Why the Power Rangers 2017 Movie Failed

In 2023 Netflix will make everyone cheer go go Power Rangers in a way that fans haven’t done so since the 1990s, but time will tell if this will be a return to glory for the long running franchise. Although many may not be aware of this, the Power Rangers franchise has never really gone away and has had a continual existence through the many teams of Power Rangers that have come and gone over the years.

One thing that’s great about the franchise is how it has always continued to build upon what came before to create an ever richer lore and history. In fact, even though Power Rangers Zero or Neo or whatever else versions of Power Rangers there have been over the years it has never rebooted. Except once that is…

In 2017 there was a big budget Hollywood reboot of the series simply known as Power Rangers. Fans and fan films for some time had dreamed of a big budget and grittier version of the idea that would see the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers up on the big screen to rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Unfortunately what we got was not that.

I’m sure there are fans of the 2017 film, and having recently rewatched it I could say that I found it enjoyable enough, but I went in with low expectations.

The film starts back millions of years and we see two Power Rangers get killed. Apparently Rita Repulsa in this version was once a Power Ranger and betrayed Zordon (the big giant head that usually tells the Rangers what their mission is). We see that Zordon along with the other dying Ranger were humanoids, but not quite humans. Zordon, who is played by Bryan Cranston takes some action which means that Rita cannot get her hands on the power medal things that turn Power Rangers into their superhero form.

Skip forward 65 million years and we meet the teens with attitudes who will eventually become the Rangers. We have the original characters from the 90s show played by new actors and have the likes of Billy, Tommy, Kimberly, Zack and Trinni. The characters all have issues in their personal lives and this leads to their bond and a situation where they stumble across Zordon and Alpha 5 who plans to make them Power Rangers.

Here’s the problem though – they don’t actually become proper Power Rangers until the final 30 minutes of the movie! Yeah it’s typical that superhero origin movies may take a while before you seen Superman fly or Spider-Man suit up, but this movie leaves it until almost the very end before the characters get there.

It’s a little while since I saw the pilot of the TV show, but in my memory the episodes lasted 20 minutes and after a brief introduction to Tommy and co, Zordon grabbed them said he needed teens with attitudes and they were fighting monsters in giant robots.

This film went the route of the teens not being able to find their inner strength to make the morphing time happen and Zordon was never happy with them and basically tells them they’re failures over and over.

Here’s my thoughts on how they could have fixed their issues fairly easily to make a much better film.

If you watch Man of Steel that film takes a good while before we see Superman dressed as Superman, but along the way we get a few big moments of action with Superman saving people and doing huge feats of strength, but just not in the costume. Power Rangers have some moments where they are shown to have their powers, but don’t really get to use them in meaningful ways. We only get the Rangers in a fight in a simulation set up by Zordon. This could have easily been that Rita’s minions were out in the city and the yet untrained Rangers had to fight them off in some big action scenes where maybe they only just survive. The point being that they aren’t fully formed Rangers yet, but are still being brave and trying to be the heroes. Instead we got the Rangers whining and talking about their home lives like an episode of Dawson’s Creek.

Going back to Man of Steel for a moment, that film started things of with a long sequence set on Krypton where Superman’s dad is the action hero and we set up how the eventual villains would be a threat. Power Rangers has the shortest scene where the Rangers of the past just get killed. If we had ten minutes of them being heroic and then they were betrayed by Rita we’d have cared a lot more when they died and it would have set up Rita as being even more villainous.

Power Rangers could have kept a lot of it’s character stuff, if there had been a bit more action and thrills along the way. Or it could have been that some of the Rangers more easily found their inner strength to morph straight away or by the halfway point in the film, and then maybe one or two of them felt they weren’t cut out to be Rangers. Instead it had all of them as failing to become Rangers.

Imagine if just Billy who is presented as the nerdy one struggled to be a Ranger and after losing a fight to Rita said he couldn’t do it and stepped away. Then towards the end of the film the other Rangers are in danger and they realise they aren’t enough to defeat her only for Billy to show up and save the day. The nerdy one becomes the hero, and we have the same story arch of trying to find the inner Ranger…but just not with all of them at the same time.

It was also a thing when watching it that I noticed that the Rangers first fight after getting their suits was with Rita’s goons in a fight that took place underwater…it was a weird choice. Their first fight should have let them show off their martial arts skills, but instead was a strange underwater battle of slow motion kicking.

My last major thought of how Power Rangers 2017 failed was with the famous Power Rangers Zords. The Zords if you don’t know are the giant transformer robots they use to combat giant monsters. Weirdly this film had one of them test pilot a zord half way through the movie and struggle to control it with it almost crashing into a car. And the Zords don’t get a proper look in until there’s only 20 minutes of the film left.

Isn’t the whole point of Power Rangers just to sell the toys of the giant transforming robots?? Why not have these used several times throughout the movie, and then in the final 20 minutes after the Ranger that had the crisis of confidence returns have them all combine to make the Mega Zord where all the robots combine into one giant robot? Saving the combined robot until the finale would make sense, and it is what they did in the film, but when we’d only really got the individual Zords a few minutes earlier it didn’t seem like a big deal.

And then they had the Mega Zord fall flat on its face as it’s first action against the giant Goldar monster. Sure it was a laugh that the Rangers would need to figure out how to control the Mega Zord all as one, but why go for the joke instead of making their big selling toy look like a bad ass?

Ohh and my final final thought is the costume design was bad looking. Like all modern superhero films they went with something more complicated looking than any of the costumes need to look and as a result they look much worse than the iconic original costumes or Zords. There needed to be a halfway point where there was better material or textured designed but without everyone looking like they’re cosplaying as Zack Snyder’s take on the Flash.

Conclusion

So this isn’t quite a review, but can serve as one, so I will give the movie a score. Despite all my thoughts on why this film failed, it’s nota  complete failure. The cast are decent and the character stuff is ok, but just see all my notes above of how they could have made it a better film by giving fans more of what Power Rangers fans want. Action and cool robots fighting. If you’re a Power Rangers fan you’ll either be more forgiving to this or feel more let down by it than most casual viewers. If you’re a casual fan watching Power Rangers for the first time, just know that the franchise has more to offer than this.

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