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.
--
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.
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