'Power Rangers' Review

‘Power Rangers’ Review:

Go Go?

BY IAN TAN

Together we are more.

I’m a little embarrassed to say this but I’ve never seen a single Power Rangers episode in my life, so this was my very first experience watching anything Power Rangers related.

The film tells the story of five ‘teenagers with attitudes’ who, by coincidence, discover five different ‘Power Coins’ at a mining quarry that leads them into a mysterious spacecraft. Soon enough, they are tasked to take on the mantle of ‘Power Rangers’ and to stop the evil Rita Repulsa, who plans on destroying their hometown of Angel Grove. However, things aren’t so simple as the team cannot defeat her until they “morph” into Rangers, but in order to do so, they must settle their differences and learn to work as a team. And so begins our Power Rangers story. 

I honestly had no real interest in this film. The marketing didn’t work for me and the source material didn’t capture my interest as a kid, so I had pretty low expectations for this. But props to director Dean Israelite and the filmmakers for crafting an entertaining superhero origin story. 

So we superheroes now?

A good amount of this film works because of its characters. The five leads, namely Jason, Billy, Kimberly, Zack and Trini are fleshed out enough for us to care about them, and the actors behind these characters are charismatic and share good chemistry with one another. But it’s really RJ Cyler who steals the show as Billy/the Blue Ranger, who puts the film’s heart in the right place and is especially effective during the film’s more emotional moments. Bryan Cranston was also a good choice to play Zordon, the Jor-El-like mentor to the Rangers, and Bill Hader was entertaining as the talking robot Alpha 5. Elizabeth Banks was alright as the evil Rita Repulsa. She wasn’t as over-the-top as I expected her to be, and she’s a far cry from being a Loki or a Joker. She was about as serviceable as any typical Marvel movie villain.

In terms of action, Power Rangers delivers the goods, but only towards the last half hour of the film, when the Zords (controllable dinosaur-like robots) come into the picture, but this isn’t really an issue, as the characters - and the actors behind them - are enough to keep us engaged in the story, even with a lack of action set pieces for the majority of the film.

 

Dinobots?

This isn’t a complaint, but I feel like the film borrows a lot of elements from recent blockbusters, namely Man of Steel, Chronicle, the Transformers films, and Pacific Rim. For a while I was worried that the movie would end up feeling like a rip off of these films, but it turned out to be more of a ‘best hits’ of those movies, which isn’t a bad thing. It could’ve tried taking some more original and creative routes though. Another one of the minor gripes I have with the film is its humour, which was hit or miss for me. A number of times, these teenagers said things that sounded a little childish for their age, and made me cringe a little, especially in the first half of the film.

But at the end of the day, Power Rangers was fun. I had a good time with it and am looking forward to seeing more of these characters in future films. Good job, Lionsgate.

Score: 7.6/10