4 Signs the Power Rangers Movie Will Be Goddamn Insane
In a move that will surprise absolutely no one, Lionsgate has announced plans to reboot the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers with what will no doubt be an origin movie preceding two other films, followed by a second reboot trilogy.
As anyone who has watched the Frankensteined first season of the original Power Rangers can tell you, the story is at best "unintelligible" and at worst "the deathbed ramblings of an LSD test subject." Attempting to adapt even a fraction of that mescaline-laced rubber-suited pop-up book into a cohesive modern action film will be nothing short of a hero's trial.
The Training Montage Was Suspiciously Nonexistent
No superhero origin is complete without spending 45 minutes watching the lead characters struggle to embrace their cosmic new abilities with a joyous amount of wry chuckle-fishing slapstick.
However, the first episode of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers knew this was a heaping mountain of time-wasting moon shit that could be better spent selling action figures to children, so they completely skipped over it. The Power Rangers go from angsty teens to karate-helmet robot dinosaur lords in an afternoon.
"But I don't even know martial arts like Jason or Trini."
"We've seen you playing Street Fighter at the juice bar. That's good enough."
After getting their "power coins" 10 minutes into the first episode, the Power Rangers initially refuse to become heroes, but manage to completely change their minds, accept the mantle of intergalactic justice, and master both the piloting of their dinosaur-shaped mechanical skyscrapers and the elaborate transformation sequence required to form them all together into an even gianter robo-titan in exactly five minutes of episode time.
The Villain's Origin Story Is Completely Batshit
Queen Rita, the Power Rangers' iconic villainess, was actually nothing more than footage of a character from a completely different Japanese television show with all of her dialogue dubbed into English. So we're already working with the storytelling pedigree of a beer commercial.
"So I was watching The Wizard of Oz while coked off my ass, and just hear me out on this ..."
The backstory the "writers" of Power Rangers managed to assemble for Queen Rita in that first episode consisted of her being locked in a "space dumpster" for 10,000 years before being accidentally set free by a couple of American astronauts. Immediately after being released, Rita vows to destroy the nearest planet in celebration, a task she chooses to accomplish with the cunning use of giant monsters. So, we can look forward to seeing what a $200 million budget can do to a space dumpster on the big screen.
The Monsters
The monsters in Power Rangers all look like costumes GWAR would wear if they wanted to make absolutely sure nobody ever bought their records. Each appears to have been created by a serial killer in a timed challenge, including but by no means limited to Terror Toad, a giant toad that ate the Power Rangers and then somehow printed their faces on his stomach ...
"If you're anything like the last green guy that tried to eat me, you'll fail, too." -Pink Ranger
... Mr. Ticklesneezer, a donkey-faced abomination inexplicably dressed like a war correspondent from the Swiss Alps ...
... and Pumpkin Rapper, a dancing pumpkin man whom we can assume was given one extra "P" at the last minute to make him slightly less terrifying:
There was also Commander Crayfish and his team of evil doppelganger Power Rangers, Hatchasaurus and its talking computer heart, and Polluticorn, a pollution-obsessed unicorn who was admittedly metal as fuck.
"You'll pay for this, Captain Pla- shit, wrong show. Sorry."
Putting any of those monsters into a movie not specifically designed to see how loud an audience can boo would arguably be the boldest decision in cinematic history.
There's a Terrifying Implied Backstory
OK, so in that first Power Rangers episode, Queen Rita's escape and subsequent attack on Earth provokes tube-faced ethereal commander Zordon to send his effeminate sidekick Alpha 5 to locate "five overbearing and overemotional humans," to which Alpha 5 immediately responds, "Not teenagers! I was afraid of that!"
"Please, Zordon ... I can still hear their screams."
In other words, this isn't the first time he's been told to wrangle teenagers for Zordon. Just how many moody high school students has Zordon burned through in his intergalactic defense league? Hell, Alpha 5's name tells us he is the fifth in a series of robot servants -- we actually see Alpha 4 entombed in a cardboard box and a death shroud of cobwebs:
Pictured: The "Peace Conference" Trini and Zach went to.
There's probably a box full of teenager bones somewhere in Zordon's attic. With any luck, we'll get to see that box in this big-budget reboot, because that's the Power Rangers movie we deserve. And not that Turbo bullshit.
