Monday, December 15, 2014

Super Mega Sendoff and Charging Up

I'll just cut to the chase and consider "LEGENDARY BATTLE" the worst finale ever. For starters, it showed how much they tried to ride Countdown to Destruction's coattails with the civilian scenes. The helmet animation was crap and saving the abandoned boy wasn't the best way to showcase White Ranger Tommy. Carter/Dana, and Cassie/TJ had decent cameos. Seeing Leo in the same clothes all these years later, and Tommy with Saba and the communicator felt very nostalgic to me. I'd like to think Tommy can just alternate between powers now. I wish we could've seen Karone/Damon/Wes helping people as well, and Mike/Emily at least be there too! Also, if they really wanted to copy the In Space finale, they could've had the Megaforce team reveal themselves with crowd reactions from Ernie and Mr. Burley.

Troy and Orion fighting Mavro on the ship was awesome and I liked the Space Ranger Legendary change to escape the crash. It was pretty bad seeing the Emporer go out like that so I was glad to see the actual final fight in the extended cut. I was surprised New Powers Blitz, Prism and Lightning were all left out (here and the Legendary War), after being kept in all those other times. I liked the action but the ADR was a mess of season names, morph calls and attacks ("Magibolt" gets the season award for the worst). Also why "Legendary Battlizers"? Troy could've said something along the lines of "Let's powerup!" and it would've been more reasonable.

Bonus point for the sweet helmetless roll call.

The X Borg army made more sense in the extended cut since they were coming for Mavro but they could've thrown in some Bruisers. The giant shot of all the teams looked really nice and I assumed they had Overdrive with Mighty Morphin since the colors matched. I thought maybe they left out the futuristic teams from the roll call on purpose but it doesn't explain leaving out Alien Rangers or Space other then to cut corners for time. I loved the shot of Astronema and the cameos putting their helmets on but man they were underused. I thought you know, we'd see them fighting and the battle would be longer.

Wow, just wow. I still can't believe they used the shot of the powers sacrifice. Way to piss off the fanbase, Seth Walther!

And there you have it. Not even a call from Gosei. I gave it a 3/5 based on the original broadcast and the extended cut really didn't help matters much. Even Samurai and the Kalish seasons had better closure. It's a shame it came to this after Megaforce opening with what would become nearly the same fight, and the excitement over the armada coming in at the end of the season last year. This was Tzachor throwing together cameos at the last minute while no one behind the show gave a crap. Now I see why he was fired after blowing the budget on this. I'd like to think they would've included the supporting cast if they hadn't ran out of money paying for underused cameos. I just hope to god everyone who did these episodes (besides the returning James W. Bates and Jason Smith, the possible Dino Charge story editor) was dismissed.

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Last year I gave Megaforce an edge and ranked it slightly above Super Samurai, despite the former having a couple better episodes. But everything went wrong in Super Megaforce placing it at the dead bottom. They could've turned things around but instead the apparent difficulty working with Tzachor and his tiresome formula of only caring about the product just made things worse.

Continuing to use the Megaforce suits never bothered me too much but it got inconsistent when they'd be skipped, while the mechazords were mostly forgotten about (and ignored at the end). An even bigger wasted opportunity was spent by doing very little with the armada and underwater base sets they had around.

The Rangers never got it together and were made to look like they had won way too often. It was like production just didn't want to deal with the entire team, and only focus on Noah, Jake, Emma and Orion - so Gia was never given anything to do and Troy's backstory was dropped. For never having her own focus episode and seemingly in the background more this year, Gia still managed to be one of the most decent Rangers along with Jake. There were some bright spots along the way but still, I'll never forgive the Samurai/Megaforce era for basically having the motto "Kids are stupid." If you're a kid watching the show, we'll talk down to you and pretend our team are the ONLY active Rangers out there. And as much as I loved watching the Gokaiger footage, the show was never made for us and no real attempt was made to creatively use footage to honor PR's legacy (Of course, the show would count the Legendary War in that regard).

With Dino Charge approaching, I can only be optimistic, knowing Judd Lynn won't ever allow those kind of things to happen (unless it really is a corporate mandate) and actually cares about good written episodes and character development, which we haven't seen much of since RPM. I imagine Judd Lynn beating the Kalish seasons but not on the same level as during the golden years, which will be just fine. Also, the theme is such a nice change. I was expecting "Go Go Power Rangers/Ranger Forever" to be in yet again which is the only downside from the theme really being great. Without the lyrics, the instrumental is pretty amazing, which I haven't felt since DinoThunder.