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The thread where Kirkland bitches about Power Rangers.


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First of all let me get this out of the way. I love the Power Rangers. Like, I don't think that peope know just how much and why. 

I attribute a lot of who I am today as a person to Power Rangers. I firmly belive that if it wasn't for the diverse cast of MMPR being part of my oldest memories I'd be the same kind of disgraceful and ignorant racist that it seems like most of the guys I grew up with turned out to be.  

I said a little while back in a thing that I recorded for youtube that the Green\White Ranger was the first TV character I remembered seeing that truely impressed on me what it was to be a good and decent person. I took more than that from it though. To this day green is my favorie color and 90 percent of the things I buy are green including clothes. You all know I have long hair and love it to death. Guess who the first guy I ever saw with really long hair that I thought looked cool was. Tommy.  If I have to say anyone outside of my dad and uncle is my hero I say his actor Jason David Frank.

Now, getting to what the title promised. First I'll quote what I said when the first trailer for the new movie came out.

 

Quote

I like the Breakfast Club tribute at the start but it brings up an issue I'll get to in a minute after my first gripe.

I do not like that they have enhanced abilities outside of their Ranger uniforms. The original MMPR we're able to fight minor enemies outside their suits because of their own skills. Jason, Trini, Zack and later on Tommy were skilled Martial Artists long before Zordon recruited them. Kimberly was a gymnast her whole life and that was reflected in her fighting and it was implied that Trini and Jason were teaching Billy to fight. Just straight out giving them super powers at all times makes them seem far less talented in their own rights. Same thing with them finding the Morphers and not being chosen by Zordon.

My second gripe comes from something I liked. They all seem to be troublemakers of some kind. The original team were good people and a shining example of what kids and teenagers should strive to be. They we're a group of close friends who served their community in various ways. They were people to be looked up to regardless of powers. I get that it'd be hard to build a movie with that but it doesn't seem like any single one of them reflects that. The closest seems to be Billy but that's just because he's shown getting bullied. Not everyone needs to be troubled."

Now with trailer two out I have more to say.

My two new gripes come down to the suits and Zords.

 

Suits

I don't like them. The best thing I can say about them is that the colors are bright and the "faces" of them don't look too bad at all.

The armor look doesn't work for me. The Power Rangers are Martial Arts based. The coolest thing about Ranger battles is all the dodging, flipping, big high kicks and acrobatics. These Rangers look more like human tanks and would look silly if they were half as agile as TV Rangers. I know a lot of people are going to be on the " Well, they're fighting alien monsters, of course they have armor instead of spandex!" Train but come on. They're granted power by a magic space wizard. Is it too much for you to believe that the traditional Ranger suits are made of a magic spandex-like material that's as durable as any kind of armor?

The actual Morphing can go here too. It looks gross. It looks like venom from Spider-Man. The Power Ranger powers are good. Activating them shouldn't look like the kids are being devoured. I know they can't get as "creative" with morphing as later series but  white or colorful glow over the body turning into the suit is fine and looks a whole lot more peaceful. Power Rangers and their powers are supposed to be hope inspiring and that Morph seems to go against that theme. I'm not against changes to improve and modernize, I'm just against the changes that they went with.

 

Zords

I'm not going to whine about them being CG even though I think a properly produced suit looks cooler but I get it. Big budget movie needs CG robots so they don't move clunky. My bitch here is a sin that the 95 movie was guilty of too. Why, why, why, why if you're going to use CG for them do you need to use so much fucking silver/chrome. The uniforms are colorful and the individual Zords are too but the Megazord some how barley has any. 95 Megazord and 2017 Megazord both disappoint me, though one is obviously much more hideous than the other (Also holy shit I just realized that thing 2017 is fighting is supposed to be Goldar, what the fuck).

 

I'll end on one more positive though. That scene with Jason helping that guy out from under wreckage? That's great, it brings in that hope thing I was talking about earlier. Everyone's going to be OK with the Power Rangers here. It reminds me of one of my favorite things Megaforce did, Rangers helping people in a way that isn't fighting.

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The dark colour palette is a bit cliche, but the second trailer at least has a sense of fun about it. It looks like they're aiming for Thor by way of Transformers.

The tone in pop culture narratives changes over the years; Mighty Morphin Power Rangers worked in the 90s because everything in the 90s was bright colours and positive attitudes. It's natural this generation are "troublemakers" as... well, have you seen any films with younger people in them this century? Daddy issues upon daddy issues upon daddy issues. The younger voices in Hollywood, like the director of this, Dean Isrealite, who's only 32, tend to mix their fandom with a cynical take on the human condition.

 

Personally, as much as I want it to do well, I think the film will be critically shrugged off and largely forgotten. But at least my original theory of it being this generation's Dragonball Evolution (badly shot, badly acted, basically unwatchable) won't be true.

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5 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

Watch this (fast forward to about 4:02) and relax:

There's also a White Ranger vs. Scorpion battle, but I like this one more.

I love the PR SPBD episodes. If the results weren't determined by popular vote I'd like to see them do later Rangers. Aside from Tommy the only Ranger I can see doing it and not getting squashed in voting is Adam's Black Ranger.

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12 hours ago, I Dungeon Master said:

Hated the costumes in the trailer, hated (to a lesser degree) that they were superpowered without the costumes, and was utterly baffled when they dropped a drug reference and swearing. Awful feeling it's going to be Transformers all over again.

All that being said, I loved Goldar.

Yep. The weirdest thing about all the remakes of old kids' shows is that they're not being remade for a new generation of kids, the way the cartoons of the '60s were remade for the '80s, they're being remade as a nostalgia trip for the adults who grew up watching it. 

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As a huge fan of the series from the start I was excited when I heard about the remake but there are too many issues with what I have seen in the trailers. Having powers before morphing and the armour on the outfits are major issues with the trailers, unless I see something interesting in any other trailer I will probably wait until the Blu-ray comes out.

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I said it in the other thread, Power Rangers is objectively fucking stupid. 

They're trying their best to cash in on nostalgia and tweak in a way that makes some bit of sense. This is only a good thing for people who stand to make money off this. The amount of people they'll lose because they're not wearing cheap spandex etc vs. those who see it because it looks shiny and cool will be like 1:100,000.

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In non-movie stuff news I watched the premire  of Ninja Steel. The acting is pretty good for Power Rangers. The costumes are really good. The sash is a neat way of setting them apart visually from past Ninja themed teams. They haven't introduced the whole team yet but I like the ones they have. It's telegraphed as hell who their special/additional Ranger will be when they get to it. Oh and the Pink Ranger is gorgeous.

 

I also started rewatch an old series yesterday when I was eating. Decided on Time Force. One bit stuck out to me as a bit strange for Rangers. So most of the Rangers are from the future except Red, he's from the then present. He's rich and he kinda caught hell for it in one episode. Next episode he comes to them where they're staying like homeless people by their crashed ship starving and tells them he found them a place to live. It's an old clock tower his dad owns and as soon as they see it they shit on it and tell him it's a dump and they can't live there. All I can think is "Fine then dicks, go live on the beach and wait for the cold". This is the second time he's helped them and they've just acted like dicks to him.

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The only thing I have to complain about in the visual side is that why do they keep making female armors look like that? It doesn't make sense and looks stupid when their armor has built in boobs in them. Aside from that it looked kind of fun. I'm half expecting all poc-characters being reduced to racial stereotypes and there are only a few Lionsgate movies that I actually like, but this one I will probably end up giving a chance for nostalgia.

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I watched a lot of Time Force today and now the theme song is stuck in my head and it's driving me crazy.

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If you could bring back two past Rangers (EXCLUDING Tommy!), either for a one-off appearance or as a regular/recurring character in a series, who would you bring back? And would they actually be Rangers, mentors (who morph only on special occasions), or de-powered advisors?

 

 

 

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Adam and Kimberly. Special mention goes to Andros. And I wouldn't be happy without seeing the old Ranger uniforms come out once or twice now that they're apparently all fixed.

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