Last week, an amazing Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers fan film/reboot was released to widespread acclaim. Starring James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek) and Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica), directed by music video director Joseph Kahn (who also directed Torque and Detention), and produced by Adi Shankar (Dredd, The Grey), POWER/RANGERS reimagines a Power Rangers world in which the Rangers are viewed as child soldiers selected to take part in a war in which they ultimately lose.
For anybody in their late 20s and early 30s, the fan film represented everything we once found cool (flashy costumes, robots, entertaining fight sequences) with what we currently enjoy (mature themes, darker content). However, and understandably so, POWER/RANGERS also received some flak of its own, even from former Power Rangers actors.
Jason David Frank, arguably the most popular and visible Power Rangers alum, shared his dislike of the film:
To summarize, Frank identifies himself as a PG-13 guy who doesn’t like the dark elements of the fan film not because he personally doesn’t enjoy them, but because Power Rangers is still a family-friendly franchise that currently appeals to both kids and adults alike. He also appears to save face by appealing to Lionsgate and Saban, somewhat denouncing POWER/RANGERS in hopes of garnering good favor so he could appear in the upcoming Power Rangers film adaptation. SCG Power Rangers, LLC, the parent company that owns the Power Rangers franchise, issued a cease and desist letter to Shankar and those involved with the reboot, temporarily bringing the short offline. However, the short is back online, albeit behind an age gate and with a disclaimer stating the work has no official link to the Power Rangers property.
As we’ve all come to realize, Hollywood (and most forms of entertainment) is cyclical, and the stuff we enjoyed as kids are being rebooted for modern audiences. Take, for instance, last summer’s bomb of a film, Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We all entered that film expecting a gritty reboot to reflect our growth and adult interests without remembering that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brand is still very much a family-oriented property. Now why is that?
We can look at the rise of the modern superhero films and how Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy and Marvel’s slate of films have not only shaped what we’ve come to expect from action films, but also how to adapt properties from our childhoods for the big screen. As we grow, we like our interests to grow alongside us, rather than leaving them behind for more age-appropriate stuff. Thus, when we look back in regards to both hindsight and nostalgia, we don’t realize exactly how kitschy and cheesy they were, even for the time period in which they were released. This is why reboots like The Dark Knight trilogy and the Marvel adaptations have been so successful and entertaining: they remind us of everything we enjoyed as children while introducing a new perspective on the material that we can enjoy on a more adult level.
Shankar, the producer of POWER/RANGERS, explained so eloquently why he decided to create the short film and include it in his “Bootleg Universe” that also includes Venom (Truth in Journalism) and The Punisher (Dirty Laundry) adaptations. When reminiscing about Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, he realized that the Rangers weren’t just teenagers selected to save the world, but essentially child soldiers enlisted into an intergalactic war they have no place in.
It’s understandable that both Frank and Saban would want to protect their interests, especially with the aforementioned official Power Rangers reboot scheduled for next summer. However, they should gauge fan reaction to POWER/RANGERS to see how they can strike a balance between keeping the upcoming film exciting for all types of fans and age groups. Shankar has already gone on record about not using POWER/RANGERS as a pitch. So where do we go from here?
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Enjoy POWER/RANGERS for what it is, share GIFs and clips with your friends and social networks, and pray that the official Power Rangers reboot will be half as good as this.