Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie - The movie that didn't live up to Power Rangers' standards.

Go Go, out of the theatre!

I recently had the pleasure of seeing the new Power Rangers (2017) in the theatre, and I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. The Power Rangers franchise isn't exactly known for its narrative storytelling or memorable characters, but it explored it from a different angle we haven't really seen before, so I have to give kudos to the team behind that movie.

Because of my enjoyment of the film, I thought it appropriate to check out some of the older Power Rangers shows. I never grew up with Power Rangers, but I can still appreciate the innocent cheesiness of the old Mighty Morphin' series. When I found out that they made a movie tie-in to the show I thought to myself: "So, they pulled a Transformers and used a theatrical film to launch a new toyline, eh? That's cute!" so I decided to check it out...that was a mistake.

I'm not pretending that Power Rangers is high art or anything, but by Zordon this movie was atrocious. I was bored, I was frustrated, and I was baffled all at once during my viewing of this film. If I was a kid in the 90s when this movie was released, and I was super-excited to see my heroes on the big screen, I would have left this movie disappointed.

This movie had a budget of $15 Million. Admittedly, not a fortune but still enough to make a halfway-decent action film. This movie apparently took $10 million and flushed it down the toilet. The fight scenes in this movie look just as bad as the ones from the show, and if you've seen the fights from the show then you know how ridiculous they are. In fact, the whole movie really feels like a 90-minute episode of the show, and not in a good way.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's discuss the plot: The Power Rangers, Tommy, Billy, Kimberly, Adam, Rocky, and Aisha, are going about their lives doing EXTREME sports in order to raise money for the construction of an observatory, when an ancient egg is accidentally unearthed by the construction crew. Zordon, the Rangers' mentor, informs us that the egg contains an ancient evil named Ivan Ooze (such a terrifying name) that must not be released under any circumstance. Unfortunately, the Power Rangers' regular enemies, Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd, crack open the egg and unleash Ooze upon the world.

Ooze is too powerful for the Rangers and manages to put Zordon in a critical state. In order to save both him and the world the Rangers must travel to an alien planet (which looks an awful lot like coastal Australia) to obtain some sort of "Great Power" that will grant them the ability to do...things. They go on adventures, fight some monsters, defeat Ivan Ooze, and then all is right with the world. The End.

The purple gentleman is Mr. Ooze.
He's got quite the lovely goatee.

As always, let's start out with the positives.

First off, while Ivan Ooze is a lackluster villain at best, the actor playing him, Paul Freeman, is clearly having the time of his life hamming it up as a cheesy kid's movie villain. He's the only legitimately good actor in the movie and it really shows.

Also, despite the stupidity of the fight scenes, some of them are entertaining in a so-bad-it's-good manner. The physics of Power Rangers are not realistic, let me tell you.

Those are about the biggest compliments I can give this idiotic movie.

Let me lay this out: what works for a 22-minute-at-a-time TV show doesn't necessarily work for a 90-minute movie. The pacing feels super wonky and the film spends an inordinate amount of time on fight scenes. The movie is even shot the same as the show, just with a more expensive camera. The only time they took advantage of their budget is inserting a skydiving scene that has f*ck-all to do with the rest of the movie. By the by, the skydiving doesn't ever come back as a plot device later in the movie, because they have no idea about Chekhov's Gun.

It occurs to me that this movie could have been a great opportunity to actually develop the characters of the Rangers beyond their one personality trait of neverending niceness and EXTREME-ness, but nope. This movie decided that introducing new powers and new toys to sell was more important than having us actually care about what was happening. Oh look, the Rangers get new costumes! Oh look, new Zords! New monsters to fight! Why should I care!? This supposedly planet-scale movie takes place in one town and an "alien planet!"

Oh, remember how I said that Paul Freeman was the only good actor in the movie? Well, I wasn't kidding. I understand that these actors aren't paid very well, but the Rangers' actors are all terrible. They're certainly good at martial arts and gymnastics, but their performances are about as engaging as a block of wood. Rita and Zedd's performances are nothing to write home abut either, but they're only in the movie for about 5 minutes so maybe they just didn't have the opportunity.

The special effect, with some exceptions, are all awful. Here's a tip: just because you can use CGI doesn't mean that you should. The CG in this movie is so mind-bendingly poor that you wonder why they even bothered. Power Rangers was always known for using people in costumes as giant monsters, so why didn't they use them here!? Just dress some stuntmen up as the MegaZord and Ooze and have them fight in a tiny Angel Grove! But no, instead we need a pair of CGI monsters brushing against one another in a way that makes you wonder why they thought it was a good idea when it was clearly outside their budget!

This movie is so ridiculous and poorly put together that the Power Rangers TV disregarded it entirely! After the movie came out the next season of Power Rangers came up for an entirely different reason for the Power Rangers to have the new powers and Zords! You know you done screwed up when Power Rangers, freaking Power Rangers, says "Yeah, we can do better."

Well, it seems like they did do better according to fans, while this movie is forever mocked as the worst thing ever produced by Saban and his company.

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie is a MegaZord of Cinematic Garbage.