Power/Rangers: A short film for grown up fans.

Discussion in 'Fan Town' started by ADigitalMagician, Feb 25, 2015.

  1. ADigitalMagician

    ADigitalMagician The Ranty Tranny

    Here's the video. VERY NSFW. Lots of blood, drugs, sex, and more blood.



    Instead of breaking this into simply the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I'm going to break it down by various elements of the video:

    Cinematography
    So, as far as the actual video goes, my biggest complaint is the opening sequence. Michael Bay style shaky cam and explosions are hard to do in a way that works, and if you're not Michael Bay, you've got a pretty high bar in that corner. So that bored me.

    After that, though, we got a lot of really cool filming decisions. The interrogation room is spectacular, though maybe over done in the "holographic computer" department, but the details were awesome.

    The two major fight scenes (Zach and the (I assume) yakuza and Rocky and Tommy's final showdown) were pretty cool, and Rocky's fighting style was super interesting to me.

    The flashbacks could of course be improved, but flashbacks.

    World Building and Fan Service
    Where to even begin. Choosing the Machine Empire as the "winning" bad guys was an incredible choice.

    I really hated Tommy's shield. It would have been much better as a physical shield like the original that projected a bubble shield.

    Rocky. Seriously. He isn't someone I cared about in the show, but holy crap, he's incredible here. Well selected, very nice story applied.

    Kimberly. You could not pick a better bad ass heroine and the only reason I watched to the end is because of how fucking perfect she is.

    The Story
    The hook is spectacular, Zordon as a less than pure guardian, questioning the very foundation of the concept of Power Rangers.

    From that initial hook, we have Kimberly being a badass and Rocky playing with emotional hooks in a very interesting way. I'd like to point out that he doesn't hit her during most of the interview, and uses the emotional manipulation over pain for most of his work. That's not something we see much in interrogation scenes.

    Zach's story line is heartbreaking, but pretty much perfectly written.

    We walk through all of them, then Kim reveals the last time she saw Tommy.

    And we find out she's supposed to be a damsel. And my heart sank. Tommy shows up, on schedule for this kind of story, and beats the shit out of Rocky.

    And then we get what the story is really about: Tommy's manpain and his villainmom. And my heart sank. We already have HAD Tommy's manpain in the actual series. This was NOT the story this needed to be and it upsets me. Because there were two or more incredible hooks here.

    Thoughts?
     
  2. Exohedron

    Exohedron Doesn't like words

    It didn't feel like Power Rangers. It felt like a gritty manpain grimdark actionmovie with the Power Rangers backstory pasted on for the Nostalgia factor. Any batch of team-of-kids-save-the-world characters would have slotted in perfectly in the spaces provided here. Even the suits didn't get any play except for a few bits.
    Also I can't help but compare it to RPM.
     
  3. ADigitalMagician

    ADigitalMagician The Ranty Tranny

    I don't think I disagree.

    I was really digging it when I thought it was going to be "Kim saves the day." The twist at the end actually made me super depressed about it.

    RPM?
     
  4. Exohedron

    Exohedron Doesn't like words

    Power Rangers RPM, based off of Go-Onger, came out in 2009, last of the Disney-era Power Rangers series. Basic premise: computer virus takes over the world, the last (known) civilization of humans is trapped in a single city protected by a forcefield dome and an inadequate military. Relatively dark for a Power Rangers series, especially considering how goofy Go-Onger was. People die, some tasty moral ambiguity, the acting wasn't terrible. Yes, there was a broody manpain character, but he's balanced out by the other characters.
     
  5. ADigitalMagician

    ADigitalMagician The Ranty Tranny

    Okay, I know of it, long after I stopped paying close attention, though. And isn't there always a broody manpain character?
     
  6. Exohedron

    Exohedron Doesn't like words

    True. It even got lampshaded fairly early on in RPM, but it was more like the lampshader was just pointing it out as a means of flirting-via-gentle-mockery.
     
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