There are certain expectations fans
have for anything bearing the Power
Rangers name; essentially, they want to see a diverse group of teenage
superheroes fighting evil with karate, robot dinosaurs, and friendship. In the new film reboot of the franchise the
last part is a more literal factor in the equation. The Rangers are incapable of accessing their
full powers until they come together as friends. That’s really all you need to know about the
movie. If you find such a sentimental
concept unappealing than this movie is not for you, but if you can get behind
it then you can look past all the ways that it’s an objectively bad movie and
just enjoy the schmaltz. Or there’s a
third possibility: maybe the concept will worm its way into your brain,
becoming a full blown obsession until you realize Power Rangers cannot be judged by typical cinematic standards but instead
should be read as a religious text and really should have been directed by the
Wachowskis.
Behind the dumb action scenes and
the unconvincing adolescent drama there’s an interesting spiritual philosophy
to Power Rangers. The Rangers, athletic Jason, nerdy Billy,
pampered Kimberly, rebellious Zach, and self-isolating Trini, are dependent on human
fellowship for the powers, a kind of oneness similar to the concept central to
Buddhism. When the movie begins the main
characters are only vaguely familiar with each other even though, in some
cases, they’ve gone to school together since kindergarten. Then they all coincidentally come together
and happen upon the magic coins that give them superpowers and a spaceship
buried underground in a goldmine. The
spaceship belongs to Zordon, the former Red Ranger and a mentor to the new
generation. It is there that Zordon
teaches them of the legacy they have just joined and they train to use their
powers for good.
They bond over their shared
experience but struggle to “morph,” the term for accessing the armor that
should appear at their command. The key
to acquiring the armor is total selflessness; to think of each other and not
themselves. The entire second act is
spent by the Rangers trying, failing, and waiting to morph. After Billy manages to briefly morph in a
heated moment Zordon sends the Rangers away in disappointment. They decide to stay and build a campfire at
the mine. In this intimate setting they
pour their respective hearts out, or at least two of them do. Zach tells of his sick mother and Trini comes
out as bisexual or a lesbian, it isn’t clear because she’s still in the process
of questioning her sexuality for herself.
Billy, being naturally earnest doesn’t say much that hasn’t already been
revealed. Kimberly, who cyberbullied a
fellow cheerleader, holds back out of guilt.
Jason claims that as the star quarterback in a small town he has no
secrets to share. Nevertheless, it’s an
important bonding moment for the team, but still not enough.
The turning point comes when the
Rangers confront the villain and former Ranger, Rita Repulsa, despite their
lack of preparedness. Rita wipes them
out easily and (here’s the big spoiler) kills Billy. The other four take him back to headquarters
but it’s too late. They unite over
their fallen friend and express a shared wish that they could take his
place. This moment of solidarity and
altruism opens the “Morphing Grid” and allows Billy to come back to life so
that the five of them can finally morph and take on Rita with the full Power
Rangers’ arsenal.
There’s also an overarching theme
of holistic oneness with all things, not just friends and loved ones. The plot is driven by a mysterious and
powerful object buried beneath the earth called the Zeo Crystal, which is the
source of all life on the planet. If
it’s removed or destroyed everything dies, so of course that’s Rita’s motivation. The opening scene shows the final moments of
a deadly battle between Rita and her once-teammates in a prehistoric
wasteland. In the Cenozoic era Rita was
defeated by Zordon, who on his last legs called for an asteroid to crash into
the Earth. Rita was thrown into the
ocean and all evidence of the Rangers’ existence was buried under ground. Eventually, the small town of Angel Grove was
built over the battleground. This
prologue establishes the power used by the Rangers and the evil they fight as
primordial forces of nature. Rita,
Zordon, and the technology they brought with them are from a distant alien
world but they landed on Earth several millennia ago, making them artifacts of
both science-fiction and fantasy, equal parts H.G. Wells and George R.R.
Martin.
An odd quirk of the film is the way
it is so busy world-building and exploring teen angst that it treats robot
dinosaurs as an afterthought. About
halfway through the film Zordon’s small robot friend shows the Rangers their “Zords”
for a few seconds then walks away, and after a quick joyride by Zach, they are
quickly forgotten in the tide of adolescent emotion. Then, in the final act, the Rangers call on
their Zords to help them defeat Rita’s giant monster Goldar, making the Zords
the centerpiece of the entire last twenty minutes of action.
The Zords are important because of
more than just being giant robot dinosaurs which are cool as all-get-out. They are also the ultimate realization of the
Rangers’ connection to nature. For every
Ranger there is a color coordinated Zord.
Billy, the Blue Ranger, drives a blue Triceratops Zord, for
instance. The Zords have cockpits so the
Rangers can get inside them and drive them like cars or airplanes except
they’re giant robot dinosaurs. At one point,
the movie shows an “arm” that reaches out from the back of the seat in
Kimberly’s pink Pterodactyl Zord and plugs into the spine of her armor. Clearly the Rangers have some kind of innate
kinship with their Zords, whether biological, spiritual or both, which is why
they need almost no training to pilot these giant robot dinosaurs designed by
prehistoric aliens.
Finally, the theme of unity reaches
its apex in the last moments of the final battle with Rita. Goldar rustles all of the Zords together and
pushes them into the recently dug fiery pit that holds the Zeo Crystal. Somehow, the power of the crystal melds the
Zords together in all the right ways, creating the MegaZord. The Rangers are
one with their Zords and each other, resulting in a single, humanoid, giant
robot. It calls to mind the “body of
Christ,” a way of referring to the followers of Jesus.
Again, Power Rangers is an objectively bad movie on a lot of levels; the
plot is sloppy, the pacing is frustrating in all the wrong ways, and the
performances are largely forgettable with the exceptions of Elizabeth Banks’
villain and RJ Cyler’s blue Ranger. To
be fair, the beloved children’s show it’s based on might actually be worse on
even more levels, but somehow the movie’s creators managed to mine it for some
interesting ideas and to add some of their own.
Interestingly, writer John Gatins also wrote the story for Kong: Skull Island which shares the
themes of humanity’s relationship with nature and giant monsters. Maybe it’s a bit of an overstatement to call Power Rangers a religious text but the
people behind it clearly put a lot of thought and care into it and it
shows. You couldn’t ask for more from a
movie based on truly terrible but thoroughly beloved unapologetic cash grab of
a TV show.
