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You may be wondering what a Greatest Living Author watches when he’s not writing. Well, how about all the proof you will ever need that Haim Saban is a genius?
And Haim Saban is indeed a genius.
You can get the long version on the Power Rangers episode of Netflix’s excellent documentary series The Toys that Made Us (which I would also recommend; it’s a heck of a nostalgia trip of you’re about my age).
Speaking of nostalgia:
The short version is this: thanks to buying the rights to a series of ridiculous Japanese transforming superhero shows, Haim Saban has gone from the bassist of an obscure Israeli rock band to the creator of a franchise that has been going steady for 30 years.
Also, dude’s worth nearly three billion (with a b) dollars.
from the US Department of State.
Public Domain according to Department policies.
Like I said, dude’s a genius. And Power Rangers is one of the smartest series that has ever existed on TV.
Well, no. Power Rangers is and always has been super dumb and kind of a hot mess where its storytelling is concerned. But from a production point of view, it’s absolutely brilliant.
Each new seasons of Powers Rangers has really only needed to film half a show’s worth of content. For the most part, any scene that involves the Rangers in costumes, the villains, or the Zords reuses the original footage from Super Sentai with the English actors’ voices dubbed in — the advantage of most of the characters either wearing helmets or being monsters whose mouths don’t move when they talk.
The only new footage, with a few exceptions, that needs to be filmed is when the Rangers are in their civilian clothes going about their daily lives.
This, combined with the fact that every transformation sequence, every Zord formation sequence, every decisive final blow via crazy special move, and more than a few of fight scenes just reuse the same stock footage over and over and over.
I think that the production has realised from the very beginning that they’re making a cheesy, low-budget adaptation of an original series that is itself pretty cheesy and low-budget and decided to deliberately lean into the inherent ridiculousness of the whole endeavour (“Recruit a team of teenagers with attitude”).
From the very beginning of the very first episode, the producers have recognised the futility of making Power Rangers something it’s not and fully embraced the thing that Power Rangers is, even though (and maybe precisely because) that thing is “ridiculously dumb, but also awesome.”
And, seriously, how uptight do you have to be not to enjoy 27 years of racially-diverse teams of transforming teenagers (with attitude) with themed superpowers (usually, that theme is some variation of “Dinosaurs”) and giant robot fights, hammy, intergalactic supervillains with the help of a sentient lava lamp?
As a quick aside, if I were an actor, Power Rangers villain would be my dream job, because you don’t have to act well so much as loud.
As a final aside to the final aside, the first season of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers featured several monsters voiced by none another than Best TV Actor in History Bryan Cranston, including one who was, and I quote, “half-snake and half-lizard.”
Yeah, the writing has never been one of the franchise’s strengths…
On the other hand, if the past 27 years have taught us nothing else, it’s that Haim Saban is. a. genius.
As of 2022, it’s been 30 years of Power Rangers, and the franchise is marking that as big deal. More on that later…
That 30 years works out to about 28 seasons. The newest seasons air on Netflix and basically the entirety of the rest of the series is available on the Power Rangers Youtube channel.
There’s also the 2017 movie, which is a standalone work in its own continuity that’s kinda-sorta a reboot/retelling/reimagining of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Although it wasn’t financially successful enough to start a franchise of its own, it actually manages to be a pretty enjoyable watch. Although it does operate under 21st-century conventions of gritty realism, it does still have more than a few moments of classic Power Rangers goofy self-awareness.
Plus, a fairly positive portrayal of an autistic Blue Ranger. Which is always a plus for an autistic audience member.
In a rather significant development since the last version of this post, the franchise celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2023. Among other things, this was commemorated with the release of the movie-length (well, strictly speaking, something like “two-and-a-half standard episodes long”) special Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always.
Now, it is worth watching once if you’re my age (25, as far as you’re concerned) and have any degree of nostalgia for the original Power Rangers. But, honestly, in a word, it’s disappointing.
For one thing, only two of the OG Power Rangers — Zack and Billy — actually came back for the special. Jason David Frank and Amy Jo Johnson (Tommy and Kimberly) both declined appearances, and Thuy Trang (Trini) died back in 2001.
Which brings us to probably the most controversial aspect of the special: the fact that the entire plot is centred around Trini being brutally offed by the bad guys in the opening fight and her daughter‘s journey to become worthy successor.
In light of Thuy Trang’s real life untimely death, brutally murdering Trini was seen by a portion of the fanbase as being in poor taste.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t offended, but my reaction was something along the lines of “Wow. That’s dark. People are going to hate this.”, and I did recognise that there were probably any number of better ways to write off Trini.
Tommy is probably the most egregious absence. How do you celebrate a franchise without that franchise’s indisputably most popular and prolific character? Of course, there wasn’t much they could do since Jason David Frank refused to appear. And Tommy and Kimberly are technically in the special, they’re just never seen outside of their suits and spend most of the movie captured by the bad guys.
In regards to Tommy and Jason David Frank, Once & Always sort of ending up being more powerful than it was probably ever ended to be once the news broke that Jason David Frank died several months before the special went live, turning it into a memorial for him specifically, as much as a celebration of the franchise overall.
On the other hand, it was nice to see David Yost (Billy) get his time to shine in the special, due to the well-documented fact that he had to go through a lot as a gay actor in the 90s. Similarly, it’s nice to see Walter Jones (Zack) — who does not look thirty years older — and it’s pretty cool that Zack gets a lead role that he never really had in the original series.
I think the biggest strike against Once & Always is that for something that’s supposed to be a celebration of 30 years of history, really only two of the Power Rangers actually do anything. On the plus side, those two are Zack and Billy, finally getting their moment in the spotlight.
The plot’s a bit of a mess (apparently, the special was originally pitched as a multi-episode series, rather than a movie-length special, that might have something to do with it). Overall, it feels like a higher-budget Mighty Morphin Power Rangers — with the exception of the climactic Zord battle, it never really looks cheap or shoddy, while still really capturing the campy tone of the original show. Apparently, they didn’t have the studio space or budget to be able to actually film the Megazord in person, so the whole thing is CGI. And it’s pretty dodgy CGI…
All that being said, there’s probably more good than bad. And to recap what I said at the beginning, if you’re nostalgic for the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, it’s worth watching once. Though the sense of missed potential is probably rather inescapable, as the loss of Jason David Frank.
Still, the few oddly-dark moments aside, Once & Always does recapture a lot of the charm of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and will have a lot of nostalgia for those of us who grew up watching the early seasons of Power Rangers.
But, again, the fact that we’ve lost one of our beloved childhood icons makes the bittersweet nostalgia a lot more bitter…
The rest of my recommendations are here.
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