Review of Power Rangers (2017) by Jackinthebox333 — 11 Apr 2017

I have been a fan of the franchise since it hit the United States in 1993. While at this point I enjoy the slightly less budget restricted source material Super Sentai, the Super Sentai concept was honestly a rather untapped resource for Hollywood, with the only real previous attempts being the two previous Power Rangers movies, both of which had serious problems. Namely the fact that they really aren't that good. So does this movie improve on the previous two attempts at making a cinematic Power Rangers movie? Yes, and no. This movie does do one thing right, and that is assume that the viewer has no knowledge of the source material, and frames the movie as an origin story. I like this as it allows you to get acquainted with the characters, which are done okay. It could have been better, but I have certainly seen far worse. I was not a fan of the Transformers style of CG going into this movie and after seeing it, I haven't changed my mind. One of the biggest issues I have with this film is that it seems like the producers saw the gritty Power Rangers fan film and decided that this was the direction the Hollywood film needed to go.

The entire point of that fan film was to parody the Hollywood dark gritty reboot, and Saban seemed to have missed the joke. Rita Repulsa is honestly forgettable as a villain in the way the character was written. For all the problems that the 1995 Power Rangers movie had, they, at the very least, executed on creating a memorable Villain. And while Ivan Ooze's one liners are incredibly corny, they are at least memorable and give a sense of the character. It's painful to me that the very forced Krispy Kreme advertising in the movie is more memorable that Rita herself. Should you see this movie? I think you probably should as it isn't a bad movie. The problem is that the movie isn't good either. It's painfully average, and that is really a shame.