No, no Power Rangers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/03/2017 (3501 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kids who spent the 1990s faithfully buying into the various iterations of Power Rangers — TV shows (both animated and live action), movies and toys — are now old enough to have kids of their own.

That, presumably, is the reason for the existence of Power Rangers, a movie reboot that does its darnedest to pump up the stubbornly ongoing franchise with a big budget, a couple of impressive actors and the big-bam-boom we usually associate with Michael Bay’s Transformers movies.

Like Transformers, the franchise is essentially a commercial for selling toys. In the case of Power Rangers, those are martial arts action figures distinguished only by gender — two are young women, three are young men — and bright colours.

You’ve got to give credit to director Dean Israelite — working from a screenplay by six credited writers — for doing his best to flesh out the plastic fantasy and even add a little grandeur to what is essentially a juvenile piece of wish fulfilment.

The movie starts with a million-years-ago flashback in which we learn the first set of Power Rangers were extraterrestrials determined to save the earth from power-mad, gold-festooned Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks, suggesting a Trumpian dominatrix dream).

Before his fall, the Ranger leader Zordon (Bryan “what-am-I-doing-here?” Cranston) orchestrates a cataclysm that consigns Rita to the depths of the ocean and buries the Power Rangers’ five power source medals to beneath a mountain.

Flash-forward a couple of million years and we see that mountain adjoins the California burg of Angel Grove, home to more troubled teens than a CW season launch.

Chief among these is disgraced football star Jason (Dacre Montgomery), sidelined by a stupid prank that leaves him off the team and sporting an ankle tracking device. In a nod to the movie The Breakfast Club, Jason makes a couple of misfit friends in Saturday detention. Billy (RJ Cyler) is a tech genius intent on following his late father’s path to exploring the secrets of that aforementioned mountain, now home to a gold mine. And Kimberley (Naomi Scott) is a former cheerleader accused of a skeevy sin for which she professes innocence.

When these three end up on the mine property after hours, they meet up with a couple more kindred spirits: Zack (Ludi Lin), your standard issue bad boy type, except that he cares for his sickly mother. Trini (Becky G), reminiscent of Ally Sheedy’s Breakfast Club character, is another outcast with a surprising back story: Her family evidently disapproves of her lesbian tendencies. (This is underplayed, but the fact it’s an issue at all is kind of admirable in the context of… you know… Power Rangers.)

In a somewhat cumbersome two-hour running time, it takes an hour before we see so much of a hint of a Power Rangers suit.

The action is back-loaded to the final half-hour when Rita appears on a mission to revive her solid gold golem sidekick Goldar and level Angel Grove, with nothing but the Power Rangers — and their giant robot vehicles — standing in her way.

Where past iterations of the Power Rangers emphasized martial arts, there is scant fighting prowess on view here, in favour of Transformers-esque giant robot action. That’s disappointing. If fans of the past might have made a study of martial arts, fans of this movie are left with somewhat more unlikely aspirations of one day piloting a Zord robot assault vehicle.

But the movie gets points for its sense of inclusiveness: Not only is there a gay hero, the character of Billy is apparently on the autism spectrum.

Still, the main reason to take it in is to enjoy how Banks navigates the exigencies of playing a sexy cartoon villain without any loss of dignity. Brava.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing