Los Power Rangers

Power Rangers (2017)

When I first heard this movie was getting made, I let out a big sigh. Thinking about all the old 80's and 90's kid's shows that have been remade into movies these days will get you to do that. Hollywood seems to have a knack for taking beloved franchises and making them into bad movies as we have seen with Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Alvin and the Chipmunks and even Dragonball. Going into this movie, I expected another Michael Bay style film with bad dialog and many explosions. Is that what the movie actually had to offer?

To my surprise (and probably the surprise of many), Power Rangers was a fun movie to watch, and it was actually good... not great, but good. There was lots of things to like and lots of things to dislike, but I think the good outweighed the bad for the most part. I think the best part of the movie was definitely the Rangers themselves. The actors who played the rangers did a good job with the material and all made for interesting characters you can get behind. Though one problem might be that we didn't really spend time with all of them as much as I might have wanted, but since there are five of them it makes sense for this to happen. Billy (blue) stood out the most out of all of them with his strange personality, he was the most unique and that made him stand out more. The other rangers were all sort of one note with their personalities. Zack (black) was the cocky crazy one, Trini (yellow) is the strong silent one, Jason (red) is the leader, and Kimberly (pink) is.... Kimberly? The rangers are introduced as high school screw ups who all seem to be good kids put into bad situations for reasons they all reveal later on in the movie. They al stumble upon a mysterious rock where they find special rocks that give them powers, later they find out where meant to be held by the next Power Rangers. It plays out like a lot of superhero origin films where the heroes get new powers and have to learn to control them in order to save the world. The story isn't really what makes this movie good though, it's the relationship between the rangers and their characters. The dialog between them is fun and sometimes a bit cheesy, but never to a point of cringe. It's got that humor that you would expect in teen PG-13 movie, but it mostly works for them. 

The visuals in the movie are fine too, lots of CG as you would expect from a big action hero movie like this. The CG is fine though, it's not the best but it works well enough. All the CG is really saved up for the end of the movie with the final battle seems like it's 90% CG and it's not as interesting as the rest of the movie, just lots of explosions and effects and one-liners. The villain in the movie (Rita Repulsa) is played by Elizabeth Banks who plays the character a little too much like the old tv show, but does a good job at doing that. It feels kind of out of place sometimes compared to the tone of the rest of the movie since she plays the villain over the top, but it is a nice reminder of how weird and crazy the villains were in the original show. Bill Hader and Bryan Cranston are also a part of the movie with voice overs for Alpha 5 (Hader) and Zordon (Cranston). They do a good job with the characters, pretty much making them exactly like the show was. 

Overall this was a good movie, far better than I thought it was going to be. It's a good start to the franchise, assuming there will be sequels to this. The main characters made this movie fun to watch and I would watch a sequel just to see them in these parts again. The rest of the movie wasn't anything great, it plays out exactly how you think it's going to. It follows the same formula as other origin stories, complete with a training montage with catchy music. It's a good movie to go watch in the theater once, especially if you like action/hero movies or are a fan of the Power Rangers. For me, it's not a movie I would really want to watch again, but I had fun watching it and it was worth the price of the ticket. 

Grade: C

An average movie sure, but one that's worth a watch because you will enjoy the characters, the fun dialog, the over the top villain and Billy being Billy.