![]() ![]() These 90 minutes are not a tight 90 minutes, and these teenagers, though likable enough, are not particularly compelling, their personalities somehow still unformed despite the film having spent so much time on them. These origin-story reboots do sometimes take a while to arrive, but we don’t mind if the time is spent developing interesting characters and building a world in which future stories can take place. It may interest you to know that the film is 90 minutes old - 75% over - before the team finally morphs into their costumes and does the whole “Power Rangers” thing. The crystal is currently buried under a Krispy Kreme, mentioned by name 475,000 times. Their ultimate purpose is to stop the evil Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks, working for a living), now reanimated after her desiccated corpse was recently, coincidentally discovered by a fishing boat - indeed, by Jason’s father (David Denham), because why pay an additional actor for a small role when you can just have someone already on the set say the lines? Rita intends to build a monster out of gold and have that monster, whose name will be Goldar (obviously), retrieve some magic crystal that will destroy the Earth, etc. We’ll just keep the magic coins that give us super strength, thank you.Īnd so there is a lot of dickering and dissembling, ham-fistedly written (by John Gatins) and broadly, earnestly acted as the five half-heartedly try to unite by training with Alpha 5. Be part of a TEAM? With these STRANGERS? Harmonize our spirits so we can “morph” and gain EVEN GREATER POWER? Ugh, forget it. Boy, you’ve never seen such a group of ungrateful teens as these newly invincible snowflakes who love having great power but grumpily refuse to accept great responsibility. Zordon tells these five randos that since they found the coins, they must be the Power Rangers, whether they like it or not. Or the fact that they only find the coins because Billy, acting on some vaguely referenced information from his departed father, blew up part of the mountain.) When they return to the canyon to test out their powers, the five accidentally fall into a submerged cavern where a friendly robot named Alpha 5 (voice of Bill Hader) introduces them to Zordon (Bryan Cranston), whose essence has been uploaded into the computer system of a spaceship that’s been hidden here for 65 million years. (I am omitting some extraneous, nonsensical details, like how the coins aren’t activated until after the five are in a van that gets hit by a train, whereupon they all wake up, unharmed, in their beds at home, and the train thing is never explained. One day they all happen to be in a canyon near their neighborhood, separately, when they all stumble upon ancient coins that give them super strength. These five, who attend the same school but don’t really know each other, become heroes primarily thanks to coincidence. ![]() In the present, in the all-American (actually Canadian) town of Angel Grove, we meet five high-school students representing your basic “Breakfast Club” types: Jason (Dacre Montgomery), the star quarterback who blew his chances with adolescent mischief Kimberly (Naomi Scott), a newly disgraced cheerleader Billy (RJ Cyler), an autistic science whiz Zack (Ludi Lin), an unpredictable Asian-American wild man and Trini (Becky G.), the lone wolf rebel. Rita Repulsa, we later learn.īut never mind them for now. One of the grapplers is named Zordon, which puts him right at home in a story like this. The incongruous melding of cool fantasy and baffling dorkiness that has always been this property’s Achilles heel comes to light as two latex-clad warriors fight ferociously while speaking a language whose subtitles are in the font of a fantasy computer game. We begin at the end of a battle 65 million years ago, in the Earth’s Cenozoic Era. ![]() Try though it might, it’s more “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (any of them) than “The Avengers.” (“What does this mean, when this is all over? Are we Power Rangers, or are we friends?”) Its 124-minute runtime and emphasis on brooding character backstories over actual heroics are evidence that it wants to be a respectable, grown-up kind of superhero movie, not just for kids.Īnd it certainly is more real-world than the cheap ’90s TV show it’s based on - but what isn’t? The film’s uncomplicated plot, undemanding stunt work, unconvincing special effects, and unpolished acting are reminders of its cheesy, simple-minded roots. The new film does have an intermittent “Friday Night Lights” vibe and a campfire scene of Power Rangers baring their souls to one another. “Power Rangers” is the “Batman Begins” of its franchise, the gritty reboot that tells our heroes’ improbably lengthy and self-serious origin story and introduces them to a whole new generation (by which I mean the same generation as before, only 20 years older now). ![]()
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