Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie
173 Plays3 years ago
It's Morphin' Time! Writer Liam Carrigan is here to discuss Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie. He and Perry share their memories of watching Power Rangers as a kid, wax nostalgic about this movie, and discuss the things about it that hold up (Paul Freeman) and the things that don't (the terrible CGI zords).
---
Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/superherocinephiles/message
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Ivan Ooze and initial conflict
00:00:18
Speaker
Anybody see anything? Let's take a look up there. What are your kids doing here? You haven't by any chance seen a morphological being lurking around here? A morphological being? Yeah. What the heck is that?
00:00:48
Speaker
Wait a second. Did it look something like this? No! Ew, gross. Too kind. I love to introduce myself. I'm the galactically feared, globally reviled, universally despised. They call me Ivan Ooze. Well, pack your bags, because we're sending you right back where you came from.
00:01:16
Speaker
Gee, a teenager with a big mouth. Not much has changed in 6,000 years. You obviously don't know who you're dealing with, Mr. Raisinhead. Really? Yeah, we're the Power Rangers. Whoo! Where's my autograph book? Ah! Power Rangers, huh? So, short on still, using a bunch of kids to do his dirty work.
00:01:44
Speaker
Well, meet my kids. From this moment forth, the world as you know it shall cease to exist. Welcome to my nightmare!
Guest introduction: Liam Kerrigan from Japan
00:02:13
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Senate Files Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine. Got a new guest today. This is another guy here with me in Japan, and that's Liam Kerrigan. Liam, how you doing today? Hi, Perry. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm glad to have you. So before we get started about today's movie, why don't you tell the people a little bit about yourself?
00:02:33
Speaker
OK, so yeah, my name is Liam. I'm originally from Glasgow in Scotland, but as of yesterday, it's been 15 years since I first moved to Japan. I've been in Hong Kong for a few years as well in the middle.
00:02:51
Speaker
Funnily enough, the movie that we're going to talk about today inspired me to initially get into martial arts, which inspired me to get into Kendo later on, which led to me taking my first trip to Japan back in 2005. So it's all kind of come in full circle today. Nice. So your first trip, was that when you moved here or did you come here on vacation first?
00:03:15
Speaker
I came here as a university student. We did a Kendo training camp for two weeks. One week in Tokyo, then one week up in Akita Prefecture with my sensei's sensei.
00:03:30
Speaker
And then from there, I just fell in love with the place. So a year later when I graduated, I started looking for teaching jobs and I got one. And so I've been kind of dividing my time since then between teaching and writing because those are my two kind of skill sets. Yeah, definitely know what that's like. So what kind of writing are you doing?
00:03:56
Speaker
At the moment, I'm the news editor for Osaka.com, which is a kind of a news and features website focusing on everything that's in Osaka. Although I live in Nagano, I did live in Osaka for a number of years, so I know the city inside and out.
00:04:13
Speaker
And I occasionally write for Guy Jimpot, not so much these days, but I do occasionally little bits for them. I sometimes blog about
00:04:30
Speaker
what folk from your country would call soccer, the football. I am a big follower of Celtic Football Club. Ironically, our biggest rivals are called Rangers considering what we're going to talk about today. Yeah, it's a mix I like to keep myself busy.
00:04:52
Speaker
Good, good. Yeah, my my dad was from London, so he I grew up very very early on. I learned that in that soccer is only called soccer in the US. He made sure that I never forgot that.
00:05:04
Speaker
Well, you know, Japan's a funny one like that because in Japan, obviously they say Saka, which is their version of soccer. But if you look at the shirts, the national team wear, it says JFA, Japan Football Association. So there are two lines about that one, I think, you know? Yeah. In fact, my daughter has, someone bought her, I think it was a hand-me-down outfit she has, and it's a JFA outfit. So yeah, I've noticed that as well.
00:05:35
Speaker
But yeah, and even when it comes to football, they don't call it football. They call it amé football, right? They call it American football. Yeah, it's a strange one all around really.
Origin and global spread of Power Rangers
00:05:46
Speaker
Okay, but today we are talking about Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the movie. This was the 1995 film that was based on the TV show. And this was an interesting little movie because this was, it had the same actors from the TV show, but it's set in like a different universe.
00:06:11
Speaker
uh and so there's like something it's the same actors but you know the villains are a little bit different there's you know some of the villains the usual villains from the tv show aren't there and then we've got uh some replacements in there the the zords are all cgi in this one which we'll we'll talk about i'm yeah
00:06:31
Speaker
And the costumes and all that were completely, the weapons, even the command center, all of it was like completely different from, even like small things like Ernie's was completely different from what it was in the TV show. Yeah. The interesting thing about that is you can instantly tell it was not made in the US. Yeah. Just when you look at the aesthetic, you can instantly see this is not a US city where they've made this movie.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, in fact, that was one of the things in the TV show they had a bit where the kids went to Australia. And the reason is because the filming went over on this and went into the TV shooting schedule. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So what was your familiarity? You said that Power Rangers is what got you into martial arts in the first place. So talk a little bit about your history with this property.
00:07:23
Speaker
Right, basically Power Rangers came to Scotland about, well, probably three or four months after it first launched in the US. And now there was kind of two, in the UK, there was kind of two tiers of people who could see Power Rangers. If you were like me and you're lucky and you had satellite TV, you got it about a month, maybe two months after the States.
00:07:49
Speaker
But if you were, if you only had terrestrial television, it was maybe six months to nine months behind the US. So there was initially a bit of confusion when this movie came out because
00:08:03
Speaker
The White Ranger was the leader of the Power Ranger team, whereas in a lot of the UK, he was still the Green Ranger from season two. So it kind of caused the like, who's this White Ranger? What's going on? You know, it kind of confused things a little bit. But yeah, I love the, I love the franchise. The thing that really drew me in was when I was a lot younger, I was let's see, so 93, I would have been nine going on 10 when Power Rangers premiered.
00:08:31
Speaker
And when I was a bit younger, I loved Transformers. I still have a few on my shelf. But the Zords, to me, those were like the sort of the next evolution of Transformers. And I just thought, those things look amazing. I want some of those. And then later on, I got into the martial arts thing. And I'd always been kind of interested in Japanese culture. And knowing that this was a Japanese show,
00:09:02
Speaker
basically translated to an American audience. I thought, here's a Japanese show that I can kind of get into. And the funny thing is, in subsequent years, I've watched the Japanese version and it's nothing like what we saw back in the day. But it's intriguing to kind of look at the two of them as different products and see where they cross over and where they don't.
00:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, I was just rewatching, Netflix has the TV show, The Toys That Made Us, and they did an episode on Power Rangers. And in preparation for this, I rewatched it last night. And it's really interesting how this concept kind of evolved because, and it's interesting how much American influence is kind of there right from the start, even in the Japanese version, because originally,
00:09:51
Speaker
Right, because of the success of the Godzilla films, Japan had done a lot of these like, you know, Kishi sci fi stuff called tokusatsu and when they started off with the superhero property called common rider, which was eventually master writer in the US, I think. Yeah. And then.
00:10:10
Speaker
And then, but one of the things is Stan Lee wanted to get in on this. So they had done a
Cross-cultural influences on Power Rangers
00:10:18
Speaker
series, a team series called Super Sentai. And they had started talking to Stan Lee and they had made a deal with Marvel. Toei and Marvel made a deal where Marvel could use Toei's,
00:10:35
Speaker
some of their properties in their comics and Toei could produce Japanese TV shows based on Marvel characters. So Marvel had taken a bunch of different like robots and stuff and they put them in a comic book called Shogun Warriors and
00:10:51
Speaker
And then Toei decided to do an adaptation of Spider-Man. And one of the things of the deal was they could use the properties, but there were no restrictions on the properties. They could use the properties in any way they wanted to. So Toei had a completely different take on Spider-Man where instead of being nerdy high schooler, Peter Parker, he was now a motorcyclist and his father was a scientist and he got
00:11:16
Speaker
He had injected with this spider serum by an alien from Planet Spider, and then he had a giant robot. He had a giant spaceship that turned into a giant robot, and that was really the start of the giant robot thing. And Toei had been planning, and it was so successful, and Bandai, who had done a lot of Toei's work on
00:11:38
Speaker
creating the props and all that, and the vehicle designs, the weapon designs. They had so much success with the leopardon, was the name of the robot, that Toei decided, okay, well, you know what, we should continue this, and we should bring back the Sentai series, call it Super Sentai, and we'll give them these mechas now. And originally, their first one that they were gonna adapt was battle, was called, I think it was,
00:12:06
Speaker
Battle Fever J, but that was originally going to be a Captain America inspired show. Somewhere in the production, though, in the lead up to the production, they lost the rights like the toy and Marvel deal ended. So they couldn't use Captain America anymore. But so then they just had, but they use like, but it still had the basic influence of it. So
00:12:27
Speaker
One of, it's funny, because then eventually Battle Fever J led to, you know, Zoo Ranger and all that, which eventually got done, which is what Saban chose to adapt for Power Rangers. And in all of that, right? So you have, you know, America influencing Japan, and then the series coming back to America later on.
00:12:51
Speaker
It's funny because when you think about it, Transformers went through a kind of similar process because it was Japanese toys adapted into first a Marvel comic, then a cartoon. That's right. And then it ended up going back to Japan and they ended up actually continuing after the American series ended with their own take on it,
Evolution from Mighty Morphin' to Turbo
00:13:12
Speaker
which was kind of a full circle, you know? Yeah. So we're similar ages. I had just turned 10 when Power Rangers debuted and
00:13:22
Speaker
It was like nothing I'd ever seen before at that time. And I wasn't a Transformers kid, but I was a Ninja Turtles kid. So that martial arts influence, that was what drew me to it more than the robots. And I had already been a fan of superheroes in general, like X-Men and Batman were on TV at the time. So I was a fan of both of those at the time as well. And it was,
00:13:46
Speaker
And it was a weird time, at least in my school, because a lot of kids my age, they were getting to the age where they're like starting to get a little bit more sophisticated and starting to look down on things that are more kitty. So liking Power Rangers at my age level was like the thing you, was like, it was like a sign that you were,
00:14:09
Speaker
you were too immature or something. So I had to hide the fact that I was a Power Rangers fan when I was in school. Yeah, very much the same for me as well. Yeah, it wasn't the cool thing. Funny you talk about the Spider-Man and the X-Men because the way it was broadcast, it was a Saturday morning thing in the UK. So if you had satellite TV, you used to get like,
00:14:35
Speaker
10 AM was, I think they would re-show old G1 Transformers. Then on 11 AM, you would get either X-Men or Spider-Man. And then at 1130, you'd get Power Rangers. So there was just this like two hour block of just my kind of television, you know? Yeah. So did you ever have a, cause I had a time when I kind of eventually dropped off and I think it was,
00:15:05
Speaker
When it got to Zio, that was when I started to get, I was starting to get a little bit tired of it. And then it was Turbo was finally the straw that broke the camel's back. And that was when I completely dropped out of the franchise. How about you? Do you have a time when you dropped out of it or were you a fan of it all the way through?
00:15:22
Speaker
Now, same here, Turbo was what killed it for me. As soon as the last of the original team left, you know, once my main man, Tommy, left, I thought, this doesn't feel like the same show anymore, you know? Yeah, yeah. It was a funny thing because what you, if you look into the background of it, Turbo feels extremely kind of goofy and
00:15:50
Speaker
a major downgrade from Zeo because Zeo was very mystical, had a lot of elements of Egyptian mythology. The Gold Ranger had basically had a pyramid for a zord, right? Right, yeah, yeah. And it was very sort of, it felt grander and more spectacular in a number of ways than season three of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers did. But
00:16:13
Speaker
Then Turbo was this major downgrade and the explanation for that I've later found in subsequent years is that the show in Japan was actually supposed to be a parody of previous seasons. It was not intended to be taken seriously but not understanding the language, not understanding the nuances of Japanese comedy.
00:16:36
Speaker
Saban took it and tried to adapt it anyway and that's why a lot of people even fans who stuck with the show after that they feel that that is the weakest of all like the 23 seasons to date. Yeah and something they pointed out in the Toys That Made Us episode is that when the toys because one of the big selling points of Power Rangers has always been the toy line like I think this is probably
00:17:01
Speaker
one of the last vestiges of that 80s crass commercialization where the show basically only existed as a half hour commercial to promote the toys. And this was kind of like the last hurrah of that kind of like marketing tactic. It seems to have kind of faded out since then. And, you know, good actually, cause it was, you know, even though I bought all those toys, but you know, looking back at it now, I was like, that was really fucking manipulative.
00:17:30
Speaker
And, uh, but one of the things that happened, one of the reasons that turbo had done so poorly was because the toys had done so poorly because people had saw that because before you had these swords, right? You had them, they were, they were animals that transformed into these humanoid robots, or they were, you know, dinosaurs or mythological beasts or all these really cool things, you know, but then you had these ones and they were cars that transformed into robots. And it's like, well, if I want a car that transforms into a robot,
00:17:58
Speaker
I'll just go with transformers. Yeah.
Production challenges and content shifts
00:18:02
Speaker
So that was like a big, that was a big problem that the toy sellers have. And the toys just weren't really selling at this point. And plus you had that weird thing where you had that little kid in it too. And I saw, I didn't see the turbo movie, but I did see the, I started watching the first few episodes of the turbo series. And I'm just like, oh God, this is terrible. This kid is just so annoying. And at that point I was just like, I'm going to find something else to do now.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that they kind of changed up the whole command center thing, getting rid of Zordon, getting rid of the original alpha, it just, it felt like a completely different show. And I realized what they were trying to do there because the guys who had started in 93, like us, we were getting by that point, we were coming on like 15, 16 years old, right? And we were probably too old for it. So they were readjusting it to go for the younger demographic again.
00:19:00
Speaker
Another problem they had too was the way that this was filmed. It's actually kind of brilliant how they had decided to put this together because
00:19:15
Speaker
What they had done was they had taken the Japanese footage, the action footage, because they're all in masks and costumes the whole time anyway, so you never see their faces. So they took the Japanese action footage and they spliced it in with scenes of American actors, which has led to some kind of funny instances. Like I remember, if you're watching the old series, you're always wondering, how come Rita's mouth never matches anything she's saying?
00:19:41
Speaker
But also they had things like, I remember the Green Rangers costume was the biggest offender of that, where he had, in the Japanese version, it was like this really cool, like really, you know, smooth shield that he had on. And then it would change sometimes mid scene to like this really crappy discount looking thing. Yeah, the kind of gold foil thing. Yeah, yeah. And it was because they didn't have the budget to reproduce that same one. So they had to make this crappy version instead.
00:20:11
Speaker
The other interesting thing about that is if you watch, of course, if you remember the original Ranger team, the Yellow Ranger and the Pink Ranger were our two girls on the team. That's right. And yet whenever they morphed into the Ranger form,
00:20:26
Speaker
The Pink Ranger was quite clearly, could easily have been the same person in the costume, even though it wasn't, right? Same proportions and had like the little sort of kind of skirt thing on her costume. Yeah, yeah. Right. Suddenly, the Yellow Ranger's shoulders looked a lot broader and suddenly hurt and she becomes flat chested all of a sudden. Yeah. And you're like, yeah, that's because in Japan it was a guy. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:51
Speaker
I had always wondered about that as a kid and like how come Kimberly wears a skirt when she transforms but Trini doesn't. Yeah. But yeah, that was another interesting little little thing they had there.
00:21:04
Speaker
And, and so what had happened was because they had used the the zoo ranger footage for for the series for like the first three seasons but in Japan, they don't last that long it's like each season is a different team and it's a different concept related to Super Sentai so they change the cast they change the concept and
00:21:24
Speaker
Saban was running out of of Zu Ranger footage and he was and he was having to shoot more and more stuff in America and which was led to higher budgets and so then what he decided to do was well let's just change it up let's just have um do what they do in Japan we'll change the cast out and everything and and that way we can keep using we'll have plenty of footage that we can keep using so that's when they did Zio and then um and then and Turbo and so on and so forth
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah I mean from a business standpoint it makes sense, although to me it really did kind of ruin the continuity of the show.
1995 Power Rangers movie review
00:22:01
Speaker
From what I understand they originally considered doing that at the start of season two, but by that point the movie was already in a pre-production and they realized that the costumes were iconic and they thought
00:22:16
Speaker
They thought we can probably get away with changing resorts, but we can't get away with changing up the costumes as well. Right. That's a good segue to talk about the movie. So what would you remember about the movie when it first came out?
00:22:31
Speaker
Right, so I saw the movie in cinema in summer of 95 and it was, well, I think it would have been July. It was either June or July, because I remember I saw that then a few weeks later I saw Mortal Kombat, which came out in August of that year.
00:22:48
Speaker
um and um yeah it was a great experience just to see the the rangers on the big screen but it was a bit jarring at first because like you see the costumes were different um i knew who the white ranger was because that i'd already seen that i think about january of that year it premiered in the white ranger block
00:23:11
Speaker
But a lot of kids in the audience hadn't so there was a lot of kind of confused murmuring when when Tommy morphed into the White Ranger in this. It was, I mean, you know, it was a movie market that kids and it was clearly the majority of people in the audience were kids but
00:23:31
Speaker
There was a few adults who seemed to be getting into and appreciating the fun of it as well, you know, there's a lot to be said for just sometimes going to the cinema and just enjoying a good goofy action movie, you know, right. And to me, this is the epitome of
00:23:48
Speaker
you know, high production value, low story content, simplistic 90s action movie. You know, that's what that says to me. Yeah, yeah. I had a lot of the same things. Obviously we didn't have the problem with any confusion with Tommy, but I loved this movie when it came out. I thought the costumes were amazing. I thought the CGI Zords were incredible.
00:24:13
Speaker
back then, now though. I was watching it, I had re-watched this movie, I think maybe like two or three years ago, it came out on Netflix or something, and I had re-watched it then, and I'm just like, oh, I remember this would be really good, it'd be like a big upgrade from the TV show, and I watched it, I'm like, ooh, some of these things have not aged as well as I thought they would have, but it is,
00:24:40
Speaker
It is interesting to look back at it because, especially at that time period, because this was 95. So like, this was actually really, this had pretty good production values for a superhero movie in that time period.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mentioned, I mentioned that the Mortal Kombat movie, if you look at the CGI of the Zords, and then you look at the CGI of the reptile character. Oh, God. Yeah. Again, terror does does not hold up in the present day, but
00:25:16
Speaker
You can see it was clearly based off of the same tech at the time. And for me, that's the one thing that really dates the movie. Exactly. I wish they'd gone practical with the Zords. I really do. Yeah, there was this weird put because CGI, that kind of CGI technology was such a new thing at the time. And every movie wanted to take advantage of it, even if it didn't really fit. So they had even Blade.
00:25:44
Speaker
had it like yet the the climatic scene of blade has deacon frost turning into this kind of like blood monster thing and it was like looking at i remember looking at it at the time it looked really cool and that was in 98 and then going back and watching it now it looks like you know cartoon jello or something
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, or even a spawn was another one that came out at around the same time too, because they had the CGI cape, which at the time looked amazing, but now looks terrible.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's a remake that I'm really looking forward to, actually. I'd love to see what modern technology can do for spawn. Yeah. That's a really interesting one. But overall, though, even with the enhanced effects, I thought the suits were especially look really good at the time. I like the new armored look. And even me at what, I was 12 years old when this came out, I think. And I thought, oh, that's so much more practical. Obviously, it makes sense that they'd have armor.
00:26:47
Speaker
um although it is kind of interesting i didn't realize this at the time but they only they're only in the ranger costumes for a very short time in this movie yeah yeah it's it's like barely 15 minutes they have that they have their initial fight with the ooze men and they spend a good portion of the movie in their ninja costumes right which are a forerunner to what was going to happen in season three of the show and then um you had uh
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, the big Zord battle at the end where they're in the Ranger form, but it's not really about them at that point, it's about the Zords. Right, they just teleport back and it's almost instantly they summon the Zords. Yeah. And there's no sort of like, yeah, this was, because they had already done the fights with the henchmen, they had done one at the quarry, they had done one with the ninja outfits, then I guess at that point they figured, well, now we just got to go straight into the Zord action.
00:27:42
Speaker
Mm, yeah. And that ended up becoming the kind of formula for season three of the show as well. You would have like the sort of henchmen fight, the disposable henchmen, the Tengu tribe, you would fight them with the ninja. Who was the 10 guy in the TV show because they had some copyright disputes. So, cause 20th century Fox produced this. And so when they tried to do it on the TV show,
00:28:09
Speaker
Saban couldn't get the rights to use Tengo, so they had to use Tenga instead. That's right, I forgot about that, yeah. So then you had, they would fight the Tengas, then the monster would show up and they would morph, and then it would escalate to a Zord battle. That became the kind of formula for season three. And that's where, like you mentioned at the height of the show, where the movie comes into that weird sort of non-canon, but still using the same actors and characters.
00:28:38
Speaker
um because in season three they get the ninja powers in a completely different way i remember being really confused when that happened in the tv show because i remember the
00:28:49
Speaker
when, cause the movie had come out, you know, between season two and season three, I think. And when the, when season three premiered, I was, I had no idea why they weren't using the ninja stuff. Why were they were still using the thunderzords? I think it was at that time. And then it, and then when they did the ninja story and they had like that weird ninja robot or whatever, and I'm just like, what is happening?
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to me, again, I use the Transformers example. If you look at Transformers, the movie, same idea set between season two and three of the show. Yeah. But that was, now, whatever you may think of season three of that show, it was flawlessly integrated with the movie. Literally, the last 30 seconds of the movie becomes the first 30 seconds of season three, and they just go from there.
00:29:43
Speaker
Or also in the case of The X-Files as well, another example at the time, right? The movie had taken place between seasons of the TV show and what had happened in the movie was reflected in the TV show then. But yeah, so this was a really weird thing because it was the same actors but it was a completely different timeline basically.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But one of the changes I really liked, because looking back at the costumes now, they don't hold up so well, especially when you look at it from a more modern sensibility, they still do kind of look cheap in hindsight. But one of the changes I really liked that they made, and this is something I could never understand as a kid, was the toys always had their, you know, their morphing animal.
00:30:31
Speaker
or dinosaur or whatever, they always had that symbol on their chest. The TV show never had that. And then the movie put that in. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good addition. Of course, the one exception to that being the White Ranger. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah, he had the weird symbol on it instead, which is also because the White Ranger was actually from a completely different series, apparently.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yeah, which is why in the Japanese footage, he never appears in the same scenes as the rest of the team.
Villains vs. heroes in superhero films
00:31:03
Speaker
Looking back on it now, that is why in season two so many times, he would split off and go and have a one-on-one with another monster while the rest of the team were taking care of business. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
00:31:16
Speaker
Um, and also why his helmet is different, why his outfit is completely different from everybody else. And yeah, it was a, it was a real weird way that you got to hand it to him for the creative editing they did in that. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, yeah. And I think that, yeah, sorry. No, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I was just going to say that, um, I think that the, uh,
00:31:39
Speaker
That that was a, it was also a bit of a marketing risk that they took there because the, I don't know if it was the same in the States but in Britain, everybody loved the Green Ranger, it was like, he was the man. And even though you kept the same character.
00:31:55
Speaker
to change him up and give him a completely new power set, completely new costume, whatever. That was risky. Again, using the example of Transformers, your season three hot rod and ultra Magnus did not sell as well as Optimus Prime and Megatron because they were not anywhere near as iconic. And I think there was a risk that the White Ranger wouldn't take
00:32:22
Speaker
as well as the Green Ranger had. But in the end, I think because the Tommy character was still there, I think fans eventually, you know, they embraced it. And the Zords were awesome to be fair. The season two Zords are probably my favorite ones. They were really good. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also I think that has kind of stayed because even in the in the new in the Power Rangers comics that Boom Studios does,
00:32:48
Speaker
they brought him back as the Green Ranger. And I think that stuck for a good long while in that. Yeah, I mean, I know that in the Power Rangers PS4 game Battle for the Grid, which is based off of those comics. Yeah, I mean, there only are, I think it's in terms of Mighty Morphin, there is only the Green Ranger and the Red Ranger are the two that made the cut as like the main character roster.
00:33:15
Speaker
Um, and you know, you can unlock a skin to play as the white ranger, but it's clearly that the character is the green ranger. If you play through the story mode and whatever, you know, right. Right. Um, so what were some thoughts of yours rewatching this movie now, you know, like over 20 years later, after the 30 years now, Jesus.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, the thing is that you have to watch it from the perspective of, this is a kid's show, but I'm not a kid anymore. And I rewatched the TV show back during the summer there.
00:33:54
Speaker
because obviously with our current situation I couldn't travel anywhere during summer so I mostly stayed at home and watched movies and stuff so I ended up doing a rewatch of The Power Rangers and the movie
00:34:12
Speaker
Really, to me, it still has the charm. Doesn't have the effects, doesn't have the aesthetic. As we said, the costumes don't quite hold up. The Zord battle looks like a PlayStation 1 video game. I think even that would be generous.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, those, but you have to just kind of get past that and look at, and if you're a fan, you look for things to like in the movie, you know, I mean,
00:34:47
Speaker
Paul Freeman as a villain, he's always watchable. He brought the same energy and the same literal sliminess to Ivan Ooze that he brought to Belok in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He's one of those go-to actors that you can always depend on to deliver a good intimidating villain.
00:35:10
Speaker
I think it kind of works in out against the the favor of the movie though because Paul Freeman is so clearly outclassing everybody else in this movie.
Evolution of superhero movie tones
00:35:21
Speaker
True. And it's like you you're almost rooting for Ivan Ooz because he's so much more watchable than everybody else and he has so much more personality than the rest of the than the than the actual heroes do.
00:35:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And the funny thing about that is that that is something, that's almost a kind of a trope that I think has emerged in modern superhero movies as well, but nine times out of 10, the villain is just as, if not more compelling than the hero. I think it was probably, well, an argument could be made for Superman, the movie and Gene Hackman's Luther, but I think it was Jack Nicholson and Batman that really started that trend.
00:36:02
Speaker
Because ever since then, it's always been the villain has overshadowed the hero. Like you had Nicholson in Batman, you had Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns.
00:36:15
Speaker
After this one, you know, in Batman Forever, you had Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Batman and Robin. So yeah, there has been this trend for a long time. And then it kind of stopped after Batman and Robin for a while, but it is starting to come back what with Tom Hiddleston and Michael B. Jordan and those types of guys.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, actually for me, you might disagree, but an earlier example of that for me was the original Highlander movie. Oh yeah, that's a good one too. I mean, Clancy Brown is the kurg and he just totally steals every scene that he's in in that movie. Yeah, I mean, and Clancy Brown is just amazing in everything. And it's funny though, but he wasn't really a big name at that time. So I think, but in terms of big name actors, I think it was,
00:37:05
Speaker
That really started with with Batman, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. And it is. Yeah, that was my biggest problem rewatching because I could deal with the a lot of the cheesiness.
00:37:22
Speaker
One of the things I kept finding myself doing in my head was comparing it to the first Ninja Turtles movie, because both of them have kind of like a similar type of vibe where it's the superhero martial arts thing it's supposed to be for kids. Whereas Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it really did a good job of finding a way to kind of please all audiences. It was fun for the kids, but adults could enjoy it too. We covered that.
00:37:50
Speaker
you know, back in one of the earlier episodes of the show. And my late co-host had, he's an older guy. So he didn't grow up with like Ninja Turtles, right? He was already an adult when that came out. So he didn't have any of that association, that nostalgia association that I had with it. But even still, when we watched that movie, he really enjoyed it. I don't think he would have enjoyed Power Rangers as much.
00:38:15
Speaker
Right. I think this is something that it's got such a nostalgia factor and you had to have been a kid at the time to have really enjoyed it, I think.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think that, like you say, I think guys, out with our immediate generation, if you didn't enjoy the show as a kid, I think you're probably not going to enjoy the movie. To me, it's the same as when I watch old episodes of Star Trek Next Generation. You always feel as if you're checking in with old friends whenever you watch one of these episodes or this movie.
00:38:50
Speaker
And it's interesting that you bring up the comparison with Turtles because the Ninja Turtles movie, I agree with you, they really got the balance between action, humor, and just the right level of dark.
00:39:09
Speaker
Shredder as a villain is so much more sinister than anything the Power Rangers would do. Absolutely, yeah. They kind of tried to do that with Lord Zedd when they first brought him in, but apparently a lot of parents complained that he was too scary. Exactly, yeah, and so then they kind of made him goofier after that. Yeah, which is a shame because that first sort of
00:39:33
Speaker
20 to 30 episodes of Zed being full on evil. It really was. He was a great villain. Oh, yeah. I and at the time when that first that that even even now that stands out to me is that first reveal of Lord Zed with the chair turning and like I'm just like, oh, my God, this guy looks bad ass as hell. Yeah.
00:39:54
Speaker
Absolutely. So yeah, I yeah, and it would have been nice if they kept something something like that, although they did a break. There's a little bit of that here, at least in the design. I like I really like the kind of like, more detailed design they use for Zed in this movie.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, actually, I don't watch it anymore, but in the current season of Power Rangers, they have apparently brought Lord Zedd back. Oh, OK. And I'm kind of disappointed that they went with the TV show design rather than the movie design, because the movie design does look so much more intimidating. Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:34
Speaker
See, the one thing that stands out to me, especially when you talk about the turtles comparison, is that the turtles each had clear individual personalities. Apparently my daughter agrees with me.
00:40:50
Speaker
But they had such individual personalities and that's really what makes that movie stand out even more. The effects are still great. They still work really well, those practical suits and the puppetry they had used. But another thing too is it's hard to forgive a lot of it with the turtles, with the Power Rangers, especially because
00:41:15
Speaker
watching this movie and watching the scenes of them on Thanos or when then they're hanging out together, they just have no personality. Like none of these characters really stands out.
00:41:26
Speaker
No, they're all basically color coded templates of each other. It's like generic teenager number one, generic teenager number two. I think the only one who even comes close is probably Kimberly. And that's because Amy Jo Johnson is probably the only actor in the bunch. And she's the only one who had an actual acting career after this show.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think that's very true. Yeah, if you think that Paul Freeman is exponentially above everybody else in the movie, I think, yeah, Amy Jo is definitely a cut above the rest of the Ranger team. It also brought back some memories, because I had such a crush on her when I was a kid. I think we all did, my friend. I think we all did.
00:42:15
Speaker
uh that definitely brought back some memories um it was also real weird that they had had um this new guy in the in the villain because they had brought back you know Zed and Rita and Goldar but they didn't have
00:42:31
Speaker
The other, like, what was it? Baboon Squad, the two bumbling guys, or the monster maker whose name I forget. Finster. Finster, that was it, yeah. But those guys were all gone. They weren't in this, but they had this new pig-like guy named Mordant, who was never seen from again after this. And I thought that was really weird. The entire time I'm wondering, when I was a kid, I was wondering, like, who the hell even is this guy?
00:42:57
Speaker
You know, if there's anybody listening out there who has a more dant figure in good condition, they are worth quite a lot now because that figure was on the market for such a short time. He was only available basically during the marketing period of the movie, which was about a sort of three month window. And I'm guessing he sold, he sold for shit too, which is why they probably didn't keep him in production.
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah, probably. I mean, it was definitely not a not a very memorable or particularly charismatic character. I really don't. It's one of them. You think, why did they do that? Because you could literally have just had gold all there. Exactly. Yeah. It was. Apparently, there are some budgetary reasons or something. One of the interesting things I too, I found out when I was doing some research in this is that the
00:43:49
Speaker
people the the crew involved in this like the director and the writer and all that they had never seen the tv show before they got the show and then they had done kind of like so what it says here is they had done kind of like a fast forward watch uh of the tv show um interesting um and in fact they were because there's they're going to be some more changes like
00:44:15
Speaker
They had originally did not want to have the total face covering for the masks, for the helmets. And so they initial shooting had the actors in helmets, but there were no visors on the helmets. And then they realized afterwards, they realized that was a mistake.
Nostalgia and critique of Power Rangers movie
00:44:32
Speaker
So then they went back and they reshot it.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting one because, again, that is a recurring problem with masked heroes, particularly if you watch the Spider-Man movies. There's always some excuse where his mask has to get ripped at some point so that the actor can emote, you know? Yeah, Iron Man had got around to that in a really clever way by having to see the close-ups of Robert Downey's face in the suit.
00:45:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that was how they got around because there was talk about doing Iron Man for a while. It's like, well, how are we going to do Iron Man and his face is covered all the time. But even with other heroes, too, like you see in the Captain America movies, every time he's got a scene where his mask gets pulled off. Yeah.
00:45:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, funnily enough, the only one who I think doesn't really do that is Batman. Yeah. Well, I think a big part of that is because his eyes and his mouth are visible, so it's a lot easier to just go kind of emote.
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah. In the case of Captain America, I just think it's, you know, they're the producers are probably like, look, we paid for Chris Evans face. We got to show Chris Evans face. Very true. I mean, nobody's nobody's going to see the Batman movies from Michael Keaton's face. You know, as good of an actor as it is, they're not as good in his face as they are as his talent. No, no, definitely not. So, yeah. So with with with this movie as well, though, I think the whole
00:46:04
Speaker
the whole traveling to, to, to Theodos to get their new powers. That part of the movie kind of, it kind of drags a little bit for me. Yeah. Same here. I felt the same thing. I found myself looking at my phone a lot during those parts. Yeah. Um, when I really, I really do like the, the ninja costumes, I think those
00:46:26
Speaker
because they're not, they're just basically suits rather than full on costumes. The costumes in that respect still hold up for me. I think they still look good and they're bright and colorful. The following months after that, I made a point of buying all the Ninja Ranger figures because I thought they looked awesome.
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah, I had two. Yeah, those costumes look really good. They still do hold up a lot better than the actual ranger suits do. But the whole phatos thing, one thing I found was really strange is they're on an alien world, but the spirit animals are all from Earth.
00:47:11
Speaker
And the animals that are, they're all conveniently fit these ranger spirit animals exactly. So I thought looking back, I'm just like, wait a second, some of this stuff. Also, I remember that one scene when Tommy does his ninja corkscrew kick. I'm like, you've never trained in these things before. How do you already have a special move prepared for it?
00:47:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, you have to do, again, like I said, good goofy action movie. You've got to just switch your brain off and enjoy it for what it is. Yeah. Also, I thought the little kid in this movie, Fred, this kid annoyed the shit out of me. I mean, even when I first watched this movie, I thought, why the hell is this little Brad in the movie?
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, again, trope of movies of that time, you always had to have the irritating 12 year old kid who somehow saves the day. Yeah, yeah.
00:48:09
Speaker
I think that all kind of started with Wesley Crusher. I'm not sure which came out might have been short round, I think, in Temple of Doom. Oh, actually, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, because that was a couple of years early. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although short round was nowhere near as annoying as most of the kids sidekicks are. No, definitely not.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I do kind of feel sorry for Wil Wheaton because he still gets ripped about that to this day. And he was just he was just working with what he was given, you know. Although, interestingly, you know who they originally want, who's up for the part of Fred in this movie? No, who was that? Joseph Gordon Levitt. Wow. Yeah. Wow. That's a way to make you feel old. Joseph Gordon Levitt was old enough to fit that part of that time. Oh, my God.
00:49:06
Speaker
Wow, imagine if he'd have got that, that could have really changed things up. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the Zord fight though, that is still the one thing that I can forgive a lot of stuff in this movie, but that the CGI used in the big Zord fight is just so bad. And even when they merge into the Megazord, the Ninja Megazord, it just looks incomprehensible.
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. That was something which really kind of annoyed me about the more recent, the 2017 Power Rangers movie as well.
00:49:48
Speaker
The Megazord is supposed to look like a humanoid robot, you know? And in both cases, to me, it didn't. It just looked like this giant sort of walking tank kind of thing, you know? Yeah, I mean, I really like the reboot movie, but I did not like the design of the Megazord in that.
00:50:09
Speaker
Now, yeah, the reboot movie is maybe something we'll discuss on a future show, but I did not care for that movie at all. I'm afraid it really actively annoyed me in a lot of places. Really? See, for me, it solved a lot of the problems I had with this movie where it had been
00:50:28
Speaker
It was sufficiently, I thought it was, it was still sufficiently like kid friendly, but it also, it had some darkness to it and it had, the characters had individual personalities, which is something I felt that this one really lacked. And Elizabeth Banks chewing every single, all the scenery in sight was just, was just so much fun to watch for me.
00:50:53
Speaker
Well, again, it's all about the charismatic over-the-top villain, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But...
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's a shame that movie never got a sequel because although I don't like that movie personally, I saw enough in it that I thought there's things they could develop here, you know? Yeah, it did. But one of the things I thought that, and I like that what it did is that it did kind of make an attempt to kind of grow up the franchise, but it didn't go to the extreme that the Power Rangers fan film from several years back went to.
00:51:25
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't like that. That was just way too much. And it was so mean-spirited. Yeah. That's a thing about modern superhero cinema in general that I don't like, right? I'm going to say something that might upset a lot of your listeners here, but it's just my opinion, right? Go for it. I do not like The Dark Knight.
00:51:49
Speaker
Oh, really? OK. I do not like The Dark Knight at all. For me, it is a two and a half hour essay on misery and depression. Right. And to me, I want to when I go watch a superhero movie, like like The Power Rangers, I want to come out of the movie feeling, yes, the good guys kicked ass. We won. I'm elated, you know.
00:52:13
Speaker
I came out of the Dark Knight feeling like I wanted to go and hang myself. It was such a depressing movie, you know? See, I don't have that problem with the Dark Knight, but I did feel that way after Batman v Superman. Like, that was just unrelentingly dark. And like, the Snyder stuff in general is just...
00:52:31
Speaker
I utterly despise it. And for a lot of the same reasons you say so I don't dark night I like I think that kind of for me at least that kind of skirted the line. It hasn't held up as well in my estimation like I don't think it's as amazing when I rewatch it. I don't think it's as amazing as I did when I first saw it. The holes kind of come through a little bit more now, but it's still it does it doesn't have that same
00:52:59
Speaker
utterly bleak feeling that Batman V Superman left me with.
00:53:04
Speaker
Yeah um Batman v Superman was um what I would say in that movie's defense though, we're getting a bit off topic here but humanly, if you watch that and then watch the the Snyder Cut of Justice League kind of back to back, it works as a complete narrative so much better. Oh it does. And the 2017 Justice League because the 2017 Justice League is just
00:53:31
Speaker
It's almost like Power Rangers in a sense. It's just like throw in all the characters, but don't really develop any of them. Have a big over the top villain, but let's not animate him properly. And it all just kind of goes downhill from there. Yeah. One thing I will say in defense of the, of the weed and cut of Justice League is that
00:53:51
Speaker
they actually got Superman right in that one. So he actually feels like Superman in that one, whereas in the Snyder Cut, he's back to maning people. And so I, even though it's a total mess, it's a total Frankenstein, as another guest, Adam Garcia had said before, it's
00:54:12
Speaker
I forgive a lot of it just because it got Superman right and it gave Henry Cavill even bad CG lip at all. Henry Cavill got a chance to play Superman the way he's supposed to be played. He was charming. He was kind.
00:54:26
Speaker
but he was and he wasn't just like relentlessly depressing or violent all the time. So I forgive that version of Justice League just for that because it gave me that Superman on the big screen. I would completely agree with that because it's like we totaled around for two and a half movies then we finally got the Superman that I went to the cinema to see originally when Man of Steel came out. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:51
Speaker
But anyway, back to Power Rangers. Yeah. So the Zord battle, I did like the idea of how they brought the comet into it at the end of the climax. I thought that was quite a
00:55:08
Speaker
I actually showed quite good creativity because in the show, it was always the power sword that took down the monster. 30 seconds at the sword fight, the power sword gets wrecked. And you're like, oh God, what are they going to do now? They don't have a power sword. They don't have the Deus Ex Machina to take out the vermin like they do every week. Which always made you wonder why none of the villains had ever thought, maybe we should find a way to counter the power sword.
00:55:38
Speaker
Yeah. This keeps happening all the time. You think we should do something about that? Goldar was a smart one. As soon as that power sword showed up, he was out of there.
00:55:54
Speaker
That was a clever usage. Another thing I think that I liked about it is we actually saw how they were piloting the Zords. I was always wondering, where the hell are the cockpits in these things in the TV show? Because it's never clear. It's always just this clear image of the cockpit, but you don't see where it is in relation to the Zords.
00:56:19
Speaker
Here they showed it, like they had zoom ins on them and the cockpits and all that. So I really liked that aspect of it. Nice little throwback as well. When they first get into the Zords and Kimberly says nice stereo, because that was the same line that she used when she got into her first Zord in episode one of the TV show. Yeah, yeah. And I actually did wonder with the Zords,
00:56:46
Speaker
I noticed what I thought was a Superman the movie reference in there. Oh, really? What was that? When, um, when the monorail is out and Tommy pilots the Falcons over. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Complete the train line. Yeah. So the kids can go over. I just went straight back to Superman doing that with the express train. That was another, that was another good thing too, in that, you know, it's,
00:57:11
Speaker
It shows them actually, and this was a big problem I had with Man of Steel, is that it shows them actually saving people, which you never really saw on the TV show. Yeah, yeah. And again, it showed you that there was clearly
00:57:28
Speaker
Well, you can say that the story is weak, the characters are formulaic, whatever. There was clearly some thought and some quite good writing went into different aspects of this movie. You can definitely see where creativity has come in because I don't know if that was intended as a Superman homage, but that was how I read it. Even back in 95, I'm like, oh yeah, I remember Superman doing that.
00:57:57
Speaker
Um, I mean, I think they had to have been there. I don't it's it's way too similar for not to have been a Superman homage, I think.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, the, uh, the whole, again, it's that thing of like, not quite adult humor, but something that adults will find funny, you know, that when they basically knee Ivan, who's in the balls to send them in front of the comet, you know, the thing I found so funny about that is that it was for emergency use only to use the ball strike.
00:58:28
Speaker
There's a specific ball breaker button on the megazord. Another thing I thought was kind of weird was the fact that Ivan Uze's plan to unearth his robots
00:58:47
Speaker
I couldn't understand why he needed the parents to do it when he's got, when he can create these creatures, these, you know, these bruisers out of ooze himself so I never really quite understood why he needed them to do it. And another thing I thought was weird was
00:59:02
Speaker
I do remember too, when all the parents are mind controlled and they're walking out, there's this one lady in the crowd who is like dressed in the most ridiculous outfit ever. I'm watching it last night with my wife and I'm just like, what is she wearing?
00:59:22
Speaker
I'm not sure if you caught that but it was just yeah there was a there was a few extras who I think didn't quite take the direction they were supposed to in that scene. There's a couple of people walking the wrong way if you watch it as well.
00:59:37
Speaker
But also there's another part too in that he's the scene when he's in the quarry with Goldar and he says, he's like, we have to get them on earth. He's like, I wish they would work faster. And then he stops one of them from working to do the weird, to do the dancing. Yeah. Again, classic villain trope. Stay on task, man. Don't monologue. Stay on task.
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah, but I think we can both agree that Ivan is definitely the highlight of this movie isn't Oh yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Paul Freeman just he steals every scene he's in, he's the, he's the most entertaining thing about this movie.
01:00:19
Speaker
Yeah, but you know, overall, I still think it's a good movie. It's one that, you know, it's one that if I could find a Japanese subtitle version of it, I would I wouldn't hesitate to show to my students. I think because because we usually do that in my in my school job at Christmas time, we'll watch a movie, you know.
01:00:38
Speaker
OK, you usually home alone because the kids love home alone. Oh, God. But but we're going to you know, I was thinking I might try and see if I can get an old Japanese Blu-ray of Power Rangers and maybe show them it just to think of it.
Post-show careers of Power Rangers actors
01:00:52
Speaker
You know, you might be able to find if you have a if you if you have a downloaded version of it, you might be able to find it on like iTunes or something like that.
01:01:03
Speaker
or you might be able to find, sometimes they have Japanese subtitles floating around on the internet. So you might be able to find something like that. I have ripped my entire movie library and I run it through Plex on my home sharing. And a lot of these movies I have, they were American DVDs. They don't have Japanese subtitles.
01:01:30
Speaker
But what Plex has, they have a subtitle search option. So even if there's something that doesn't have Japanese subtitles for my wife, I can search. And about like 60, 70% of the time, there'll be a Japanese subtitle option that we can find. All right. I'll need to look into that. That's interesting. For me, I think if you were a fan of Power Rangers,
01:01:53
Speaker
I think you'll, and you have, and I don't, if you were a fan of Power Rangers, I don't see any reason why you haven't seen this movie already because. Yeah. But if you were, or if you've only discovered it recently, like through the comic book or something like that, then it might be worth a watch. I'd say if you're not really, if you don't really have that kind of, if this, if Power Rangers doesn't really tickle that nostalgia bone for you, I don't think you would enjoy this movie.
01:02:19
Speaker
I would say that. I would agree. I would add the caveat that if you're one of those guys like me who watches superhero movies for the great villain performances, I think it's almost worth watching just for Ivanoo's. Yeah, I would agree with that. It comes very close to almost being worth it just for him alone.
01:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, he's up there with, oh, I mean, you know, it's like you say, when you've got an actor of his caliber surrounded by a bunch of pretty much non-actors, it perhaps makes him look better than he is. But in Paul Freeman's case, I don't believe that. I genuinely think he was just such a superb
01:03:09
Speaker
a superb actor who played that role. And the thing is, you can tell he's having so much fun with it. Yeah, he definitely gets the award for how the hell did this guy end up in this movie? Absolutely, yeah. It's like Patrick Stewart and Ted, right? You're like, why are you with this?
01:03:32
Speaker
although it was quite funny to hear Patrick Stewart swearing. I thought it was hilarious but it's like you're watching it like you know you know Shakespearean trained thespian Patrick Stewart and he's and he's doing dick juke voiceovers.
01:03:50
Speaker
Yeah. Alan Rickman and Dogma is another one where it's just like, I don't understand how you got how you how you're in this with your you should be doing something else. Yeah, yeah, it's not to those movies. I love those movies, but it's just like they don't seem like a good fit at all.
01:04:08
Speaker
But I actually have a lot of respect for actors who are willing to, in a sense, lower themselves to that. They're not beyond self-parody. They're not beyond having a joke at themselves. And clearly Paul Freeman knew this was just some goofy kids movie.
01:04:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, he flew into it head first and he really went for it, you know, and he and he commit because he had to do like and he wasn't, you know, half asking like he had to do seven hours of makeup a day for this, you know, compare that to like Jennifer Lawrence in the in the X-Men movies where she had to suddenly develop an allergy to the makeup all of a sudden.
01:04:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, those definitely are. Those are great. You've got to admire the commitment of some of these actors, even if you don't necessarily appreciate the movies, you know? Well, I will say that too, especially about Jason David Frank, like he has remained so...
01:05:07
Speaker
maybe it's because there's not a lot of other stuff for him to do but but he he really seems to really love like this franchise which is why he stayed involved in it so much over the years yeah you know it's funny i've actually got a signed print from him up on my wall oh yeah which um my brother got me at a comic con in scotland a couple of years ago yeah um he um yeah he's a great ambassador for the franchise as well he
01:05:35
Speaker
Not because from what I've been reading about it, not only what did did he basically start the whole thing of like, you know, going to comic cons and meeting fans and tapping into that nostalgia, but he also brought other actors from that from the show and from that era into all that. Yeah. And encourage them because a lot of them had moved on and not even, you know, they weren't even actors anymore. Some of them had become like
01:06:02
Speaker
You know, teachers or instructors. Yeah, I remember I'd seen some documentary. I think it was the guy who played Jason. Brian Austin Green, I think is his name. Austin St. John. Austin St. Brian Austin Green is another actor completely. I always get those two names mixed up. Austin St. John. Yeah, he he was like a firefighter for a while. And apparently I think he was even in Afghanistan, too.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he he was a firefighter paramedic. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And like you say, he did he did he did his best in the military as well. And the guy who played the black played Zach Walter Jones, I think he he had become like an instructor, like Ty Bow was basically originally his thing. He had called it hip hop keto back in the day. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. And
01:06:51
Speaker
David Yost who had played Billy, he, oh God, that was a tragic story for him because he quit because like the production crew kept harassing him about being gay. And he apparently wasn't the actors, apparently the actors, the other actors had actually been supportive of him and he had good relationships with them. But like the other actors would be pulled in by like the producers and they'd be asked about his sexuality all the time.
01:07:20
Speaker
And he had just gotten so tired of it that he had quit and he had...
01:07:25
Speaker
And it had been such a destructive environment for him that he had tried conversion therapy, right? And it almost drove him to suicide and it was terrible. And since then, like he had come out of it and he had become like a producer. Strangely enough, he was one of the producers on Temptation Island, which was this reality TV show a few years back about, which like the complete, as far away from Power Rangers as you could possibly get,
01:07:54
Speaker
Yeah. And the funny thing is he hasn't recently started doing the convention circuit again as well. And from my understanding, it was Jason Frank that brought him into it. You got to say props to that guy because from what I understand, having read about him, he's a conservative. He likes his guns and whatever.
01:08:23
Speaker
it didn't stop him from having a very good friendship and helping out a guy who he knew was gay, which just shows that you don't have to necessarily be a bigot to be a conservative. I'm not going to agree with the guy politically, but I certainly respect him for doing that. And then, unfortunately,
01:08:49
Speaker
Tui Trang, unfortunately never, she looked, she was on her way to having some decent Hollywood performances. Cause she was in the second crow movie and she did a pretty good job in that. But then she, you know, she had died in a car accident. I think before even that movie was released. Yeah. I think she was only what 27, 28. Something like that. Yeah. Really tragic. Yeah.
01:09:13
Speaker
Yeah, actually, funny thing, I was an odd kid that way because everybody was crushing on the Pink Ranger. And Kimberly was gorgeous, but Trini was my girl. Yeah, Trini was the one. I had the hots for back in the day. Now you had said, one last thing I wanted to ask about before we close up is you had said you had watched some of the Japanese ones and just like how different, how do they compare? Like, what did you think of the Japanese ones?
01:09:42
Speaker
Well, now remember, I'm coming at this as someone who's, you know, as of yesterday, lived in Japan for 15 years. I can appreciate a lot of the cultural nuances and the
01:09:58
Speaker
like why people act a certain way as they do in the show. To someone from Europe or the US coming into it who has no prior knowledge of Japanese sort of culture or how the Japanese approach TV, they would think it was over the top, dramatic and kind of, well, kind of dumb. But I actually,
01:10:28
Speaker
really enjoyed it. I mean one of the things was like the relationship between the Red Ranger and the Green Ranger is completely different in the Japanese version. They're actually brothers and they are rivals and initially the reason the Green Ranger is a villain is because he feels inferior to his brother.
01:10:47
Speaker
And they have this kind of set too, but in the end up they make peace. And towards the end of the series, the Green Ranger actually, you know, in our version, he just temporarily lost his powers. In the Japanese version, he dies. I mean, he actually kill off the Green Ranger, which is really, you know, unthinkable in the American version. And the other thing was that the villains were so much darker.
01:11:20
Speaker
Bandora as she was known in Japan, Rita Repulsa, she full on makes a pact with the devil in order to defeat the Power Rangers. If you remember towards the end of season one, what was originally supposed to be the finale of the series was a two-part episode called Doomsday.
01:11:41
Speaker
where the Rangers fight Gogar and Cyclopsus in his. The Cyclopsus was Gogar's zord, basically. And then this mysterious head in the sky monster called Lokar shows up to back them up. And Lokar is just seen as exponentially more powerful than any other villain. And that's because in the Japanese version, Lokar literally was Satan.
01:12:09
Speaker
Oh, OK. And so the the Japanese series ended in a similar way with them taking down cyclops, this and whatever. But they literally destroyed the Avatar of Satan series. And I thought that is that's a really, really dark path to go down for a kids TV show. Yeah. And you get into spawn territory at that point. You know, yeah, I've been interested in
01:12:36
Speaker
in seeing the original one, especially because I think there, if you use a VPN, some of those episodes are actually available for free on the official ranger or homepage or whatever. So I've been curious to check that. I think I'm just, I think I might just wait until my daughter's actually a little bit older to actually then probably watch it with her, but probably what I do.
01:13:03
Speaker
They did actually release the Complete New Ranger series on, I think it was DVD a couple of years ago. Yeah, I know it's out there, because I have seen it at Satya and stuff like that. But with the VPN, I can watch it for free by making the Ranger homepage think I'm in the US. That's a lot easier. That is true. Because then I don't have to dig up subtitles for it either.
01:13:29
Speaker
Well, the other that's what I was going to say, Amazon has an English subbed version of it. Oh, OK. But it's quite expensive. I think it's something like eight or nine thousand yen. Oh, yeah. Considering I only paid four thousand yen for the boxed the European box of season one, two and three, you know, it's quite a quite a lot to pay for one season. Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:51
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's definitely worth checking out. I would recommend that if you're, like I say, if you're a fan of the original and you want to see it done just a little bit differently. Um, one thing though, the idea of Goldar and Scorpina being a couple is weird. Oh yeah. That's, that's weird. Um, even as a kid, I knew something was up with that. Right. And I could tell, and I, and then I found out later on that they were a couple in the original one. I'm like, Oh, that makes total sense now. Yeah.
01:14:22
Speaker
My thought was, Scorpina, you're too beautiful. You can do myself in that girl. Another thing, too, is the comic book. You've read the Boom Studios comics, right? Yes, I have. Yeah, Shattergrid is excellent.
01:14:41
Speaker
is someone who is you know you dug the rewatch of the tv show you've read the comics how do the comics compare to the tv show is it is it as like kishi as a tv show or does it find like a more updated balance it's definitely more more updated and it's it's gone
01:14:59
Speaker
There is a little bit of that dark night element in terms of making it darker and grittier to appeal to a more mature audience. Because whereas the current TV series is, I watched one episode of it last week when I heard that Lord Zedd was coming back just to see what was going on. And it was, in all honesty, it was barely watchable. Because it's aimed at seven-year-olds, right? That's the reality of it. Yeah.
01:15:28
Speaker
The comics are clearly aimed at guys like us, guys who grew up with the original show and would like to see a continuation of stories about those characters, but with a more mature twist. And the Boom Studios actually strike the balance very well, I think, in that
01:15:48
Speaker
There's nothing in there that's I mean, there's no gratuitous sex or violence or anything. So kids who are watching Power Rangers now could still pick up these comics and enjoy them. Right. So it's not like not like the fan film. No, not at all. Not at all. But there's higher stakes. Sometimes people get killed. You know, it's
01:16:10
Speaker
It's on the same level as, like, I would say, a Spider-Man or Superman comic. Okay. Yeah, I've been meaning to check it out, but unfortunately, it's... First, I have to use my VPN anytime I look for it on Comixology because the way the rights work is Saban has the rights to the Super Sentai stuff everywhere except Asia.
01:16:35
Speaker
Yes, so, so like if I if I change my VPN set it to the US boom studio stuff comes up on Comixology right away. If I don't have my VPN on that it doesn't show up at all. Yeah.
01:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, I've had similar issues trying to watch a couple of different things that were, you know, the rights issues and what have you. But I would also just say that the, I don't know if you know about this, but Saban have said, well, I think it's now Hasbro actually that owns Power Rangers. Yeah, Saban sold it to Hasbro a few years back. And they've said that this current iteration will be the last time that they use Japanese footage.
01:17:18
Speaker
That's right. Yeah, I was reading I was reading last night that they've got someone who is like doing like a whole kind of imagining like a new like kind of reboot universe for the Power Rangers for like everything for like films for TV and he's kind of like mapping it all out. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens with that.
01:17:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I, and one of the rumors is that they are going to do a more, a more adult centric TV series. Right. That's right. Right. Now, I'm not going to spoil it for people that haven't read it, but if all I'll say is if they do those, if they do that and they do not make Lord Draken the main villain, that is unthinkable because Lord Draken is one of the best, most intimidating, most
01:18:09
Speaker
But also at the same time, most sympathetic villains I've ever read in a comic book. There are so many layers to the guy. He's a cold-blooded murderer. He's literally committed genocide. But at the same time, he's just...
01:18:26
Speaker
Tommy the Green Ranger who took one wrong turn. That's all the character is. One thing that happened to the Tommy in our universe didn't happen to him. He didn't have friends when he needed them and that drove him to become this completely insane villain who literally kills everybody in his own universe and then starts hunting in our universe.
01:18:49
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard about that story and that made me really interested in seeing and going back and looking into this series. And I've just been waiting for it to actually come on sale on Comixology so I can pick up the books.
Challenges with Boom Studios' comics
01:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, but so when that happens that I'm hopefully because the problem is boom, because Comixology has lots of sales, Marvel and DC run sales on there constantly. Boom, almost never run sales. And when they do, they're not really that impressive. Right. It's like, you know, it's like a buck or two cheaper than what it normally is. So I haven't really been willing to to kind of spend the money on it yet. But maybe we'll once I finish off my massive Tibery pile and eventually get there.
01:19:35
Speaker
I remember that used to be an issue with the Transformers IDW comics back in the day as well. They were always that bit more expensive. And I think it was simply because they were a more limited print run with it being a smaller company. Yeah, could be. I think that could be it. And then with the digital stuff, they're trying to price match it. Because I know that was an issue when digital first started coming out was the fact that comic stores were worried that they'd be undercutting the print sales.
01:20:04
Speaker
Yeah. So they intentionally, I think at first, in fact, the digital comics were intentionally more expensive than the print ones.
Conclusion and participation invitation
01:20:11
Speaker
That's changed now. And now digital is the same price, except for when it's on sale.
01:20:18
Speaker
But anyway, I think that about does it for wraps up our discussion about Power Rangers. So Liam, anything you want to promote, tell people where they can find you online. Yeah, if you guys want to give me a follow on Twitter, it's at Liam 6783. Always happy to engage with people. We'd love to hear feedback on this because this is my first time doing this kind of podcast.
01:20:45
Speaker
I hope you'll have me back again sometime to talk about another movie, because I've really enjoyed going through this. Absolutely. Yeah, you gave me a short little list, so we'll have to look at that again and see what's on there. Yeah. Sometimes, someday, I want to make the case for the defense for Superman IV. That is not as bad a movie as everybody says it is, and I'll fight to the death on that one. All right, maybe we'll have to have you come on for that then.
01:21:14
Speaker
All right. Well, Liam, thanks so much for coming on. And yeah, we'll definitely have you back on and we'll have that fight at some point. I look forward to it, mate. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much for listening. And you can find us at Superherocinephiles.com or on Twitter and Instagram at Supercinemapod. Don't forget to join our Facebook group, Superherocinephiles. Just do a search of that. It'll pop right up.
01:21:36
Speaker
And please, if you like what you hear, leave us a review, let us know what you think. And if you're interested in being on the show, you can drop me a line. Superherocinephiles at gmail.com is the email address, or we've got a contact form on the website. Drop me a line, let me know what you'd like to talk about, and we'll see if we can schedule a time to squeeze you in. Thanks again, and we'll talk to you next time.
01:21:58
Speaker
You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles, where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon,
01:22:14
Speaker
or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com. If you buy or rent any movies through the Amazon links at our site, it helps support the show. Please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:22:47
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.