I have a confession to make: I’ve never seen Power Rangers. It’s not quite up there with never having seen Star Wars but you may want to revoke my nerd credentials nonetheless. Somehow, it just never appealed to me. That said, Lionsgate have reworked the popular Saban series for the latest film adaptation and it looks like it could be pretty good.
Directed by Dean Israelite and starring Elizabeth Banks, Becky G and Bryan Cranston, who recently recalled dubbing some of the original show’s Japanese dialogue into English, the movie is set to be released on March 24, 2017. Like the recent Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, it will be a total reboot of the original franchise with all the classic elements present but updated for a modern and slightly older audience.
What’s it all about?
The plot is relatively simple. Five ordinary high school kids learn that their normal small town existence is about to be obliterated by an alien threat. They quickly learn that they are the only ones who can save the planet but to do so they have to overcome real life issues and band together as the Power Rangers before it’s too late.
We don’t yet know how the movie will be tied into Power Rangers past but when Roberto Orci was briefly a part of the project, he remarked that “It’s got a continuity within the world. I can’t tell you what, but it does have a continuity.” It remains to be seen whether he was referring to the inclusion of the classic characters or to a tie-in with the new TV series or something else entirely.
The newest TV spots, which arrived days after a new international trailer, show the Rangers meeting in detention and Dacre Montgomery’s Red Ranger activating his sword while leaping into battle, along with footage of the villainous Goldar and the Zords.
There’s also a huge reveal in the spot featuring Rita Repulsa, who claims to have killed Rangers before and in an even bigger twist says that she was once like them. This has a lot of people speculating that this is confirmation of the popular fan theory that she is in fact the Green Ranger, especially as we already know she has the Green Ranger coin.
Diversity
In keeping with the theme of the classic show, the movie boasts a diverse cast and when asked on Twitter about the most important message of the film, actress Naomi Scott, who plays Kimberly Hart/Pink Ranger, said “diversity only makes us stronger, so embrace it”.
https://twitter.com/NaomiScott/status/837038234345549824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Rumor has it that sequels are already planned and we know that an official graphic novel tie-in is also in the works, titled Power Rangers: Aftershock. The story will pick up directly where the film ends and will be released on March 29, 2017, five days after the movie itself.
The studio, Lionsgate, has also amped up its Twitter game with custom hashtags for all the rangers. For each hashtag – every time a user tweets it out – the studio will donate to The Thirst Project, a charity which aims to help end the global water crisis.
Lionsgate just released the first official clip from Power Rangers.
