LESS POWER THAN USUAL
Remake of a 90s sensation dials up the diversity but gets lost in translation with a clunky script, writes Alex Casey.
In keeping with the current rejuvenation of franchises from yonder year, mid-90s sensation Power Rangers is the latest to undergo the big-screen reboot treatment. Directed by Dean Israelite, maker of found footage time travel film Project Almanac, Power Rangers gets updated for 2017 in more ways than one with a diversity dial-up in the cast and the first gay character in the franchise. But does a pared-back “teen” version of the superhero genre need to exist when 7-year-olds are already watching The Avengers and Suicide Squad?
Brought together after discovering mysterious powerful gems, a group of high schools must train to earn their superhero stripes and defeat the villainous Rita Repulsa. It’s a motley crew including a jock on house arrest, an autistic explosives enthusiast, a mean girl going straight, a lone wolf with an ill mother and a queer girl growing out of her suburban shackles. They’re a diverse bunch too. As the alien robot Alpha 5 (Bill Hader) says: “different kids, different colours, different coloured kids.” The symbolism of their unity — every colour working together in order to defeat evil — is not lost in these extremely divided times.
The casting shouldn’t be the best part of a film, but that might be the case here. Unfortunately, Power
Rangers is a bloated and confused mess, not unlike the train wreck that was X Men: Apocalypse. The tone shifts between light-hearted and earnest, using more blue rinse and Dutch tilts than the first Twilight film. Although I did just mention the diversity of the characters, they seldom explore them beyond simplistic descriptors like “nerd” and “black” and “gay”, with little of the whopper duration spent on the intricacies of those labels. Much attention goes to training sequences inside an underground space ship, though, so don’t worry about that. Even the greatest actors struggle with dialogue that feels like it’s been lifted out of an old Days of Our Lives script, and unfortunately the young actors carrying the film are burdened with the bulk of an excruciatingly clunky script. One scene in particular where the characters confess their secrets to one another around a campfire felt painful to watch, the line “be the person you want to be” sighing its way out of lead ranger Jason’s (Dacre Montgomery) mouth. That said, there is a sparkling moment when the “Black” power ranger (played by Asian actor Ludi Lin) exclaims “hey I’m Black!” whilst catching the bemused gaze of the “Blue” power ranger (played by black actor R.J. Cryler).
There is a sprinkling of star power in Elizabeth Banks ( The Hunger Games) and Bryan Cranston ( Breaking Bad), whose presence noticeably lifts the energy of the film tenfold. Banks is delightfully gross and unhinged as the extra-terrestrial Rita Repulsa, a villain hell-bent on collecting gold and fighting teenagers outside a Krispy Kreme to collect her final crystal or something. Look, there’s a lot of doughnut product placement and not a lot of plot details, okay? Cranston’s alien Zordon appears mostly as an Oz-style digital head on the spaceship wall, advising the Power Rangers on their next moves.
All in all, Power Rangers feels like a combined effort to update the superhero franchise for 2017, but all that frenzied cobbling seems to have missed out on the crucial importance of story and character. You can have all the digital special effects and costumes that Weta can throw at you, and as much diversity as the cast will allow, but none of it matters if the audience comes away caring more about the Krispy Kreme sponsorship deal than the characters themselves.