Directed by: Dean Israelite
Written by: John Gatins, Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Michele Mulroney, Kieran Mulroney
Starring: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler
IMDb Link
I'll just leave this here before I start.
Power Rangers is nothing special. I've seen just about everything that the film uses a dozen times before, and it doesn't do anything with what it has to really make itself memorable.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
The film's plot is essentially The Breakfast Club if the kids were also going through a collective super hero origin story, with a little sprinkling of Chronicle in particular. Five teenagers happen to be in the same place at the same time when they discover coloured coins in a rock face that give them super powers and allow them to become the Power Rangers: an ancient order of warriors who protect a crystal that gives life to all beings on Earth. The Power Rangers are guided by Zordon, an ancient alien who was once a Power Ranger, who tries to teach them to control their powers; their opponent is Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks, completely over the top and perfect for this reason), another ancient who seeks to take the crystal to destroy life on Earth and use it to conquer the universe. It's similar enough to the plot of the show, but presented without any real awareness of the ridiculousness of itself, and the film is so slavish in its following of the origin story formula that it's never unpredictable or particularly exciting in any way; it's stiff and safe, and a lot of conflicts happen seemingly simply because the plot demanded it. The power levels of the good guys and the bad guys are never quantified, so there's no tension as to what will happen and you're basically waiting for the film to come to each step in the narrative. It wouldn't be a problem if the effects weren't so terrible, but more on that later.
In the mean time the teenagers all go through their respective emotional journeys of struggling with identity and dealing with mistakes, overcoming various dysfunctions. It's probably the only element of the film that really works despite how obviously derivative it is. The writers seemed to get a little creative with the characters here, giving various relationships to pairs withing the five and promoting diversity and acceptance. The Blue Ranger is on the autism spectrum, the Yellow Ranger is gay/bi-sexual (the movie didn't seem entirely clear to me on that), and they made those traits part of the characters without making the characters all about those traits. It's surprisingly decent and considerate, making those traits obviously part of their emotional struggles as teenagers without pushing them as some sort of 'other' struggle that makes them different from the struggles of the Red, Black, and Pink Rangers (Red screwed up and ruined a potential career in football, Black has to take care of his sick and dying mother who is his only family, Pink did something horrible to a friend and now has to live with the mistake and the guilt).
The Rangers talk to each other and help each other to confront their issues, and we see a few good moments like "You have to live with it. You did an awful thing but that doesn't make you an awful person". The ways in which the Rangers interact as people and come together by sharing their struggles isn't new, but it's the most well done thing about this movie, and if they had spent more time developing the ideas they put forward, I might have even been able to call the film good. That said, there are more than a few trite moments and elements in the film that, once again, seem like they only happen because the plot demands it. One aspect in particular that felt forced was this blatantly hinted but never directly spoken rivalry between the Red and the Black Rangers. It's hinted at, it gets heated and comes to a peak, and then it's sort of forgotten about, like it was never real and only happened because rivalries are the sort of thing that happens when a team is just starting out.
Alright, now to the effects, because they really were awful, and were a detriment to a few moments that would be important to fans of the series. I'm not sure how exactly to describe what I saw, but the design of the Zords (robot dinosaurs/prehistoric creatures for anyone unfamiliar) are awful, almost completely unrecognisable from the animals upon which they are based, looking essentially like transformers on four legs. My friend who watched the movie with me wasn't even able to identify what anyone of the Zords were supposed to be besides the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Past the designs themselves, the animation was pretty terrible too, as none of the Zords had any real weight to them, and so we're just watching multi-coloured mess smash about the screen without ever feeling like their smashing was at all real. The ultimate giant boss that they fight, Goldar, is even worse. He's made purely of semi-liquid gold, without any defining physical characteristics besides a pair of wings, and his lack of definition causes a look akin to a CGI cartoon like Beast Wars. The only exception here is the MegaZord (the combination of the five DinoZords); unfortunately, the supposedly epic reveal of the MegaZord is completely obscured by lava and fire, so when it came to reveal the giant robot and maybe raise my heart a little, the whole moment is wasted because you can't really see anything besides moving orange. You know that mechanical parts are moving, but you aren't really given a look at how the five Zords fit together, and so the big reveal is a bit of a flat moment, which is disappointing considering it's one of the key moments for fans of the series.
With the fans in mind, I want to finish with a quick word about the film's identity. Obviously the people who paid to have this film made wanted to make their money back, so they had to appeal to fans of the series while also drawing in kids who may not be familiar with the show but like the idea of super heroes fighting monsters with the help of their robot dinosaur friends (ie. every kid ever), so the film had to be presented in a way that younger audiences were comfortable with while still having enough 90s extreme cheese to remind adults why they loved the show as kids. The film ends up trying to tow the line between these two ideas, and suffers for it, as it never uses its big budget to try and make the extremes of the series work, while also presenting a plot that's so overplayed at this point that there's no reason for people to want to see this when they could easily watch a dozen other movies and get the same essential experience that they're looking for.
The Verdict: A derivative and predictable plot, mostly bland acting, as well as ugly and sometimes incomprehensible CGI, offset by what seems to be a genuine effort to push characters past their archetypes (an action that is in and of itself derivative, but not poorly done) makes for an overall slightly less than mediocre movie. The film also has a trouble with identity, too far removed from the series to really please fans beyond a couple of homages, and too much like every other super hero origin story to stand out.
Rating: 4.5/10
Published March 23rd, 2017
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