Review | Power Rangers 2017 |

WARNING SPOILERS!

I finally got round to seeing the new power rangers movie, I had pretty high hopes for this film I partly blaming on me feeding into the hype and how good the trailer looked. I feel like I've been living my childhood lately, with the release of crash and power rangers I felt so nostalgic which I'm not complaining about, being a kid in the 90s was fucking awesome! My sister's and I would watch a variety of tv shows from My Little Pony to Batman, I was the Tele addict out of my sister's so I would happily sit and watch tv for hours if I could. Like many children my sister's and I would pretend we were the Power Rangers, my sister Stefi would be the pink power ranger, much to my dismay! I would have to be the yellow rangers but I was younger and use to think the pink ranger was the strongest when they're all as strong as one another. The fact that a new Power Rangers movie would be released took me back to them days, they were some of the best days I had as a child.

At the very start, we meet Zordon who is the leader of the first team of Power Rangers on earth over 65 million years ago (crazy long time ago I know, who knew that kind of tech the Power Rangers had was around that long ago). The green power ranger on his team, (Rita Repulsa) betrayed her team by wanting to rip out earth's life source with the Zeo Crystal luckily Zordon had an idea, he hides the power coins and calls Alpha 5 for help, he asks them to send a meteor down to earth. The film then cuts to modern day life on earth and we meet Jason who is a popular guy but a very naughty one at that, is caught stealing the football mascot from a rival school, he ends up in a police chase smashing up his truck and the police catch him, he gets made to wear a tag as well as having to attend detention every day. Jason (Red ranger) eventually ends up meeting the rest of the characters Billy (Blue ranger), Kimberly (Pink ranger), Trini (Yellow ranger) and Zack (Black ranger) but before they all meet up we find we meet Billy we find out he is on the autism spectrum.

I've seen many people saying it's so important that this was represented in a movie but alas it wasn't represented by someone who is on the autism spectrum and in that sense it is ableist. I'm not going to say I speak for everyone Kerry Margo wrote a wonderful review from their perspective and what it means to have someone representing autism in a super hero movie. My biggest issue with him portraying someone on the autism spectrum was how often he would mention it, a bit like they wanted to make it clear that he does these things because he is on the autism spectrum. Eventually all 5 teens end up in the same place where they find the spot where the coins which Zordon had hidden millions of years before inside of a mine, whilst they are there they are spotted and try to make their escape in Billy's mums car but are hit by a train, this could have surely killed them right? Wrong! They end up waking up in their beds feeling stronger than ever which is obviously because of something to do with the coins (well obvious to me).

 Rita Repulsa

It seemed to focus a lot more about their school life than anything else, when they do eventually find Zordon (in non-human form) its when they come across the ship that crashed on earth, they get freaked out at the little robot dude called Alpha 5 and try to escape the ship but they come around to what he is saying and follow him into a room where Zordon's hologram is. The teens are warned by Zordon about Rita Repulsa and he explains that she will return in order to find the Zeo Crystal and that the teens need to learn to Morph and work together in order to save Earth within eleven days or it will mean the end of Earth as we know it! I didn't feel like there was much of a character development the only one who gave much away was Billy, I just didn't feel like we could get to know them well enough, to be honest, they seemed like an odd fit for Power Rangers. 

I don't know if they were trying to make the audience think the characters were relatable, I certainly didn't, I felt like it was more forced and badly executed. Once they learnt how to Morph which was of course in time to face Rita they didn't spend much time even fighting, it lasted something like 10 minutes which felt like such a waste, if they were trying to do it to help introduce the audience to the Power Rangers they could have at least included more fighting, I personally think the best character in the whole movie was Rita and we were meant to dislike her for wanting to destroy Earth! The movie as a whole didn't keep my attention for long, I was bored and there wasn't enough fighting, I don't know if it would be something kids would happily sit down and watch as it's so slow and doesn't have enough action to keep their attention either, I don't think I would ever watch this movie again.

Elle May