Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog (2/5)
You ever start consuming a piece of media, find you dislike it, but force yourself to continue? Mystic Knights is one such thing.
The only reason I watched this was because of Movie Bob's episode on it. I'd never heard of it before, but decided to give it a shot. I mean, Irish Power Rangers? Well, that's...something, I guess. I actually makes an interesting study in a sense, in that we have Super Sentai (Japanese) being made into Power Rangers (American), being made into Mystic Knights (Irish). However, although "Irish Power Rangers" was more or less the selling point (or more specifically, Saban trying to do their own PR show in-house), the thing is, this show...it really isn't like Power Rangers. At all.
To demonstrate this, I'll ask you, what are some of the fundamentals of Power Rangers? There's exceptions to this, but I'll list some out:
1) Multi-coloured characters, with red being the de facto leader, and the one who gets the most goodies
2) Of that group, at least one new ranger will join the group down the line
3) The Rangers are pretty much the only group in the setting that can accomplish anything (like, the military can't do jack shit against monsters)
4) Each ranger has a zord, and the zords can combine to form a megazord
5) Most episodes usually have the formula of setup-grunts-monster-monster is defeated-monster grows-zord is called-monster is defeated
You can point to exceptions, and can debate about what constitutes the basics of PR, but hopefully that's a reasonable list. However, the thing is, Mystic Knights only conforms to the first two options. Because MK is in the context of a larger war, and the knights are, well, knights - special, but not so special that men-at-arms are useless. None of them have zords - there's a dragon that's used every so often, but very rarely, likely due to budget. And there's no set episode formula. Oh sure, certain plot points repeat, but the PR formula I described simply doesn't apply. And while not a tenet, MK is nowhere near as over the top as PR, and is clearly made on a lower budget. Yes, there's a tonne of extras, but the fighting is dull as dishwater. The knights will often use their weapons to shoot stuff rather than use them for anything approaching choreographed combat. PR at least made that work. So, no. Mystic Knights has far more in common with Medieval-esque fiction than sentai-esque fiction.
Why do I bring this up? Because honestly, comparing MK with PR in the context of its production gives me far more to talk about. Because MK is, as I stated, dull as dishwater. This is a children's show with children's-level writing. Characters are okay, and I can buy their dynamic, but there's barely anything to discuss. I mean, there's some interesting potential (two kingdoms warring over not!Ireland as to who controls the throne), plus marriages of allegiance, and something approaching military tactics, but there's really nothing worth discussing. PR could be fun by being batshit crazy (e.g. MMPR), or at times actually having decent character development (e.g. RPM), but...oh God, I'm still talking about Power Rangers.
Really, the greatest problem with MK is that it's dull. It ends on a "to be continued," but I don't care. Power Rangers or Medieval fiction, there's much better alternatives.
