Rating (1 out of 5)
A remake that discards its roots and tries to carve a new path for itself. In doing so they carved a path down to the bottom of the barrel. In the end this is flat, boring action hero movie, where you pray that it will finally end.
Plot: A group of teens discover amulets buried in a mine. They soon learn they have been chosen to be Power Rangers, and must defend earth from Rite Respula.
What I Liked: If we are going for a new grown up Power Rangers, I thought the villian pulling out teeth and robbing the jewelry store were good scenes to establish a serious evil. Elizabeth Banks did a fair job in her role.
What I Didn’t Like: Let’s start with the basics. It is a 2 hours movie, and we don’t see the Power Ranger out fits until the end of the movie. That blows.
Even worse, is we are shown the special dino craft briefly when one ranger took his out for a joy ride. It wasn’t until the very end battle that they jump into their vehicle. Then, miracously they know exactly how to operate them. We don’t see MegaRanger until the very end, and then the Power Rangers seem to operate it flawlessly. The MegaRanger assembles behind cloud of smoke. We don’t even get to see them join. Then the total of MegaRanger seems way bigger than the sum of its parts. The cool thing about Power Rangers is the Power Rangers.
The training sequence was done without the Power Ranger outfits. What a rip off. They didn’t learn how to use their powers before their final battle with the bad guys. They also didn’t get to practice in their vehicles. We were hosed on training sequences.
The mentor for the Power Rangers, Zordon (Bryan Cranston), had personal issues of his own to surmount. In a basic action movie like this I am not a fan of your mentor having a weakness.
They attempted “a get to know you” scene around the bonfire. This felt forced and was the wrong approach. It should have been done through school or after losing a battle in their first fight. This scene should have given me deep insight to what drove them, and how they could connect. It was a flat scene that did little for the audience.
I am working on developing my Power Ranger formula for movies, which requires each character to have a trait that is different from the others. A key reason for the formula is to add humor to action or serious movie. There was no humor in this movie. As an example, I would have expected the the smart kid would have read the manual on all the crafts and that to be a key part of the movie. This would have also be the bonding moment rather than the silly bonfire.
They basically found the Power Ranger base by mistake, as one of the characters fell into water. Then the entrance was weird as it was through an invisible wall underneath the water. The entrance should have emitted a sound or color, that attracted them…and our tough guy went to punch his way through and falls through the invisible barrier.
I am not a big fan of the villain letting the good guys live when they have them trapped. Rita was supposed to be very dark, but she lets 4 of the 5 live. This was another opportunity missed for them to finally discover how to morph to break away. Rita letting them to live just seemed like a way to keep the movie from ending. That was weak, or as Scott says “garbo”.
Conclusion: A movie that really misses the mark in so many areas. It takes so long to get to any action, that you might luck out and fall asleep and wake up when it ends.