Review by Julian Lytle
Basically: What if the Breakfast Club got superpowers from Walter White.
So how do you take a TV franchise that’s still on the air and reboot it in a movie at the same time? You hodgepodge other movies into your concept and throw everyone into armor and POW you have your movie. That is what this Power Rangers movie is—based on the first three seasons of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Dacre Montgomery plays Jason Scott, the leader who essentially has the storyline of Emilio Estevez’s from Breakfast Club, while Naomi Scott plays Kimberly Hart, a regretful former mean girl. They first meet Billy Cranston in detention, which ends up leading them on a journey to some mines where fearless teen Zack and angsty loner Trini are. They fall down a hole do some exploring in a cave find some stuff and BOOM, PIFF, POW they get superpowers kind of like the film Chronicle.
From this point, we have training montages and bonding sessions with the teen heroes. The threat is Rita, played by Elizabeth Banks—who seems to have fun with any type of role she is given—she is looking for gold to make her monster, Goldar (who for some reason isn’t a dope Ape in golden armor with wings). The teenagers with attitudes don’t really get along with Zordon (Bryan Cranston), who is the former red ranger from 65 million years ago. Rita doesn’t have much to do on the screen to show why she does anything other than: She’s the bad guy. Which is a big thing because all great superhero movies have outstanding villains. The end is totally rushed with not enough good clear fight choreography, and a ‘let’s get this done’ fight with the Zords (giant robot vehicles) and Goldar. Hopefully, people react to Saban’s Power Rangers well despite all of its flaws, because the movie goes for every piece of nostalgia it can, and maybe they can get a second chance to fix it with a sequel.
In the end: Be ready to be intrigued by a bunch of kids then bored and confused by a conclusion that somehow took two hours to get to.
