How does one describe the bizarre power that Power Rangers had over the younger demographic during the 90s? Power Rangers was an American entertainment and merchandising franchise built around a live-action superhero tv series, based on the Japanese tokusatsu franchise Super Sentai. The first entry in this 28 different themed series long franchise, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, debuted in 1993 and proved to be so insanely popular that it helped launch Fox Kids, a children’s tv programming block, and permanently melted into pop culture history. The show used stock footage from the Japanese TV series, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, which gave the film a unique style and more cultural specific visuals that featured several power-suit fight scenes, giant kaiju mech fights and a lot of stunts and creations that rely on physical props as opposed to computer generated effects. The show definitely relies more nostalgia and appraisal for its concepts as opposed to its content as the show does have a familiar but repetitive formula, characters with no sense of personality and a ton that is more often than not, way to silly and simplistic to be timeless. Regardless, the show was popular enough to earn itself a cinematic movie in 1995. Starting like typical teenagers ‘’with ATTITUDES’’ by pointlessly skydiving, the power ranger teams consist of high school students; Tommy (played by Jason David Frank), Kimberly (played by Amy Jo Johnson), Billy (played by David Yost), Adam (played by Johnny Yong Bosch) and Aisha (played by Karen Ashley). They are forced to don their suits when a new threat emerges from the earth, Ivan Ooze (played by Paul Freeman), who strikes close to home for the rangers by mortally wounding their mentor, Zordon (played by Nicholas Bell). With the lose of their powers and Ivan Ooze taking control of every adult in their hometown in order to dig up his own battle mech, the rangers are forced to journey to a distant planet in order to obtain a power source to revive Zordon, reunite with their ranger powers and defeat Ivan Ooze. The movie is stupid, lamely written, dated, softly told fluff that will give nothing for adults and non-power ranger fans, but for those that are, it seems perfectly fine for that demographic.

The show was always hampered by a formula that people grew accustom to and never spoke up about, but nevertheless was an element that prevent the show from surprising its audiences and made it so all audience members would be able to predict exactly what was going to happen each episode. Turning this into a movie seems like a dangerous move, and to the people behind this film’s credit, they try their hardest to make this scenario not only work for a film, but for one that was released on cinema screens. The movie feels like it is trying to be an actual movie in how its shot, the music that is played, the added effects, the choices the story takes, even with the build-up that comes in the finale. With that said, however, the material is still the typical power rangers’ stuff, which is highly simplistic and just feels like a glorified longer episode of the tv show. The risks are pretty low and there’s no consequences by the end of the film, but it nots like that’s a departure from the original show; the flaws for this movie are the exact same as the flaws of the show, except this is at least attempting to feel like it means something more. The movie doesn’t alter its formula enough to remove the negative aspects, but that’s what people who like the show got into in the first place, so it would more than likely not affect their viewing experience at all and instead be happy to see their show on the big screen.

Its quite staggering to watch the movie and discovering the power rangers are so devoid of any sense of character. Despite how mainstream this series is and despite how many times these character have been given different actors and been through several different episodes and series, none of the main five have a single shred of personality out of any of them. Any line any of them say could be said by the other and mean the exact same thing, they do nothing distinct, there is never an indication of likes or dislikes, they are simply action figures masquerading as action heroes, nothing more. The actors themselves are not actually too bad and do the best with the terribly generic material that they have, but when your star heroes are as dull as dishwater, there needs to be a update with how they’re handled. The villains are usually the ones that people remember from the show; not really for their characters or ‘’complex stories’’, but rather through their designs and actions. Ivan Ooze on any other show would be incredibly generic and rather weak as a threat, but for Power Rangers, he fits right in with all his stupid lines, overly goofy presence and next to no good motivation outside of ‘’I want to be bad’’. His make-up is actually pretty good however and the actor for him is clearly having fun, so it is better that he is a forgettable goof as opposed to a bland stick in the mud.

One of the appealing qualities of the show that most likely ranged to everybody was its real-life models and actual stunt men used for its action sequences. It was very clear that they never occupied the same space as the original American material, but it had a charming honesty about it that is not normally seen even in today’s programming. That element is not as prominent here, as the film instead opts for using CG as it was very popular at the time. Being in its early stages and just wanting to use it for a gimmick proved incredibly disastrous, as not only is it not want fans would have wanted to see, but the effects on display here are complete garbage. Its almost laughable how poor it looks and how kindergarten it feels, even for the time they were bad and its even more painful looking back at them now. With that said, whenever actual fights do happen, they are still nicely choreographed and it’s cool to see these American actors being able to pull off the same kind of stunts as their Japanese stock footage counterparts. The film surprisingly does not feature as many painful dialogue or dated music as the show itself features, but that does not mean what is in the movie is better, rather just less offensive. A lot of the early scenes do have a very ‘’90s’’ feel to them, mainly during the sport stunts that are completely pointless to the film and are only there to prove how ‘’cool’’ they are, and the writing is certainly not good or funny in the slightest, but because it’s trying to take itself a bit more seriously, it means that there isn’t as much time for stupid jokes. The costumes for the film have a nice distinct visual to them, but the new designs for the Power Rangers just feel like toys and were mainly only used because the stock footage for the original suits ran out and they had to create new ones.

This movie is both perfect and awful at what it does. It’s awful for obvious reasons; its not a good movie, it has a very weak story, the characters are as complex as pop stars, the effects are terrible, the writing isn’t funny, and it just feels unbelievably 90s. However, so is the show and in that regard, fans of the show will no doubt find a lot of good stuff in this movie. Even if the plot is weak in consequence, its at least attempt to be more than its tv show counterpart, the villain isn’t very memorable or interesting, but his attitude and design fits perfect for the show’s tone, the fight scenes are still there and can be engaging to watch, and the personality-less characters and dated feel never bothered them before so it won’t affect them here. This is not a good movie by any means, but it is an effective Power Rangers film and that is the challenge that will always be present in the enigma that is Power Rangers.