Power Rangers
Directed by Dean Israelite
Starring Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Becky G, Ludi Lin, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Banks, and Bill Hader.
Backstory
Yay, childhood nostalgia! Well, actually, Power Rangers came along in my awkward teen years so…yay, awkward teen years nostalgia! With superheroes dominating the box office and 1990s nostalgia starting to gear up, I’m not surprised it didn’t take long for the gritty reboot of Power Rangers to hit the big screen. And the trailers delighted me. As I’ve been joking on social media, I haven’t seen Power Rangers taken this seriously since the fanfic I wrote in high school. I was genuinely surprised at how excited I was getting for it as opening day came around. So, there I was on opening day. How does the gritty Power Rangers go?
Plot
Jason is the star player on the Angel Grove High School football team. Until a senior prank goes horribly wrong, he’s in a traffic accident, placed under house arrest, and forced to go to Saturday detention. There, he meets Billy, an autistic kid who accidentally built a bomb in his lunchbox, and Kimberly, a former star cheerleader who knocked the teeth out of the quarterback. Sneaking out one night, they run into a couple of kids from the wrong side of the tracks: Zack and Trini. During their adventure, they discover some mysterious, glowing coins the imbue them with enhanced strength and stamina. The coins soon lead them to a buried spaceship and Zordon. Zordon explains that the coins have chosen them to become the next in a long line of Power Rangers — intergalactic warriors sworn to protect all life. But they must master their powers quickly, for the ancient evil that is Rita Repulsa has also been awakened. Will they master their powers in time and defeat Rita? Will they be able to become the Power Rangers?
What I Liked
Elizabeth Banks as Rita is fantastic. We don’t get a lot of…deliciously evil villains these days. And Banks’s Rita is deliciously evil. And I might have joked about my high school fanfic, but damn it, there is a scene that is straight out of my high school fanfic and it made me giddy to see it on the big screen. There’s lots of great Power Rangers Easter eggs, but the best one has to be how the entire third act follows the formula of a typical episode. Which leads me to….
What I Didn’t Like
We really don’t see our heroes suit up until the start of the third act, so a lot of the film is our heroes working through their teen angst so they can fully embrace their powers. Eventually, you start looking at your watch just waiting for the colorful suits to show up. And as superhero films go, it really is a rather cliched and formulaic origin tale.
Final Verdict
All talk talk talk and franchise set-up until it turns into the biggest budgeted episode you’ve ever seen. As nostalgia-fests go, it left me pretty happy.