Power Rangers (2017)
Directed by Dean Israelite
Five ordinary teens must become something extraordinary when they learn that their small town of Angel Grove — and the world — is on the verge of being obliterated by an alien threat. Chosen by destiny, our heroes quickly discover they are the only ones who can save the planet. But to do so, they will have to overcome their real-life issues and before it’s too late, band together as the Power Rangers.
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Hence, about two-thirds of “Power Rangers” feels more like “The Breakfast Club” with a science fiction twist, and things don’t really get going until the third act of the movie.
Taking a page from “The Breakfast Club,” he meets two of his future teammates in detention: Kimberly (Naomi Scott), a mean girl brought low by her gossipy ways, becomes the Pink Ranger, while the Blue Ranger is Billy (RJ Cyler), a nerdy, lovably awkward tech whiz.
Power Rangers’ faction of screenwriters will be happy to hear it if this mismatched collective reminds you at all of The Breakfast Club, as bonfire powwows and parables about the valor of unity serve as the film’s lifeblood from beginning to end.
This is basically The Breakfast Club with super powers.
Even though “Power Rangers” doesn’t provide anything new to “The Breakfast Club” formula, its willingness to explore the adolescent experience in any way is appreciated.
Throughout the course of this overlong 124-minute sci-fi action-adventure/coming-of-age superhero dramedy, “Power Rangers” pays homage to, attempts to replicate, or simply steals from “The Breakfast Club,” “Thor,” “Chronicle,” “Transformers,” “Pacific Rim,” “Children Of Men,” “Iron Man,” “Spider-Man,” 2009’s “Star Trek” and maybe “Gods Of Egypt.”
With its city-block-levelling action sequences that recall Transformers, to the characters’ adolescent enthusiasm that mirrors similar moments in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, Power Rangers feels late to the party, its every move telegraphed by earlier films.
Perhaps the two most obvious pieces of franchise DNA present in this film are ones you shouldn't want to emulate: Michael Bay’s Transformers and the Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films.
In fact, from the symphonic music that plays over the opening credits to the film’s glacially-paced origin story and the city-destroying robot fight with which it culminates, “Power Rangers” owes far more to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the “Twilight” generation, and Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies than it does its own source material.
Case in point: “Power Rangers,” a movie for people who find “Transformers” too intellectually challenging.
Following in the childhood-exhuming footsteps of Transformers, 21 Jump Street, and now CHIPS (or, if you’re old-school, CHiPs), comes Hollywood’s latest high-risk wager on low-brow nostalgia, Power Rangers .
Inevitably, director Dean Israelite and writer John Gatins incorporate the franchise's sillier and more nostalgic underpinnings, from snippets of the "Go go Power Rangers" theme that chased many a parent from the room to a seemingly inevitable "Transformers" joke.
As many have snarkily observed since the first trailer for Power Rangers was released, the film’s primary basis of comparison is less the original series than Chronicle, Josh Trank’s 2012 revisionist superhero film that recast new powers as an allegory for the hardest parts of adolescence.
Throughout the course of this overlong 124-minute sci-fi action-adventure/coming-of-age superhero dramedy, “Power Rangers” pays homage to, attempts to replicate, or simply steals from “The Breakfast Club,” “Thor,” “Chronicle,” “Transformers,” “Pacific Rim,” “Children Of Men,” “Iron Man,” “Spider-Man,” 2009’s “Star Trek” and maybe “Gods Of Egypt.”
Power Rangers takes the venerable Saturday morning TV franchise and morphs it through a food processor with Chronicle and of all things, The Breakfast Club .
A juvenile live action superhero franchise turned brooding origin tale (think “Chronicle”) is bad news for everyone; it’s especially bad news for “Project Almanac” filmmaker Dean Israelite.
Coming off his 2015 feature, “Project Almanac,” the director, Dean Israelite, has made yet another teen-centric science-fiction adventure that invites comparison with “Chronicle” (2012), which tackled similar themes of youthful bullying and alienation with far greater visual and conceptual intelligence.
In fact, the teens' slow realization and acceptance of who they are is more reminiscent of Chronicle (though with less angst and violence) than a Saturday morning cartoon.
Like a version of “Spider-Man” in which Peter Parker doesn’t start slinging webs until Act 3, the movie doesn’t let the Power Rangers don their armor until they learn to bond as a family unit and understand why they, and they alone, were chosen for the extraordinary task of protecting Earth.
Throughout the course of this overlong 124-minute sci-fi action-adventure/coming-of-age superhero dramedy, “Power Rangers” pays homage to, attempts to replicate, or simply steals from “The Breakfast Club,” “Thor,” “Chronicle,” “Transformers,” “Pacific Rim,” “Children Of Men,” “Iron Man,” “Spider-Man,” 2009’s “Star Trek” and maybe “Gods Of Egypt.”
The Amazing Spider-Man had a short run on TV, played by Nicholas Hammond, best-known as one of the Von Trapp kids in The Sound of Music .
As Billy wonders aloud whether they will get cool superhero costumes like those worn by Iron Man or Spider-Man, he and his friends are seen testing the boundaries of their newfound abilities not unlike Peter Parker on the rooftops of New York, before eventually learning to morph into their Rangers’ metallic body suits that looks like a day-glo range from Stark Industries.
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In the pantheon of remakes that no one has ever asked for, this new Power Rangers film has already earned a spot alongside the likes of Spike Lee’s Old Boy, or the new Total Recall with Colin Farrell instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Though there’s some effort to move beyond the Saved by the Bell approach of the original show and pump in a grittier teen vibe (think Riverdale, or a sillier Friday Night Lights), this is still a movie that opens on a scene set in the Cretaceous period, where a nude and blue-skinned alien called Zordon (Bryan Cranston) summons a meteor to strike the earth to wipe out his nemesis Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks).
The new film does have an intermittent “Friday Night Lights” vibe and a campfire scene of Power Rangers baring their souls to one another.
Even with such campy morsels to play with, the vibe director Dean Israelite seems to be going for is "Friday Night Lights" meets "Fantastic Four," which actually isn't totally awful at the beginning as we meet the five high school students destined to wield their newly found superpowers to save the world.
For 100 minutes (it takes that long for the costumes to go on) it wants to be a misfit teen drama recalling everything from Rebel Without a Cause and The Breakfast Club to The Goonies and Stand By Me , with sexual themes and deaths, only to climax with a nonsensical and dumb-looking giant robot vs. giant monster battle.
Já suas tentativas de evocar algum drama são artificiais e óbvias como o merchandising descarado de uma franquia de donuts – o que só não é mais irritante do que a atrocidade cometida contra “Stand By Me”, que aqui surge na pior versão já concebida por um músico (os criminosos responsáveis são os integrantes da banda Bootstraps).
Then, in the second act, the group goes full Breakfast Club confessional, all to round the corner into Stand By Me in time for the beginning of Act III.
Throughout the course of this overlong 124-minute sci-fi action-adventure/coming-of-age superhero dramedy, “Power Rangers” pays homage to, attempts to replicate, or simply steals from “The Breakfast Club,” “Thor,” “Chronicle,” “Transformers,” “Pacific Rim,” “Children Of Men,” “Iron Man,” “Spider-Man,” 2009’s “Star Trek” and maybe “Gods Of Egypt.”
As Billy wonders aloud whether they will get cool superhero costumes like those worn by Iron Man or Spider-Man, he and his friends are seen testing the boundaries of their newfound abilities not unlike Peter Parker on the rooftops of New York, before eventually learning to morph into their Rangers’ metallic body suits that looks like a day-glo range from Stark Industries.
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Yes, this is a Power Ranger movie that talks about gruesome serial killings, but I would have flipped for that when I was 10 in the same way we now worship The Monster Squad.
Captain America had also been adapted for a couple of humiliating TV movies in 1979 starring Reb Brown, while a 1990 feature mainly notable for starring The Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger’s son in the title role.