Power Rangers (2017) - How to Doom a Franchise

[Applause] captain [Applause] midnight [Applause] this video is brought to you by sundance now in the early 2010s the saban capital group was looking at the marvel cinematic universe and seen nothing but dollar signs the original owners of the power rangers brand it isn't hard to see how the investment firm believed they could recreate the interconnected superheroics of marvel with the rangers after all they had brand recognition and childhood nostalgia on their side which are really the only two things that modern studios seem to think can launch a franchise they approached lionsgate a studio that had success with y a hits like twilight and the hunger games and after a ton of writer and director turmoil and confusion power rangers was finally released into theaters in 2017 and well as you probably know since there hasn't been a flood of sequels since the movie kinda failed to take off and didn't lead to much of anything sure the franchise is still alive and well on the small screen i mean why wouldn't it be when each episode costs about 25 and a few ham sandwiches to make and yeah there had already been a film that mostly used that first tv cast but i decided to title this video how not to start a franchise because this was supposed to be the birth of a new kind of power rangers a reset that would take it in a far more mature direction and on that front it failed pretty miserably so that's what i really want to get into this week where this movie went wrong a few things it did have going for it and maybe most importantly why closely following blockbuster trends usually doesn't lead to success of your own oh and this is definitely my first time covering anything power rangers related so if you like it and would like to see more or maybe just want to help out the channel feel free to leave a like comment down below so the algorithm doesn't hate this video enough about youtube though let's talk about this very very weird little movie and only one power on earth can stop him [Music] so the first thing i want to say about this film might sound like a nitpick and maybe it is but it's something i couldn't stop thinking about throughout the movie like so many productions trying to save a few bucks power rangers was shot near vancouver canada and it just feels off nothing against vancouver i think it can actually be a great location shows like the early seasons of the x-files used its dark forests and cold look to its advantage and i think the series was really hurt when they moved production from there to the sunny streets and valleys of la but for power rangers it's kind of the other way around one of the things that i most remember about the mighty morphin power rangers as a kid is that sunny california setting now sure some of the seasons were shot in australia and the show would transport them somewhere else in fights to use japanese footage but for the most part they really sold themselves as a very southern california show and as a little kid in cold snowy montana that really stuck with me and it's just nowhere to be found in the film this angel grove isn't the fun sunny location of the show it's a generic small town that everyone constantly says is boring and awful the whole movie long stretches of the film just take place in like dirt and rock patches next to a mine really trying to drill home just how dull and generic it is now i'm not saying the original show was some fantastic holy text that needs to be upheld or anything but at its best it was a real sugar rush of a show providing upbeat music enthusiastic if wooden performances and unique visual effects that felt like nothing else on kids tv at the time it was trying to be the embodiment of fun and spectacle in all capital letters this movie makes the active choice to go against that in setting in tone in its characters it wants you to know that being a power ranger is serious business that needs to have a dark weightiness to it on the surface i can understand why they went in this direction they wanted to age up the demographic this movie is aimed at and as the director dean israelite often said in interviews establish it as a more character-driven story here's the thing though the movie doesn't actually put in the work to be character-driven at all sure the cast has more emotional problems than the ones on tv did but that's not the same thing as actually being driven by the actions and inner lives of its characters in reality the script for power rangers 2017 feels about as on rails and generic as it gets a good example to jump to the end of the movie is when all the team zords are being pushed into a big fiery hole in the ground there's this interesting little moment where all the characters realize they might have to accept their own deaths kind of strange for a power rangers movie obviously they were never actually gonna die but the movie doesn't even have a character-based reason for them to come out of this alive in a better script and i don't even necessarily mean a great one just something a little more competent the team would be able to get themselves out of this situation using the things they've learned about themselves or each other throughout the movie so them coming together to form the megazord would actually mark some sort of character growth but what actually ends up happening is the zords themselves just end up combining without the team even knowing that they could do that making it just feel like dumb luck more than anything else i'm not saying this one moment ruins the movie but i do think it's indicative of how the film doesn't seem to use its characters well at all despite the whole creative team talking about how character driven it is i should probably talk a little bit more about the cast it's a mixed bag you have brian cranston as zordon which is kind of a nice nod to the monster voices he provided in the original show but he doesn't really get to do much acting here i think the face effect looks perfectly decent but outside of being mildly stern it's not like zordon is exactly a character that gives an actor much to sink their teeth into elizabeth banks's reader repulsa is a different story i remember a lot of people mocking this performance when the movie came out and i understand why it's a very big very campy one but i think it works honestly this is rita repulsa we're talking about there's no point in going small every time banks is on screen there's at least something worth paying attention to a lot of her dialogue is clunky but i do really think she's easily giving the most committed performance here the kids come out mostly okay as actors i think rj clyre and naomi scott as the blue and pink ranger end up giving the best performances don't get me wrong both of them are saddled with some terrible dialogue at times but they do a pretty decent job of selling it the rest are perfectly serviceable except becky g as the yellow ranger i wasn't really familiar with her before this film but apparently she's mainly a pop star and going off of this performance she should probably stick to that she was the only one here who kind of felt like she was acting on a disney channel sitcom the film has them all meet in detention much like the breakfast club and like that movie there's a few scenes of the kids bonding as they share what's going on with their lives it isn't the worst idea it's kind of tough though because it has to balance that with this massive exposition dump about the backstory of zordon rita and the entire history of earth it's an awkward pairing but one that i think they probably could have gotten away with if they just made them flow into each other a little bit better as it is it just kind of feels like two very disparate stories mashed into a clump whereas i think if you look at better teen genre stuff like buffy the vampire slayer you can see examples of those two elements working together that fantasy or sci-fi lore being used to support a story that's still firmly focused on its character development which has the added benefit of making us care about the lore too since it directly impacts the characters that we are already invested in instead what we're given is a script with tons of exposition that eventually adds up to let's have a great big fight outside the krispy kreme you know that donut place well if you don't know you certainly will by the end of this movie because they cannot stop bringing it up the zeo crystal is apparently buried under the krispy kreme so characters don't just talk about it they go inside it we see the nice clean store i mean the movie does its best to play it off as a joke but it just comes off as kind of sad i get that product placement can really help fund a movie and a little of it here and there is tacky but not the end of the world having the entire third act of your new movie franchise revolve around it though it just feels kind of desperate it's the kind of thing that directly impacts the movie and makes the whole production look pretty cheap i've mostly been talking about the script and the acting though and while those are obviously important with a franchise as fun and goofy as power rangers i think just being visually exciting and full of energy would have at least gotten them halfway there but it isn't the whole production has this kind of netflix drama quality and a really muted color palette if they ever try something like this again with the rangers i think it would really benefit from animation something with the looks of into the spider-verse but with the costumes zords and monsters of mighty morphin power rangers i think that would get people a lot more excited than this iron man baby in the woods look that this film has in the end though i think there's one very simple problem with this movie there's been a lot of power ranger teams through the years most of them revolve around a simple gimmick like dinosaurs or ninjas and all of them were made on a much much smaller budget than this but what they have that this movie doesn't is a fast-paced sense of fun and energy they're not great shows but they understand exactly what they're trying to be power rangers 2017 doesn't it wants the nostalgia and fan service but it's ashamed of its own source material it wants to be taken seriously as a character-driven story but it doesn't have a good enough script to support that it wants to be a broad fun blockbuster but it looks too dour and downbeat to really pull off that tone like so many failed blockbusters power rangers tried to do a little bit of everything that was popular at the time and came out about as bland as you can get apparently there are plans for more movies going on in netflix and aimed at adults not just kids if they ever end up happening we can only hope they learn a few lessons about what not to do from this 2017 incarnation it's the mighty morphin power rangers teenage defenders of earth so okay despite the few things 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Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 234,255

Keywords: Power Rangers, 2017, movie, ending, megazord, morph, reaction, review, go go power rangers, captain midnight, captainmidnight, trailer, zord

Id: 7naBQMq2eB0

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021