The Big Picture: No No Power Rangers

[Scars Unseen]

Wait. You mean the Power Rangers is still a thing? I watched the show when I was a kid back in the 90s but I recognized that it was mostly crap even back then(as opposed to my early childhood shows like the Thundercats, which I didn't realize was crap until I tried to re-watch it years later). I can't believe that show lasted this long.

 

[Vrach]

Not gonna lie, I think Bob did a good job with this episode what with the calling out people cringing at the prospect of a Power Rangers reboot while fawning over other, just as geeky, things themselves.

It probably helps that I was a huge power rangers fan growing up, though I was more ambivalent than anything else at the prospect of the reboot.

I don't know... to be honest, I loved this show when I was a kid. All my friends did too, we watched it religiously, got our parents to buy us toys and so on. But there's not one of us that remembers the show fondly nowadays. It's not a "omg, that shit was awesome, I wish I could watch it again", it's a "yeah, watched it as a kid... because I was a kid and didn't know any better".

So I don't think it falls into the same category as Marvel's universe and the like. I think that's stuff you can make a legitimately good movie out of, both for kids, nostalgic people and even general adults who have no ties to the universe from their childhood (I should know, I love the Marvel movies and I'm not sure if I even heard of Marvel when I was a kid).

It's like if 20 years from now someone did a movie adaptation of Teletubbies. Yes, you might've been doped up on Ritalin enough to watch the show as a kid... but that doesn't mean you're gonna run off to the theatre to watch it when you've grown up. Just because it was a show and someone watched it, doesn't mean it gets a free pass from the critics and the general public's opinion.

 

[tzimize]

I loved Power Rangers as a kid, even realizing how cheap and campy it was. But I'm not excited because with current Hollywood fucking up characters like Superman, Power Rangers movie being crap is a foregone conclusion.

Agreed.

Off topic: Holy shit I forgot how awesome that intro was <3<3<3<3

 

[SOCIALCONSTRUCT]

I think it is a fair argument to say that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with media that is aimed a particular audience, in this case gen-Y nostalgic for Power Rangers. Nostalgia is always unique to people's experience of childhood during a particular time and can never be adequately transmitted to other age groups.

 

[Ashley Blalock]

Just glad to have Hollywood screw up something other than the 80's. I'm sure there will be some exceptions to the rules and someone will make something that seems even better than the original but for the most part yea guys welcome to Hollywood screwing up the things you had fond memories of.

 

[VonBrewskie]

Nice! Linkara plug! I love that guy. I don't read many comics but man, I love that whiny little bastard's descriptions of bad ones. I think Bob and I are around the same age. (I'm 33.) I too feel like I was too old for Power Rangers when it came out. I just...wasn't interested. I was obsessed with Voltron when I was a kid and the show looked like a take (not a rip off, a take) on that kind of show. Where's my Voltron movie by the way? You have any info on that Bob? At any rate, good for the Gen Y and millennial kids. I'm getting a ton of the stuff I grew up with made into films and TV shows, for better or worse. Why shouldn't they?

 

[VonBrewskie]

Wait. You mean the Power Rangers is still a thing? I watched the show when I was a kid back in the 90s but I recognized that it was mostly crap even back then(as opposed to my early childhood shows like the Thundercats, which I didn't realize was crap until I tried to re-watch it years later). I can't believe that show lasted this long.

Whoa. What's that movie you have for an avatar? I love Gundam!

 

[Scars Unseen]

Wait. You mean the Power Rangers is still a thing? I watched the show when I was a kid back in the 90s but I recognized that it was mostly crap even back then(as opposed to my early childhood shows like the Thundercats, which I didn't realize was crap until I tried to re-watch it years later). I can't believe that show lasted this long.

Whoa. What's that movie you have for an avatar? I love Gundam!

It's from Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, a decent enough mecha anime side story to a much better mecha visual novel, Muv-Luv Alternative. The visual novel is one of the best mecha stories I've ever encountered, but since it is a visual novel, you have to read it(but it has Japanese voice acting, so it's kind of like reading a voiced manga).

 

[jimClassic]

Good episode, Bob.
I'm 33, and I'm just curious to see what a new movie might looks like.

 

[KazeAizen]

I think it is a fair argument to say that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with media that is aimed a particular audience, in this case gen-Y nostalgic for Power Rangers. Nostalgia is always unique to people's experience of childhood during a particular time and can never be adequately transmitted to other age groups.

Nostalgia is a strange and powerful force alright. Hell it was Nostalgia that brought me back to Power Rangers after years and it is nostalgia that may bring me back one last time. The big thing for Power Rangers Dino Thunder was that Tommy was gonna be back. Any Power Rangers fan worth his salt knows who Tommy is and I'm sure that season brought back some older viewers like myself. It also had Dinosaurs which dinosaurs are just inherently awesome to begin with. Point being is that my nostalgia for one of my childhood heroes brought me back to a show I hadn't really watched all that much for years. It also helped that that particular season was actually pretty dang good by Power Rangers standards.

Its also doing it again with this super mega force show. The big tribute season to rangers of the past with the characters able to gain the powers of past rangers while also having a big Ranger war with a lot of the old Rangers returning for their suits. Yeah that's gonna get me to come back. If this movie actually starts looking good you bet your ass I'm gonna get my butt into a seat to watch it. With all these new green lit movies it does seem like the 90s Nostalgia boom has begun. Rescue Rangers, Captain Planet, Power Rangers. Then you add in the DVD set of the first 20 seasons of Power Rangers finally being released in a collectible Red Ranger case and Frozen which was very much a throwback to the 90s Disney movies. You mix that all together and it seems that Hollywood is transferring from taking my personal nerd dollars to taking my personal nostalgia dollars now.

 

[PeaceRider]

Yeah, I don't see a Power Rangers being all that good honestly, and I was a fan as a kid. I mean, do you think a grim-dark Power Rangers would be any good? I certainly don't, yet we all know that thats a likely scenario. I just can't see it being good as anything more than a goofy, extremely fan-servicey movie with lots of dumb action poses, and honestly, I don't that that'll work for anybody who isn't already a big fan or below the age of ten. I don't think that it'll necessarily be bad, it just won't be Iron Man or Captain America, and thats even with an optimistic projection that they hire somebody who gives a shit and they don't do the dark,gritty reboot thing.

Who said it has to be GrimDark? Was Avengers that way? Didn't seem like it to me, especially with RDJ stashing snacks around the set and having a good time with it. And look at the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy, you have a damn talking racoon and tree fighting criminals IN SPACE!
However yes Lionsgate has an uphill battle if they want to compare to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even more so with such a foreign property. But if Toei (the group behind most toku in Japan) can get fully behind this like Toho was with the new Godzilla movie, then maybe it has a very good chance of doing good.

 

[faefrost]

80's 90's cartoons and childrens shows suck. All of them. (Except Gargoyles)

Just wait until people are selling the kids nowadays their nostalgia back. Then we're going to get some awesome films. Kim Possible is going to rock the world so hard the GI Joe films go away and cry themselves to sleep, asking why their entire existence was so pointless and forgettable.


(Power Rangers were my generation's thing. They sucked even then)

I'm betting Kim Possible will be the next Disney chick to go all Miley Cyrus and start giving naked lap dances to bikers. "Kim Possible the twenty something years!" Be honest, you know you all want to see it.

As an objective very early Gen X 46 year old I can say I understand the crack like appeal of Power Rangers to those that came after me. I mean it merged nerd child porn from the 70's (Kaiju) with nerd child porn from the 80's (giant transforming robots. Transformers, voltron etc) with badly dubbed and spliced together shows not unlike those we grew up with (Starblazers, Robotech, Battle of the Planets). And since we were raised on Adam West Batman and Gilligans Island we early on learned to recognize and shake our heads at really bad cheesy campy shows with horrible acting. (And let's be honest with ourselves, power Rangers was cast with people who could not meet the actual ACTING qualifications for porn). So mostly we old timers looked at Power Rangers shook our heads and chuckled. We know quality cheese when we see it. And PR is the cheesiest.

We watch the news of a Power Rangers big budget reboot movie with interest, because there is no way it doesn't turn out entertaining. Granted mainly in a so bad it's unintentionally hilarious sort of way. They will either follow the dark gritty reboot path and go all Man of Steel with it (which will be hilarious) or they attempt to play up the cheese for comedy and fail miserably ala Land of the Lost, in which case watching the horrified fans will be worth the price of admission. Either way we get entertained.

 

[MorganL4]

It probably helps that I was a huge power rangers fan growing up, though I was more ambivalent than anything else at the prospect of the reboot.

I think the biggest reason for this (and this is the reason for me at least) is that unlike super hero comics which have had established continuity throughout their entire run (What happened to Green Lantern in the 60's effected his actions in the 70's and 80's and what happened in the 90's gave birth to a whole resurgence of the character in the late 2000's (Until the new 52 screwed everything up.) Alternatively post Turbo, every season of power rangers effectively had entire new casts, with new origin stories, which with the exception of the obligatory crossover episode in every series, never demonstrated any kind of continuous canon, thus as we aged and recognized the camp we started to abandon the show because the characters changed entirely and we had no emotional connection to the "new" red pink or green ranger (which ever color you prefer).

Whereas, if you liked Hal Jordan in 1970, you could probably still identify with the character on some level in 1990.

 

[Crazie_Guy]

Even a few degrees of difference can be big. For me it's simply the fact that Power Rangers ages extremely poorly, or fails entirely to jump over the age gap. I was right in exactly in the right age range to watch Power Rangers, and watch it I did, and I loved it as a kid. But I sure don't love it now. I'll always love Pokemon and many of the other things I loved as a kid, but sometimes it's possible for something to just be so incredibly bad that it can't even be watched through the strongest nostalgia goggles, and Power Rangers really is that bad.

 

[red255]

there are no power ranger fans, only tommy fans.

 

[Ishal]

But compared to Spectacular Spiderman, My Little Pony, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls... I think someone at some point in the 2000's decided that kids were actually pretty smart. And Batman TAS went on to have Justice League, Justice League Unlimited and all the really good Batman shows in the 2000's too.

For sure. MLP, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Regular Show (that one's a hard sell for me. Seems almost too mature) and Clarence. Clarence is really, really good. It's sincere and surprisingly funny.

Spoiler

The part where they surf the TV channels here had me dying. So good.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

A bit surprised that Bob says he was too old for Power Rangers when it came out. I always assumed I was about the same age as Bob, I recall being bang in the middle of the age demographic that the original series was aimed at when it aired and I thought it was the bee's knees- I was in year 5-6 of primary school and thought martial arts, power suits, giant alien monsters and humongous combining robots was the coolest thing ever at the time.

 

[Strazdas]

the reason people who love the current comic book movies trend are rolling their eyes at Power Rangers movie is because power rangers movie already happened and it was so awful noone wants to need to see it again for review. i relly dont see why it baffles you. we already had this dance with the travesty that is Transformers. except transformers were good before the reincarnation.

oh, and you know what thme makes look like? smart shoppers.

 

[Something Amyss]

There is actual disdain for this stuff, because these people never grew up with it, they don't feel the same way.

There's disdain from people who did grow up with it, even former fans. What I am getting at, why I commented in the first place, is that Bob's premise is flawed. Explaining it multiple times to the same end doesn't change that. In fact, I find it curious that you addressed my TMNT comments over...Well, just about everything else, including the exact substance that got at that point.

It's not that I don't understand Bob's point, it's that I don't agree that it's particularly grounded. Bob is overstating the number of people who are looking for a nostalgia boner and then raining on everyone else's parade.

The backlash is not because of that. Not to the extent it's being made out to be, anyway.

Are you saying I'm too old to have had a birthday cake?

I'm saying the cake is a lie, obviously.

It's okay, bad Portal references are "retro" now.

On point, depending on where you look I am 12 days too young to be Gen X, but i really don't feel like I am a Millennial and it seems Gen Y is no longer in use. That being said I grew up on Transformers, Ninja Turtles, and Power Rangers. Maybe Transformers and Turtles happened while I was young enough to not see them for the commercials that they are or maybe they were high quality commercials than Power Rangers, or maybe because Power Rangers is still on mostly unchanged. I don't know. Or maybe the recent Transformers and Ninja Turtle movies have soured me on nostalgia cash in movies. But I just don't feel anything about the power rangers announced movie. I am still upset about the Bay Transformer movies, and I am disappointed in the up coming Turtles teasers. But Power Rangers, I got nothing.

The Gen X/Gen Y or Milennials divide is a blurry one at best, because people continue to age and grow and one year difference between the end of one era and the beginning of another means you have people growing up on largely the same media.

And, of course, there's no accounting for who will like what.

 

[IrisNetwork]

Never has the intro been so epic. GO GO POWER RANGERS!

As an old fan of Power Rangers, my reaction so far is... wokey. I think I need to see trailers or something to get an idea of how this will be.

I'm also an old fan of TMNT and the trailer made me go.. "fuck you Michael Bay". Even though he's just the producer.

Still, I'm hyped about Guardians of the Galaxy as I was hyped about Pacific Rim. I guess I'm moving on to new things.

the captcha says "don't waste time"
Ok, ok I'll get back to work