink beer around a campfire and confess to her being gay- you start to wonder when they’re just going to shut the fuck up and karate kick something already. As it stands, the young actors portraying the Rangers are…fine. Their annoying bickering and trumped-up teen attitudes gets pretty tiresome after an hour, but that’s mostly the fault of the script. The acting is okay, for what it is.
And then…there’s Elizabeth Banks as the villain sans-eyebrows. In an inexplicably confusing turn of events, she appears to be acting in an entirely different movie than the rest of the cast. What starts out as a villain portrayed as a horror movie monster soon devolves into the camp and silliness that you would expect from a Power Rangers movie. Unfortunately, she didn’t get the memo that literally no one else is doing that.
While the kids are set up to be grounded, realistic portrayals- Rita Repulsa slurps down gold jewelry like soba noodles and cocks her head inquisitively like a fucking Cocker Spaniel, grunting and squealing all her lines as if a Power Ranger punted her in the taint. Also, she murders four people while the kids are having their campfire bonding sesh.
Obviously, this makes for an extremely confusing clash of tones. This movie is all over the place. It can’t decide whether it wants to be The Breakfast Club meets The Avengers, the Power Rangers meets The Ring, or just a two-hour long Krispy Kreme commercial. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot- this movie has the single largest product placement deal I think I’ve ever witnessed. I’m not kidding. No less than 20 minutes revolves around it. Just how big is it? Well, a Krispy Kreme store is actually integral to the fucking main conflict. Oh, and Bill Hader voices the comic relief.
In the end, Power Rangers spends so much time trying to be so many different things at once that it forgets to actually be fun. By the time they finally “earned” their armor, I was so long past checked out- I was fucking overdue. Making matters worse is the fact that you’ve already seen the suits if you’ve seen the trailer. They spend one dissapointing fight sequence battling CGI rock-monsters in their armor for maybe 3 minutes, before scrapping that and hopping into their Zords. There’s no fun experimentation sequence in their vehicles; they just hop in and get right to it. After all the gritty, emotional set up, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers theme song, complete with steel guitar plays as they jet around for a few minutes in their brand new alien Ferraris. I mean…why? It feels like an afterthought- like they shot all of this at the end, realizing only too late that they now had to wrap this thing up, like…now.
Truthfully, I went into Power Rangers cautiously optimistic, and with an open mind. I do think that had they stuck to one specific tone, it would have been just fine. Dare I say, it may have even been enjoyable. As it stands, however, it feels a lot like Elizabeth Banks trying to be a method actor and stay true to the cheesy-ass source material in a movie that wants to be Batman Begins. I genuinely don’t understand who this movie was made for. If you’re like me, and you’re tired of seeing the bottom of the barrel being scraped for gritty, realistic reboots, then we need to take a stand. We have to stop paying these studios to shit out polished turds every year around summer.
You Should See This Movie If: You’re one of those nostalgia suckers who waits in anticipation with their wallet out for anything even vaguely resembling something from their childhood (Ooh! Biker Mice From Mars is getting a movie? Where do I pay?)
You Shouldn’t See This Movie If: You ever want to see another original film made.
FOUR THUMBS DOWN
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