POWER RANGERS (2017) review

(Reviewed by Melody Werner)
Everyone knows Power Rangers. They're a sentai superhero team created by Saban. Early this year, the series was rebooted by Saban and Lionsgate. Directed by Dean Israelite, it stars Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Ludi Lin, Becky G, and Elizabeth Banks. The film was met with mixed critical reception, but somehow made enough money that it will now be made into a franchise. Now, I grew up watching Power Rangers quite a lot, and while I realize in hindsight that the show was always bad, it was an enjoyable kind of terrible--though some of the subseries did have some genuinely neat things (Light Speed Rescue, for instance, had an incredible villain in Diabolico, and the series theme music has almost always been fantastic). It was cheeseballs if you were any age over 10, in a good way, albeit not for most. I would've been fine with a reboot which either stuck with the old style and just had fun, or a reboot which tried to make Power Rangers more adult, more modern... if it were good. Which this film, quite clearly, is not. At all. In any way.


The film's one true strength, its special effects, are always hampered by the film's completely atrocious action sequences. The character designs are horrendous. Not just the Power Rangers themselves, who look even worse than they did in their first reveals. Everyone was calling them knockoff Ironmen, but in their full incarnation they are even worse. Somehow. Most of the time they don't even have their visors on, so they look like really janky Warframe fodder characters. 'Cept Warframe had some intriguing grunt designs, and these look like b-grade Grineer. And aren't just characters to be slaughtered by you. The action sequences are always covered in a haze of ash or blurs, so you can't even appreciate the work put into the SFX. They're badly choreographed, boring, and at times have hilariously bad results like when Rita gets batted off by the Megazord at the end. The music is forgettable, but obnoxious for the most part, and the one cheap attempt to use the classic theme song makes the film feel like a hollow pantomime which just, at that moment, realized what it was called. The acting is awful. Everyone indulges in such melodrama to compensate for their stiffness and the lack of a good story.


The narrative is stupid. Incredibly contrived, poorly executed, way too confusing for how trite and cliché it really is. For instance, everyone acts so surprised when Kimberly cuts her hair and acts like it has somehow made her a badass--all she did was cut her hair! That's not "Wow" worthy! People don't act like this! Who wrote this screenplay, motherfucking Martians? It's also incredibly predictable. I was able to guess the storyline beat for beat. And guess what? Unlike with a good movie which constantly keeps me on my toes and being able to predict the ending is extremely satisfying, this movie just made me cringe into myself once my predictions were proven correct, time and time again. It's such a lazy story. A real effort was made to flesh out the characters, to give them more complexity, but it backfires in making every character incredibly hateable. Kimberly is a scum lord. Jason is a self-serving asshole who does stupid shit but somehow has a messiah complex. Trini's family is incredibly overbearing to a comedic level. Zack is a douche who puts everyone else's lives in danger, but it's totally okay because his mom has cancer and he cares for her. But no, he literally almost kills people. Alpha-5 is even more annoying than he ever was. If that was even possible. It's the snark which acts way too sure about how funny it is that really puts him over the top. But more on the epic failure in terms of comedy this movie provides later. Zordon is a dick. Rita just looks and feels like a poor man's Grunge character. Oh, and Billy? I've saved the worst for last.


You know how kinda' silly it was to have the black dude be the Black Ranger in the original series, and the Asian chick be the Yellow Ranger? Well don't worry, now the black guy is the Blue Ranger, the Black Ranger is an Asian dude, and the Yellow Ranger is a ...? girl. Oh, and the Blue Ranger has autism and is made the butt-end of every joke and only used to set up a stupid as fuck death which completely loses its effect not even five minutes later. Yeah, that might be worse. Every other character is an asshole to Billy until he (not really a spoiler since your experience will not be spoiled knowing this for a fact) dies. Then is revived, because of course. Then everyone goes back to ignoring him. Because of course, because of course. Next time, Saban, if you're going to try and have some self-awareness and own up to your goofs, have enough self-awareness not to make things infinitely worse for yourselves.


The pathetic excuse for "comedy" in this film is possibly the most cringe-inducing part of it. There is only one legitimately good joke in this film (Krispy Kreme?!), but that doesn't make up for the litany of garbage ones. I remember watching the trailer in 2016 for his movie, seeing the terrible "It's just like a video game" joke and saying to myself "No way can the actual movie have jokes this bad. They must be saving the a-grade material for the actual film. Nobody can be this terrible at comedy." Then I watched the film. Good god, how can anyone live with themselves knowing they let such terrible lines of pseudo-humor slip into the wilderness, for public consumption? The dialogue is unnatural. The whole movie has this air of manufactured manipulation and fleeting attempts at being hip. You know how The Emoji Movie got a lot of flak for how it tried to bandwagon on pop culture? Well this movie does that shit too, with grating references and emojis aplenty. As if nobody has learned anything and people really want to point focus at something so mundane as digital facial expressions.


I have to ask: what is the purpose of Power Rangers now? We already have plenty of other, much, much better sentai or sentai-inspired properties, like Voltron: Legendary Defender, Chroma Squad, and the previously mentioned Warframe. Hell, the Power Rangers comics apparently kick loads of ass. Did this movie really need to exist other than to leech off of a popular brand name? Growing up with your audience is an admirable goal, updating something from decades ago for a new audience is perfectly acceptable, but this movie has a lot less soul than the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers movie. And I know people hate that one, but it's better to be a movie that knows what it is than to try and be something it isn't, that's way out of its reach, and fail miserably. If you liked the old series, you'll hate this movie. If you hated the old series, you'll hate this movie. This is something which I can't see anyone liking, though I know it has its defenders (which is, of course, fine. Like what you like. I just don't get it). It isn't the worst movie ever, but I could hardly recommend it. Power Rangers 2017 gets a 2.5/10.

Embarrassing

Summary:
The film is an utter piece of drek, dragged from the bowels of hell itself to bore a new generation to death. Terrible in every way except for its impressive but obscured special effects and singular entertaining joke. This isn't the popcorn film you were looking for, this isn't the modern update which pleases everyone it could've been. It's abysmal.

(originally posted: 10/20/2017)

Comments

Popular articles