Following on the footsteps of Transformers and Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles, this is the latest film adaptation of a children's TV
show and toy franchise. Unlike the former two, I actually like this one. Not
the biggest fan of the original series, as a kid I only watched the Mighty
Morphin-era up until the 1995 movie, it has been over 20 years so I don't
remember everything about it.
The plot of this film in a nutshell similar to the pilot for
the original –Villainess Rita Repulsa has
escaped imprisonment, five teenagers were selected to become the next team of Power
Rangers, they meet Zordon and Alpha whom tell them their new gifts, they are
sceptical but accept when danger arrives, they morph into their suits, gain
their Zords leading to a battle in which the Zord form to become to the
Megazord. In the pilot episode, that was 20 minutes long and this film
expands it to two hours.
They use that time to develop the characters, which I
greatly appreciate because the Rangers in the original weren’t really complex
or realistic, they were more archetypes for how you want teenagers to be not
what they actually are. Here they written to have story arcs to make them more
relatable, some even have their character traits from the original and are
given new twists to them. Jason is a sports star like in the original but has
gone off the rails when a prank goes terribly wrong. Kimberley in the original
was a valley girl, here she was part of the ‘mean girl’ cheerleader crowd whom
also has gone off the rails when she’s excluded for sharing a secret photo.
Billy is a socially awkward nerd in the original, here he’s a genius who is
struggling with autism. Zack is a truant who is an adrenaline-junkie,
struggling with a sick mother. Trini keeps herself to herself as she struggles
to make friends due to her family moving a lot and possibly struggling with her
sexuality. I don’t remember much about Zack or Trini in the original, I do know
they received quite a bit of criticism of being possible racist stereotypes –
black guy in the black-suit and Asian girl in the yellow-suit. Their
ethnicities have been changed as Zack is played by Chinese-Canadian actor Ludi
Lin and Trini is played by Latina-American actress Becky G, in fact the cast is
pretty diverse Dacre Montgomery whom plays Jason is Australian, Naomi Scott as
Kimberly is English and RJ Cyler as Billy is African-American. All five of
these actors deliver excellent performances and make you relate to characters
you’d probably hate.
Bryan Cranston plays Zordon, whom original provided some voice-work
in the original series and the character Billy Cranston is named after him. I
like what they did with the character, instead of just being a God-like mentor
to the Rangers he has his own character arc. I like that he was former Power
Ranger along with Rita and she betrayed them (I don’t think that was the case
in the original). Elizabeth Banks is greatly over-the-top as Rita, rightly so
as Rita was ridiculously OTT in the original that she was dubbed with a
shouting-voice. Thankfully they never go that far with her, there are times where
she seems to channel Glenn Close’s Cruella De Vill, however they are moments
when she can be quite intimidating.
What also makes this film work is it’s sense of humour, despite
grounding the main characters it doesn’t forget that it’s based on a cheesy
kids show. So it doesn’t go all too dark, it knows not to take itself too
seriously, it has it’s silly moments and is even self-aware at times. Of course
it has the most blatant product placement for Krispy Kreme ever, even they have
fun with it I remember that getting a lot of laughs in the cinema.
In a lot of ways this is what Josh Trank’s Fant4stic should
have been like, Fantastic Four was a cheesy comic with a great family dynamic and
the 2015 film took away all of that. This film has a nod to Trank’s Chronicle
when they first try out their new powers, which made me realise how darkening
up a cheesy story can work and not work.
This a perfect popcorn movie (or should I say donut movie?)
it has great characters, over-the-top action and special effects, as far as I
can tell respects it’s source material and more importantly it’s fun.
