Sunday, April 30, 2017

⚡ Morphinominal Movie Recap! ⚡

The Power Rangers Movie premiere was easily one of the most exciting times I've seen in franchise history, kind of a similar feeling right before Power Morphicon. I was always pretty confident we were in for something good. It had to be better than MMPR:TM's bad CGI and maybe T:APRM, which was more of a long episode to launch the Turbo season (while completely dropping what happened to the Zeo powers). Neither movie I ever saw at a theater, but the MMPR:TM soundtrack is still one of the first CDs of my collection.

Team Ranger Bar got together for the Thursday night (March 23rd) showing. I couldn't have asked for a better opening, starting out with Zordon as Red Ranger and Rita as Green Ranger, mentioning the Zeo Crystal for the first time in a flashback to Prehistoric Earth, as Zordon desperately buried the Power Coins in the midst of a war. The focus on the five Rangers kind of varied. I liked Jason the best, followed by Billy, Kimberley, Trini and Zack, who - as has been talked about - didn't get as much focus as he should've. Rita's introduction was good and I really liked how Zordon was written - wanting to be free from the command center ship imprisonment but ultimately choosing not to so Billy could come back to life. Making it very tough for the team to get in sync enough to able to morph for the first time was well done and deeper than I would've guessed. One of my favorite moments was when they finally morphed - probably the most beautiful scene of the entire movie - from the way it was shot to the Stranger Things-like music. I liked how far underground the ship was as well.

The zord action against Goldar was pretty awesome and more believable with the Rangers visors down. I thought we'd get more of an orchestrated theme, than what little they used of the '95 movie theme. Also, I was waiting for Zordon to instruct the team to form the Megazord - certainly wasn't expecting they'd nearly die before gaining the ability to do it on their own. As for other fun nods, Rita calling out to make her monster grow was cute and using past PR cities as street names totally fit. Foreshadowing new student Tommy was a nice way to end the movie. I still can't believe JDF had gotten his cameo all along and they managed to get AJJ. Hopefully their other cameo that was cut from the film (which had JDF wearing green and a long haired wig) will make it onto the DVD/Blu-Ray.

Further adding to the festivities, Ranger Bar had its 6th annual Fancy Dinner Dress Party Friday night and we picked up the Krispy Kreme movie donuts. I usually struggle to sit through 2+ hour movies, but this was the most attentive I had been in my life as I never wanted to look away from the screen. A great reimagining of the franchise, this is definitely something special and I look forward to hopefully more big screen PR in the future. 5/5 🙂