"It's actually men, you'll find who are far more romantic. Men, you'll hear say, "I've found somebody and she's amazing. If I don't get to be with this person, I'm fucked. I can't carry on. I mean it. She's totally transformed my life; I have a job, I have a flat, it means nothing. I can't stand it, I have to be with her! Because if I don't, I'm gonna end up in some bedsit, I'll be alcoholic, I'll have itchy trousers...I can't walk the streets anymore."
That is how women feel about shoes!"
-Dylan Moran
Some time ago in what I'll manfully admit was some desperation, I found myself as a member of Match.com. I was only an actual paying member for about two weeks before quitting in disgust, but I haunted the site for quite a while. Eventually I just had to walk away from it, as it did something to me I didn't think possible; it made me seriously dislike women.
And as somebody who has nothing but bile in regards to my own gender, I figured this wasn't a feeling to be nurtured
Let me explain. I went through profile after profile on that site, many lovely ladies of all ages, and every last one of them was the same. These women would list their interests, hobbies, aspirations and so forth, give a general idea of their ideal of the perfect man, and then note that they wanted a significant other who not only shared all of the same interests, the same political and social outlook, the same religious background, the same everything, but was also a perfect physical specimen, a snappy dressr, a good listener, strong and masculine, sensitive and giving, assertive and adventurous, creative and spiritual, and had at least one Master's Degree, a foot on the property ladder, owned a good car, was over 5' 11" and brought in £500,000 a year or more. And they all stated that if one didn't meet every last one of these criteria then not to bother even saying hello.
This thread is not, I swear, all about me and my tragi-comic failings with women, but it is born out of my frustrations. I am seriously starting to feel that women are on their way to matching if not surpassing men as the shallow, self-absorbed half of the species.
I've heard women talk about the perfect wedding, perfect homes, etc, like everybody talks idly about that stuff. But what if, I sometimes dare to ask, Mr. Right comes along and isn't keen on marriage or having kids (I am vehemently opposed to both)? Every female I've asked has said that this would be a deal-breaker. In other words, even if she and Atlas were utterly in love and clicked on every other level, if his plans for the future didn't tally with hers, they'd simply have to call it quits.
I know not every woman under the sun wants marriage or babies, but they do tend to be on the popular side, and though I certainly don't begrudge anybody looking for long-term stability or security- we all are, really- if a woman's idea of security is having her man father children he isn't the least bit invested in, or committing himself to a miserable marriage from which he will almost certainly stray (more on this later), well...If that's not shallow and selfish I don't know what is
And I know exactly who, or rather what, is largely to blame for this culture in which a woman cannot live without 50 or more pairs of obscenely over-priced shoes, a man is not a man if he doesn't habitually dress in designer suits, and a wedding ring is but a trinket if it cost less than a quarter of a million and is smaller than a hand grenade; Sex And The Fucking City.
See, what Mr. Moran says is true, men usually are romantic, we are sensitive, and by and large we do put the effort into serious relationships once we're in them. But for today’s' generation it's rather an odious uphill struggle, as all the time we're haunted by this mental picture of the girl of our dreams sat in front a laptop, typing a 4000 word essay on how the veins on our forearms don't stand out as sexily as on her last boyfriend.
Don't even get me started on the new trend for aggressive sexual frankness in women. I abhor it in men, the blokeishness is something that makes my working life, to say nothing of socialising, very uncomfortable for me. So why is it now acceptable for ladies to talk openly about masturbation techniques in restaurants, but if a man so much as twitches an eyebrow he should be crucified? Maybe because that's how The Three Hookers and Their Mom behave*.
And is Sarah Jessica Parker really a "fasion icon"? She's 4' nothing in heels and looks like a horse in a prostitute costume.
An article in the paper caught my eye last year. It was another one of those pieces about the size zero trend. This is something that's always confused me, as I can't ever recall hearing a man say his idea of feminine perfection was a cadaverous waif with no hips, bust or bottom and barely the strength to hold up her own head, but as the article explained, this diabolical trend has nothing to do with trying to look attractive to men and everything to do with impressing other women.
I do not think any woman should define herself by her sexuality or how much she is admired by the opposite sex, but I think it's significant how image-obsessed women are these days. I mean, really. Obsessed.
I don't pretend to know every woman on Earth, and I know that they aren't all like this, but the fact that so many of them are is...depressing.
It's disappointing, in fact. I know some people will probably get the wrong end of the stick with this diatribe and perhaps take offence, and I'm sorry but the honest-to-God truth is, I love women. I was raised by women, I feel safe around them, and I’m endlessly fascinated and inspired by them.
I generally don't like men and I don't trust them. I avoid spending time with them, for the most part. I've known many, many wonderful, warm and clever women in my life, and it gets me very confused and down that so many of those I encounter these days are so unshakably convinced that Real Life is about holidays, parties, drinking, and doing lots of shopping.
Every woman I know thinks she is overweight. Some are, the majority aren't. I worked in Laura Ashley the year before last, the only male on a staff of 18 women. All of them were dieting, all convinced, strangely, that they had enormous backsides. Every lunchtime was a depressing cornucopia of soup, salad and Special K. If I had to live on that shite, I would actually die.
* * * *
From Futurama
Love dummy: "My two favourite things are commitment, and changing myself."
Leela (wearily): "Does that dummy have a brother?"
The marriage thing I still can't get my head around. What exactly is the point?
Say you're two people very much in love, you live together, share interests, go out, have fun, have nice sex and are just totally sympatico. Well done.
What, pray tell, will getting married change? Will it magically make you even more in love, even happier? I have yet to hear a convincing answer. I've always felt that marriage is one of those ancient institutions that is growing ever more irrelevant. I suppose there are some legal advantages to being married rather than just living as a couple, but that's only because the law always takes ages to catch up. God knows there are down sides.
No matter how in love you are or how much you want to spend the rest of your lives together, human nature being what is, once the whole love thing is officialised and rendered as a binding contract and reduced to crass domesticity, most people today will sort of go "Oh. That's it, then? That's my life mapped out for me, forever?" I know it works for some couples, but even the best of us still like to think we can walk away from something even if we'll never actually want to. And marriage is such a huge hassle, when you hear a couple are separating, it can be sad but it's not the end of the world. When you hear a couple are getting a divorce, hoo boy! Legal disputes, endless money squabbles, friends taking sides. Once the ring is on, it's very hard taking it off.
My grandfather has been gone 13 years. My Nan likes to rhapsodise about the ideal marriage they shared, but the fact is he was deeply unhappy with it towards the end of his life. Had he be born into a later generation he may even have considered divorce.
How often do you see these awful old couples, so set in their ways and so trapped together, hopelessly co-dependent despite the mutual loathing that makes the air around them vibrate. Not my idea of happily ever after.
People have a few thousand years of sentimentality about marriage still in their heads, but it doesn’t suit most modern men or women, despite what the latter may think they want. They've just swallowed the pop culture myth, like the high school prom; everyone wants one because American TV makes it look so magical.
Like a lot of sensitive males, I’m cursed with the stigma of Mr. Nice Guy rather than Mr. Right.
I’m always the good mate who listens and is always there etc etc etc, but someone who will never make anybodies' heart beat faster. Even though my female friends are forever telling me what a great catch I’d make for some lucky girl, or should I say woman, as the only females who actually seem to appreciate sensitivity, kindness, loyalty and support are usually hurtling towards 50. Young women want excitement, they want a bastard for a boyfriend and I can’t provide that.
Some of you may have caught that episode of The IT Crowd, where the guys try and make themselves out to be as horrible as possible in their online lonely hearts ads, as they believe that’s the only way to get a woman interested enough to secure a date. It captured perfectly the confusion and agony of being forever relegated to straight gay best friend status:
Roy: ""Shut up"..."Do what I tell you"..."I'm not interested"...These are just some of the things you'll be hearing if you answer this ad. I'm an idiot and I don't care about anyone but myself. PS, no dogs!"
Moss: "I'm going to murder you. You bloody woman."
QFT.
I suppose I could try acting that way, but honestly just getting into a relationship is such a huge deal, I’d be too terrified of jeopardising it.
In the ‘Studs vs. Sluts’ debate thread, on the SFX forum, user Clown Asylum beautifully sums up the particular type of “Bad Boy” that 90% or more of the girls I’ve ever been interested in have invariably fallen for:
“These were the blokes who would sleep with anything that moved, including your female friends, including your girlfriend if they could swing it; men who viewed women as pieces of meat, to be used, dumped and then laughed at. I remember being informed by one of them once that a close female friend of mine just “lay there like a sack of spuds” during sex. What a charmer, eh?
These are men who seem to see one half of the human race as handy receptacles for their bodily fluids. They are terrifyingly shallow and lacking in empathy. They are not to be envied and certainly not to be congratulated.”
I often find myself working with such characters, walking masses of smugness and testosterone, openly leering at female customers and making no secret of how little these conquests actually mean to them. And y’know what? The girls in work love them.
You look at some of these young women, giggling as someone grabs a handful of their arse, and you just know that every boyfriend they’ve ever had has made them cry.
Not all girls are like this, of course. The brainier girls tend to go for stoners in beanie hats or posers whose personalities begin and end with their floppy hair. These tend to crash and burn just the same.
Even the exceptions still baffle me. One girl I used to work with was charming, delicate, pretty, built for laughter and just a joy to be around. Her boyfriend was a boring old fart, a 50-year old in a 19-year olds’ body. His only interests from what I could gather were beer, football, his car (he drives a yellow mini), and talking about beer, football and his car. She may as well have been dating her dad.
I’m the sucker, of course, being so deeply drawn to girls like this, I just can’t win. Although I’ve recently worked out, with a sinking feeling, that My Type is in fact the ice queen, the aloof, fragile types who look at me like I’ve no right to exist, on the rare occasion they don’t look through me altogether. My ex being a good case in point.
Damn, I guess this thread was about me. Sorry.
* I'm reduced to quoting Family Guy. I'm ashamed.
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Thursday 11 March 2010
"Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Whatsit" (Not if she's dressed like that!)
"Once more, with acting..."
Some fellow forumites were discussing their memories of school plays today.
Let's see.
The earliest Nativity I can recall was probably the first, when I was still in nusery school. I played Joseph, opposite my friend, Lauren as Mary. It was a very traditional affair, tea towel headscarves and all.
The next Christmas, I was at a different nursery. I'd been selected as one of the three kings, and actually asked specifically to be "the gold one", which earned me a telling off. But that's the part I got!
The costumes for this particular production were of staggeringly high quality. I have no idea where these outfits came from, but the whole cast looked magnificent. My mum still has a picture of me, resplendent in head-to-toe shimmering gold (the other kings were purple and green, but I don't remember which was frankincense and which was myrrh), and I don't think I've ever looked so expensively dressed since.
At primary school, there was the semi-legendary Oliver!, production of which involved literally 8 weeks of almost non-stop rehearsals. I was merely one of Fagin's gang, the result of a machiavellian conspiracy, at least according to my friend, Ryan, to cheat him out of the role of Dodger, thus knocking him down to playing Charlie, the role originally earmaked for me. I'll never forget those endless weeks wearing rags, of "Oom-pah-pah"-ing and Considering Ourselves At Home. The fact that Gene Cubitt was cast as Bill Sikes, despite a dazzling lack of acting talent, simply for the unspoken reason that he was very, very intimidating and scuzzy, or that Sally Fazakerly, one of those amazingly self-assured kids you meet every so often, wound up playing Fagin because she was so much better at it than Mr. Knight, our music teacher/director. Or that the population of 19th Century London was 40% muslim.
We did three productions, my mother came to the second, reasoning that it'd be the one where we'd ironed out all the wrinkles, before we'd all gotten too tired. She was right. The whole thing was a big success, and the cast (pretty much my entire Year group, actually) was comissioned to perform a cut-down version at the city hall!
Naturally, I was ill that week.
Admittedly, all the other kids got out of it was a coach trip and a ring binder and pen set each, with CARDIFF CITY COUNCIL stamped on them, but I still felt profoundly cheated for having missed out.
Fortunately, my next period of illness the following year coincided with the next school play, the dreaded Grease. I manged to miss the whole thing, and am not a bit sorry.
In the final days of primary school, it was decided we'd have a go at Cats, and for once I actually had some lines, the first of which I fluffed badly. This was a one-night only gig, so there'd be no second try. I covered it with a jokey ad-lib that earned me lots of laughter and applause, but I still feel embarassed about it now.
My high school didn't really do plays, as such, but there were drama presentations, short scenes usually performed as a practical exam. Sometimes, it'd be an English class thing, like when did dramatised versions of The Red Pony or Of Mice And Men (have I mentioned, I loathe Steinbeck?). We never quite got round to Shakespeare, but there was an aborted production of An Inspector Calls, cancelled because the drama department was such a shambles. I was a serious minded aspiring actor back then, and I seemed to be the only kid in my year who didn't see Drama class as an excuse to piss about, and an easy 'A'. Well, there was one girl, Vicky, who attended a drama group out of hours and who despised Matilda actress Mara Wilson, as if they were somehow rivals. She works in Waterstones now (Vicky, that is. Dunno about Mara Wilson). Anyway, we did things like Abigail's Party, where I played Lawrence for the first half. With my floppy hair and awful, charity shop blazer, I think I looked appropriately 70's. Funny how many people my age would adopt that same look once they hit college!
Then there was All's Fair... They split us into pairs for that one, and let me tell you, it aint easy being a moody teenege male trying to portray a 1940's Welsh girl named Dilys, and that's without your dyslexic mate playing her younger sister and pretending to paint your legs with gravy browning the whole time.
My last bit of school acting was more succesful, it was a segment from a high-concept and somewhat slapdash production, called Wheel of Time.
Drafted in at the last minute and partnered with a lad from a lower year, I did a modified reading of Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting'. I did rather well, if I do say so myself. Especially considering I had to contend with an intrusive horn soundtrack, the fact that I was dressed all in black whilst the other kid (who'd just come from an orchestra recital) had on a white shirt and a South Park tie, or the fact that everyone immediately forgot about my performance when Emily Gaskell came on later, and did 'The Secretary'. Fair play to her, given that it was a monologue and she wasn't a member of the drama class, her reading was superb. Unfortunately, she seemed to have taken 'secretary' in the porno sense of the word, and turned up dressed in the tightest blouse, shortest skirt and highest heels that stage (I went to a church school, did I mention that?) had ever seen, so nobody was paying much attention to the words. How the famously prudish Mrs. Morgan even let the curtain rise (hey, hey!), I'll never know. Perhaps it had something to do with the ambitious reading of 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night', insanely staged as a duologue, coming to an abrupt end two verses in, when Alice Salmon declared she'd forgotten the rest, Miss, and exited stage left in a big hurry.
As a wise man once said "Madness, and...Madness, and stabbing pain, and...Ooh...Uh"
Sunday 7 March 2010
Ranger Re-watch: Power Rangers: The Movie, minute by minute
(written for one of the PR forums I used to frequent)
00:00:27 Opening legend: Great stuff, the first of many awesome cues from composer Graeme Revell, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick’s voice-over is perfect and there’s already a real Star Wars-esque sense of grand mythology.
00:01:19 Sky diving sequence: Talk about showing off! The team take to the skies with ridiculous confidence and the movie struts its Hollywood budget. It’s great fun but seems strangely at odds with the show we know and love. A karate class at Ernie’s would have worked just as well.
The Rangers all flash their whiter-than-white teeth- and personalities!- and it’s nice that we don’t have to sit through a retelling of the teams’ origin; the opening crawl may annoy diehards for skimming over PR history, but it’s an elegant introduction to the film that really doesn’t need much in the way of set up.
In contrast to the stately orchestral opening, this scene is accompanied by the first of many dynamic pop songs, “Higher Ground” by Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It won’t be the only Stevie Wonder cover, either.
00:03:37 Weird. Tommy’s parachute makes a noise like a champagne cork popping as it opens. This won’t be the last inappropriate, cartoony sound effect we’ll be hearing in this movie...
00:03:40 Our first look at a panoramic Angel Grove doesn’t disappoint. New South Wales offers an appropriately futuristic skyline and it’s all very green and utopian looking already.
00:03:55 There’s a brief shot of a gaggle of kids from Angel Grove High, waving a banner, then we cut straight to the POV kid character, Fred and his boring father. Some familiar faces would have been nice, of course. Miss Appleby, Mr Kaplan, Ritchie, Curtis...
00:04:40 The target touchdown: is this the first time ever we hear Tommy’s last name used? Also note our White Knight has a little sky board (?) thing on his feet, which none of the others had.
00:05:15 Gosh, was JDF always that pretty?
00:05:33 Bulk and Skull’s jump actually raises a laugh, which bodes well.
00:05:53 Rollerblading now! Where do these kids get their energy? One has to laugh, especially given all the safety gear the teens wear, which apparently justifies some incredibly reckless stunt-skating, like thundering down stone steps. Don’t try this at home, kids!
00:06:49 I’d forgotten Paul Goddard, of Farscape and the first Matrix movie, was in this. The excavation scene that follows is a good showcase for two things; first, the humorous no-cursing policy of kids’ shows (how many real-life building workers would say “what in the world?”?), and second, a lot of antipodeans doing American accents of wildly varying quality.
Seems oddly familiar.
00:07:35 The hyperlock chamber cover really suggests something very different to the villain we wound up with
00:08:22 Who designed the hand and egg thing? Zordon?
00:08:58 Is that open air food court supposed to be Ernie’s? Give me the pastel coloured gym and juice bar any day.
00:09:15 I never cared as a kid, but those coloured teleport beams streaking across the sky kind of give the Rangers away.
00:09:20 Same Command Centre building, good!
00:09:22 The CC interior is impressive, sure. The light-up concentric rings in the side columns have been retained, as have the chunky push buttons of the consoles. But am I being a slave to nostalgia in preferring the old, darkened TV set? I’m just saying, they could have switched the lights off and the dry ice machine on and saved themselves a few thousand dollars at least.
00:09:38 Not sold on the white faced Zordon. I’m grateful they stuck with the Bob Manahan voice, but the blurring, ghostlike face used on the TV series was far more effective. I don’t know who exactly is under the make-up but the mouth doesn’t move in time with the voice.
00:09:54 I realise that the teens’ outfits, despite the colour coding, are primarily white, as if to underline the characters being pure and non-threatening as possible, as well as sponsored by Nike.
I like how Tommy’s ensemble is evocative of both his White Ranger armour and a karate gui.
And look at Billy, showing off his biceps! He looks a lot more macho than Adam or Rocky. By this point his nerdishness had been forgotten.
00:10:14 Tommy’s yin yang pendant is present and correct.
00:10:52 The regular series villains enter the picture.
Zedd is awesome. The familiar Robert Axelrod voice is set to maximum growl with reverb up to 11, and the Big Z looks like a skinned, metal-plated Satan. This is how Zedd was meant to be before panicking parents and sloppy writing neutered him. If only he were the main villain of the piece!
Yet another actress is playing Rita, same Barbra Goodson voice, but it’s Michiko Soga or nobody, frankly.
In contrast to Zedd, Goldar looks less animalistic and more like an action figure here. ‘Evil Space Pig’ Mordant is fine, the monocle is a nice touch, but I’d rather have Baboo and Squatt.
00:12:35 Don’t think much of Ooze’s overall design.
00:13:00 First mention of Eltar in PR history
00:16:20 The fight at the construction site. As a kid, this seemed to go on for days. Back then I just wanted to see them morph, but watching it now I’m very impressed. First generation PR fans tend to rhapsodise about the Saban era fight scenes, back when nobody had heard of genetic powers or Kalishplosions. But the fact is, fights in the early days were more like dance routines, choreographed so cleverly that you didn’t notice how little actual violence was involved- ironic, given the controversy about the shows violent content at the time.
This is different. Fast cut, with our heroes moving like lightning (there sure is a lot of somersaulting and back-flipping going on) and much more actual body contact. In fact...
00:17:30 Did that Ooze monster just punch Rocky across the jaw! You hardly ever saw anybody get punched in the face in the TV show. What a great scene.
00:17:52 “Let’s do it, guys!” Boo yeah! It’s Morphin’ time!
00:17:56 But of course, the sequence has been altered for the movie, with the group morphing in a different order ( so it goes Kim, Billy, Rocky, Adam, Aisha, Tommy), for some bizarre reason. The morphers are now colour coded, with the POWER RANGERS graphic removed. This is also, sadly, the first of only two brief uses of the famous “Go, Go, Power Rangers!” theme we all love.
I’m not complaining, though. This scene rocks.
00:18:34 That old joke about what the bad guys are doing whilst the Rangers go through all this transformation business is finally answered onscreen; they get bored and go away.
00:18:48 From this point on, the Rangers can’t so much as flutter their eyelashes without a lot of loud Bruce Lee swishing and swooping noises.
00:20:09 Ivan/Zordon face off. Again, Zordon’s voice is out of sync. Up close he looks like he’s saying something else entirely.
00:20:25 Ivan trashes the CC: pretty scary if you’re a kid.
00:21:00 Tracking the Ooze creatures. You’re suddenly very aware that this scene takes place at night, in darkness. Try to think of so much as a single fight scene from the TV show that wasn’t filmed in bright daylight. Sound design, direction and music are fantastically atmospheric here.
00:21:34 Hmm, the “Power Beam” might have worked if it'd been integrated a little more organically. As it stands, I think this is where the makers of Go-Onger got the idea for Bear RV.
00:22:08 Power Scope. Oh please.
00:22:30 I'm sorry, but I really can't love the new suits. I do admire how the design looks so solid (the suits were made from both plastic and metal plating) yet allows for so much flexibility. I just don’t think that the Power Rangers look right with armour. Nor do I like the colour scheme used, the gigantic helmets or the single diamond/giant power coin on the chest. It’s all a bit tacky.
00:23:17 Monsters go splat. Nice surprise.
00:24:02 The infamous Double Whammy. The cartoon eye-popping is deeply lame, his head should have exploded!
00:24:15 "Stega-Stinger"?? What have stegosauruses got to do with Billy? Or grappling hook guns, for that matter. It’s just dumb, they obviously thought the name just sounded cool.
00:24:32 ...Like “Pterodactyl Thunder Whip”.
00:24:50 Tommy does a cool flying kick. In fact, most of the coolest stuff on screen revolves around Tommy.
00:25:34 Funny, I don’t remember Saba being able to fly. And where exactly did Tommy pull him out from? The blade blasters and holsters, again colour-coded, are visible but are just for show, so that's faithful to the TV series from season 2 onwards, anyway!
00:26:35 The Rangers arrive to find the CC in ruins. Look familiar, Tommy?
00:27:00 I hate the idea of Zordon being an actual flesh and blood man inside the tube. And did anyone stop to ask why the ‘real’ (read: fake) Zordon has a British accent? Worst of all is his “the Power Rangers are no more” speech.
Zordon would never, ever say that! No matter how bad things got, our Zordon would still always tell the Rangers to believe in themselves and never give up. It’s a pretty basic character trait and for them to have gotten it so wrong feels like a betrayal.
00:29:10 Off to Pheados. It sinks in that we won’t see the team morphed again until the end of the film.
00:29:40 The movie version of Rita’s Palace is pathetic. It’s just one big empty room full of dry ice. No Finster, no monster machine, no armies of Putty Patrollers.
00:30:18 “NO ONE DOUBLE CROSSES LORD ZEDD AND LIVES!” You tell ‘im, Zedd!
00:30:30 Rita and Zedd are trapped in a snow dome and that’s pretty much their contribution to the movie over and done with, too.
00:31:48 Oh joy, the Tenga’s, or "Tengu" as they're called here. At least the ones in the TV show were grown from eggs, whereas these guys come from, erm...snot.
00:34:40 Ivan’s laugh is already starting to bug me
00:35:25 Tommy and Kim’s heart-to-heart. Isn’t there some legend about a kiss between the two being cut from this very scene? If that’s true, I can’t see where it might have appeared, unless the scene was totally reshot. Odds are it wasn’t a French kiss, anyway!
00:37:22 Dulcea is, literally, revealed. And what a sight she is to behold! Even Divatox wore more than that. Why couldn’t we have had her instead of Ninjor?
Law and Order star Mariska Hargitay was originally cast in this role, but the footage has sadly never been released.
00:38:15 Oh, Fitpatrick's cut-glass accent! Me like.
00:38:36 Tommy lands on his back once again, but you can bet when he gets up there won’t be a mark on his brilliant white outfit.
00:40:00 Fake Zordon wants to ‘help’ the Rangers. Thanks, but I think you did your bit by telling them that it was all over and there was no hope.
00:40:05 Nice to see Ivan taking the traditionally small-scale approach to conquering Earth, dressing as a creepy wizard and handing out jars of ooze to kids in Angel Grove.
00:41:20 After a long hike, Dulcea brings the team to the Ninjetti temple ruins. Ancient powers...Animal spirits...A posh English accent really is ideal for delivering speeches about destiny etc. And I could listen to Dulcea talk all day.
00:41:40 Dang, look at those abs. Concentrate, man, concentrate!
00:43:30 More standing around for the team. There’s precious little of the interplay between the Rangers' personalities that was as key to the series as the action and effects. In this movie, they mostly stand around having the plot explained to them.
Again, a scene is superbly enhanced by Revell’s score.
00:44:23 Ninja robes. Glad to see they didn’t go for the full head-coverings of the show, which made the team look like some freakish rainbow sect of the KKK.
00:45:04 “Rocky, you are the mighty ape!”
No arguments here.
00:45:27 “I’m a frog!”
I wonder if Johnny Yong Bosch realises this is what it’ll say on his tombstone
00:46:33 Aww, Dulcea turned into a beautiful owl! No fair. In today’s Power Rangers, she’d just have become the Owl Ranger.
Why have we never had an Owl Ranger?
00:47:00 Big scene at a quarry. Again, very familiar.
00:48:51 Ivan zaps the Tengu (yay!) and we get another stupid sound effect; as Ivan pulls some feathers off his face it makes a Velcro ripping sound.
00:49:10 I’m guessing the others are getting bored of Tommy staring moodily into the distance whilst rubbing his wrist in that tough guy way. Time for more hiking. I think there was a scene here with some sort of blue elephant alien but it was cut.
00:50:29 More Fred. Movie makers always seem to think kids in the audience need some characters their own age to relate to, even though they actually just want to see the superheroes do super things.
00:52:15 The dinosaur skeletons come to life. Yup, didn’t see that coming! Whole seconds of thought went into this one. It’s a very American touch, but it serves to remind one that the film really misses the wonderfully bizarre monsters of the TV show.
00:54:00 Weird sound effect alert: the triceratops makes a belching sound as its head falls off
00:56:00 First glimpse at the Ecto-Morphicons. Again, very flashy but uninspired. Anyone could come up with giant silver bugs, where’s the originality? Am I expecting too much?
00:58:14 Rock creatures. Yawn. This movie is crying out for an Eye Guy, a RoboGoat, a Goo Fish or a Pineoctopus. Every movie should have a Pineoctopus.
0058:39 The ninja Rangers power up. And they didn’t even do that cool hand gesture thing.
01:00:15 So the gargoyles dissolve in water? Probably wasn’t a great idea building the monolith right next to a waterfall then.
01:01:40 More bad puns, and Rocky nearly gets it in the nuts.
01:02:05 For the second time in the movie, Tommy does something very similar to the Zeo flying power kick. Spooky.
Actually, any Super Sentai fans who saw this must have been completely bemused.
01:03:46 The animal spirits flying around the team are “new Zords”, apparently.
01:04:00 Alright! The Rangers are back online, with new power coins. The helmet designs retain the dino theme, as in the show. Pity they couldn’t have changed them to reflect the animal spirits, just for the movie.
Although, thinking about it, since one early (and utterly insane) idea for the movie was to remove the visors and mouth pieces from the helmets, so that that actors faces were visible while suited-up, we should just be grateful this movie didn't turn out a complete travesty.
01:04:25 Bye, Dulcea!
01:04:33 Ecto-Morphicons on the rampage. These things are supposed to have enslaved the universe? They’re not even that big. Any of the TV Megazords could have just stomped on them.
01:05:19 Has the Scorpitron gotten smaller since the last scene? This whole battle has some serious issues of scale.
01:06:50 The Zord-summoning thing they do with their morphers is very nifty.
01:07:07 Comedy Sound Effect! There’s no way that loud "ribbet" the Frog Zord makes can be there for anything but comic value. Made me laugh, anyway.
01:07:33 “Nice stereo” says Kimberley, in a sweet nod to “Day of the Dumpster”. So whoever wrote this movie saw at least one episode of the show, that’s good.
01:07:42 “Ribbet!” There he goes again!
01:08:50 What the..? Why is Tommy flying around the city looking for the Ecto-Morphicons?! They were right in front of them just a minute ago.
01:10:00 The Ninja Zords have been given a predictable make-over from the TV versions. The polished metallic look doesn’t exactly work with those bright colours, and a lot of extra detail has been added to make them look more mechanical and less plastic. In fact they look more like they’ve escaped from a video game. The Ape Zord is also made to look specifically Gorilla-like.
Oh, and those close ups of the Zord cockpits are terrible, they don’t remotely match the CGI models and just look very cheap.
01:10:44 Bulk and Skull look somewhat incongruous amongst all those kids.
01:10:05 “You think she’s cute too, huh? Mmm”
I love Goldar! Now we know why he really hated Tommy.
01:11:18 Kim: “Ivan’s got me in some sort of electromagnetic deadlock!” Anyone else think maybe that line was meant for Billy?
01:12:02 Hooray, Tommy’s back in the game! Cos the others would be totally lost without him, as the movie is at pains to point out.
01:12:50 Weird sound effect: The Hornitor makes dog begging noises when it looks to Ivan.
01:13:44 Megazord time
01:15:00 Tommy saves the monorail. Let’s face it, he’s a God amongst men.
01:15:15 This Megazord fight bites. Both Zord and monster ought to be skyscrapingingly huge, but instead the relative size seems to change from one shot to the next and the MZ never seems bigger than about 60 feet tall.
Angel Grove First National seems to be made entirely of glass.
01:15:49 "NINJA FALCON MEGAZORD!"
Oh, come on, this is getting silly. This movie fetishises Tommy to a ridiculous extent.
01:16:25 “Leap to our doom...”
I’m told Anthony Kiedis, of the Chilli Peppers, is in the crowd somewhere
01:16:55 Well, whaddyaknow! Fred has a plan.
Is that long-haired kid a boy or a girl?
01:18:03 So Bulk turns on the hose, what’s Skull doing? I’m rather grateful the pair doesn’t appear much, they always stole too much screen time from the Rangers on TV. Compare this to the Turbo movie, where for every minute our heroes are on screen, Bulk and Skull seem to get ten.
01:19:20 Funny we never saw the Emergency kick-the-monster-in-the-balls button in the TV series.
01:19:30 Orion’s Comet is shown as...A giant flaming ball of rock. Who says PR isn’t educational!
01:20:41 Too late?
The Rangers’ close-up reactions are a priceless; Billy looks like he’s forgotten a line, Rocky looks embarrassed, Kim, well AJJ always gives the material her all, so naturally she’s crying very convincingly (you want to give her a hug, actually), Tommy seems to be forcing some tears out, Aisha’s expression suggests somebody just let one, and Adam simply hangs his head in shame.
01:22:36 The real Zordon’s back! Well done, gang.
01:23:38 At the party, Fred contemplates one day becoming a Ranger himself. A precocious preteen as a Ranger? Not in my lifetime, thanks.
Note also that Rocky doesn’t look up from his meal once.
01:24:19 Aw man, Tommy should have kept his soft rock locks tied back.
01:24:40 Tommy and Kim snuggle up. It’s as much physical contact as they’re allowed.
01:24:53 Credits: Screenplay by ARNE OLSEN (WHO??)
01:24:55 Van Halen’s “Dreams” is such a great song, even to a bitter old cynic like me. One of the greatest air guitar solos ever.
01:25:09 Nice to see the names of the Ranger actors are listed alphabetically, two at a time, so nobody takes top billing.
01:25:45 Zedd’s back. Uh-oh.
The movie should have ended with “Go, Go Power Rangers”, dang it!
The songs they do use are fine, the jazzed up remix of "Kung Fu Fighting" is great fun, but the “Ayeyaiyai” song smacks of a college band trying to be hilariously ironic.
The credits reveal that several different effects companies handled different costumes and props. Interesting. Seems the movie Zedd was created by Optic Nerve, who went on to do all the make-up and creature designs on Buffy.
THE END
I won’t lie, I enjoyed that. It’s not our Power Rangers, but it’s slick, good-hearted fun, and it’s not often we see our favourite super team looking so well-funded.
Overall, I give the movie a B- (like you care).
00:00:27 Opening legend: Great stuff, the first of many awesome cues from composer Graeme Revell, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick’s voice-over is perfect and there’s already a real Star Wars-esque sense of grand mythology.
00:01:19 Sky diving sequence: Talk about showing off! The team take to the skies with ridiculous confidence and the movie struts its Hollywood budget. It’s great fun but seems strangely at odds with the show we know and love. A karate class at Ernie’s would have worked just as well.
The Rangers all flash their whiter-than-white teeth- and personalities!- and it’s nice that we don’t have to sit through a retelling of the teams’ origin; the opening crawl may annoy diehards for skimming over PR history, but it’s an elegant introduction to the film that really doesn’t need much in the way of set up.
In contrast to the stately orchestral opening, this scene is accompanied by the first of many dynamic pop songs, “Higher Ground” by Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It won’t be the only Stevie Wonder cover, either.
00:03:37 Weird. Tommy’s parachute makes a noise like a champagne cork popping as it opens. This won’t be the last inappropriate, cartoony sound effect we’ll be hearing in this movie...
00:03:40 Our first look at a panoramic Angel Grove doesn’t disappoint. New South Wales offers an appropriately futuristic skyline and it’s all very green and utopian looking already.
00:03:55 There’s a brief shot of a gaggle of kids from Angel Grove High, waving a banner, then we cut straight to the POV kid character, Fred and his boring father. Some familiar faces would have been nice, of course. Miss Appleby, Mr Kaplan, Ritchie, Curtis...
00:04:40 The target touchdown: is this the first time ever we hear Tommy’s last name used? Also note our White Knight has a little sky board (?) thing on his feet, which none of the others had.
00:05:15 Gosh, was JDF always that pretty?
00:05:33 Bulk and Skull’s jump actually raises a laugh, which bodes well.
00:05:53 Rollerblading now! Where do these kids get their energy? One has to laugh, especially given all the safety gear the teens wear, which apparently justifies some incredibly reckless stunt-skating, like thundering down stone steps. Don’t try this at home, kids!
00:06:49 I’d forgotten Paul Goddard, of Farscape and the first Matrix movie, was in this. The excavation scene that follows is a good showcase for two things; first, the humorous no-cursing policy of kids’ shows (how many real-life building workers would say “what in the world?”?), and second, a lot of antipodeans doing American accents of wildly varying quality.
Seems oddly familiar.
00:07:35 The hyperlock chamber cover really suggests something very different to the villain we wound up with
00:08:22 Who designed the hand and egg thing? Zordon?
00:08:58 Is that open air food court supposed to be Ernie’s? Give me the pastel coloured gym and juice bar any day.
00:09:15 I never cared as a kid, but those coloured teleport beams streaking across the sky kind of give the Rangers away.
00:09:20 Same Command Centre building, good!
00:09:22 The CC interior is impressive, sure. The light-up concentric rings in the side columns have been retained, as have the chunky push buttons of the consoles. But am I being a slave to nostalgia in preferring the old, darkened TV set? I’m just saying, they could have switched the lights off and the dry ice machine on and saved themselves a few thousand dollars at least.
00:09:38 Not sold on the white faced Zordon. I’m grateful they stuck with the Bob Manahan voice, but the blurring, ghostlike face used on the TV series was far more effective. I don’t know who exactly is under the make-up but the mouth doesn’t move in time with the voice.
00:09:54 I realise that the teens’ outfits, despite the colour coding, are primarily white, as if to underline the characters being pure and non-threatening as possible, as well as sponsored by Nike.
I like how Tommy’s ensemble is evocative of both his White Ranger armour and a karate gui.
And look at Billy, showing off his biceps! He looks a lot more macho than Adam or Rocky. By this point his nerdishness had been forgotten.
00:10:14 Tommy’s yin yang pendant is present and correct.
00:10:52 The regular series villains enter the picture.
Zedd is awesome. The familiar Robert Axelrod voice is set to maximum growl with reverb up to 11, and the Big Z looks like a skinned, metal-plated Satan. This is how Zedd was meant to be before panicking parents and sloppy writing neutered him. If only he were the main villain of the piece!
Yet another actress is playing Rita, same Barbra Goodson voice, but it’s Michiko Soga or nobody, frankly.
In contrast to Zedd, Goldar looks less animalistic and more like an action figure here. ‘Evil Space Pig’ Mordant is fine, the monocle is a nice touch, but I’d rather have Baboo and Squatt.
00:12:35 Don’t think much of Ooze’s overall design.
00:13:00 First mention of Eltar in PR history
00:16:20 The fight at the construction site. As a kid, this seemed to go on for days. Back then I just wanted to see them morph, but watching it now I’m very impressed. First generation PR fans tend to rhapsodise about the Saban era fight scenes, back when nobody had heard of genetic powers or Kalishplosions. But the fact is, fights in the early days were more like dance routines, choreographed so cleverly that you didn’t notice how little actual violence was involved- ironic, given the controversy about the shows violent content at the time.
This is different. Fast cut, with our heroes moving like lightning (there sure is a lot of somersaulting and back-flipping going on) and much more actual body contact. In fact...
00:17:30 Did that Ooze monster just punch Rocky across the jaw! You hardly ever saw anybody get punched in the face in the TV show. What a great scene.
00:17:52 “Let’s do it, guys!” Boo yeah! It’s Morphin’ time!
00:17:56 But of course, the sequence has been altered for the movie, with the group morphing in a different order ( so it goes Kim, Billy, Rocky, Adam, Aisha, Tommy), for some bizarre reason. The morphers are now colour coded, with the POWER RANGERS graphic removed. This is also, sadly, the first of only two brief uses of the famous “Go, Go, Power Rangers!” theme we all love.
I’m not complaining, though. This scene rocks.
00:18:34 That old joke about what the bad guys are doing whilst the Rangers go through all this transformation business is finally answered onscreen; they get bored and go away.
00:18:48 From this point on, the Rangers can’t so much as flutter their eyelashes without a lot of loud Bruce Lee swishing and swooping noises.
00:20:09 Ivan/Zordon face off. Again, Zordon’s voice is out of sync. Up close he looks like he’s saying something else entirely.
00:20:25 Ivan trashes the CC: pretty scary if you’re a kid.
00:21:00 Tracking the Ooze creatures. You’re suddenly very aware that this scene takes place at night, in darkness. Try to think of so much as a single fight scene from the TV show that wasn’t filmed in bright daylight. Sound design, direction and music are fantastically atmospheric here.
00:21:34 Hmm, the “Power Beam” might have worked if it'd been integrated a little more organically. As it stands, I think this is where the makers of Go-Onger got the idea for Bear RV.
00:22:08 Power Scope. Oh please.
00:22:30 I'm sorry, but I really can't love the new suits. I do admire how the design looks so solid (the suits were made from both plastic and metal plating) yet allows for so much flexibility. I just don’t think that the Power Rangers look right with armour. Nor do I like the colour scheme used, the gigantic helmets or the single diamond/giant power coin on the chest. It’s all a bit tacky.
00:23:17 Monsters go splat. Nice surprise.
00:24:02 The infamous Double Whammy. The cartoon eye-popping is deeply lame, his head should have exploded!
00:24:15 "Stega-Stinger"?? What have stegosauruses got to do with Billy? Or grappling hook guns, for that matter. It’s just dumb, they obviously thought the name just sounded cool.
00:24:32 ...Like “Pterodactyl Thunder Whip”.
00:24:50 Tommy does a cool flying kick. In fact, most of the coolest stuff on screen revolves around Tommy.
00:25:34 Funny, I don’t remember Saba being able to fly. And where exactly did Tommy pull him out from? The blade blasters and holsters, again colour-coded, are visible but are just for show, so that's faithful to the TV series from season 2 onwards, anyway!
00:26:35 The Rangers arrive to find the CC in ruins. Look familiar, Tommy?
00:27:00 I hate the idea of Zordon being an actual flesh and blood man inside the tube. And did anyone stop to ask why the ‘real’ (read: fake) Zordon has a British accent? Worst of all is his “the Power Rangers are no more” speech.
Zordon would never, ever say that! No matter how bad things got, our Zordon would still always tell the Rangers to believe in themselves and never give up. It’s a pretty basic character trait and for them to have gotten it so wrong feels like a betrayal.
00:29:10 Off to Pheados. It sinks in that we won’t see the team morphed again until the end of the film.
00:29:40 The movie version of Rita’s Palace is pathetic. It’s just one big empty room full of dry ice. No Finster, no monster machine, no armies of Putty Patrollers.
00:30:18 “NO ONE DOUBLE CROSSES LORD ZEDD AND LIVES!” You tell ‘im, Zedd!
00:30:30 Rita and Zedd are trapped in a snow dome and that’s pretty much their contribution to the movie over and done with, too.
00:31:48 Oh joy, the Tenga’s, or "Tengu" as they're called here. At least the ones in the TV show were grown from eggs, whereas these guys come from, erm...snot.
00:34:40 Ivan’s laugh is already starting to bug me
00:35:25 Tommy and Kim’s heart-to-heart. Isn’t there some legend about a kiss between the two being cut from this very scene? If that’s true, I can’t see where it might have appeared, unless the scene was totally reshot. Odds are it wasn’t a French kiss, anyway!
00:37:22 Dulcea is, literally, revealed. And what a sight she is to behold! Even Divatox wore more than that. Why couldn’t we have had her instead of Ninjor?
Law and Order star Mariska Hargitay was originally cast in this role, but the footage has sadly never been released.
00:38:15 Oh, Fitpatrick's cut-glass accent! Me like.
00:38:36 Tommy lands on his back once again, but you can bet when he gets up there won’t be a mark on his brilliant white outfit.
00:40:00 Fake Zordon wants to ‘help’ the Rangers. Thanks, but I think you did your bit by telling them that it was all over and there was no hope.
00:40:05 Nice to see Ivan taking the traditionally small-scale approach to conquering Earth, dressing as a creepy wizard and handing out jars of ooze to kids in Angel Grove.
00:41:20 After a long hike, Dulcea brings the team to the Ninjetti temple ruins. Ancient powers...Animal spirits...A posh English accent really is ideal for delivering speeches about destiny etc. And I could listen to Dulcea talk all day.
00:41:40 Dang, look at those abs. Concentrate, man, concentrate!
00:43:30 More standing around for the team. There’s precious little of the interplay between the Rangers' personalities that was as key to the series as the action and effects. In this movie, they mostly stand around having the plot explained to them.
Again, a scene is superbly enhanced by Revell’s score.
00:44:23 Ninja robes. Glad to see they didn’t go for the full head-coverings of the show, which made the team look like some freakish rainbow sect of the KKK.
00:45:04 “Rocky, you are the mighty ape!”
No arguments here.
00:45:27 “I’m a frog!”
I wonder if Johnny Yong Bosch realises this is what it’ll say on his tombstone
00:46:33 Aww, Dulcea turned into a beautiful owl! No fair. In today’s Power Rangers, she’d just have become the Owl Ranger.
Why have we never had an Owl Ranger?
00:47:00 Big scene at a quarry. Again, very familiar.
00:48:51 Ivan zaps the Tengu (yay!) and we get another stupid sound effect; as Ivan pulls some feathers off his face it makes a Velcro ripping sound.
00:49:10 I’m guessing the others are getting bored of Tommy staring moodily into the distance whilst rubbing his wrist in that tough guy way. Time for more hiking. I think there was a scene here with some sort of blue elephant alien but it was cut.
00:50:29 More Fred. Movie makers always seem to think kids in the audience need some characters their own age to relate to, even though they actually just want to see the superheroes do super things.
00:52:15 The dinosaur skeletons come to life. Yup, didn’t see that coming! Whole seconds of thought went into this one. It’s a very American touch, but it serves to remind one that the film really misses the wonderfully bizarre monsters of the TV show.
00:54:00 Weird sound effect alert: the triceratops makes a belching sound as its head falls off
00:56:00 First glimpse at the Ecto-Morphicons. Again, very flashy but uninspired. Anyone could come up with giant silver bugs, where’s the originality? Am I expecting too much?
00:58:14 Rock creatures. Yawn. This movie is crying out for an Eye Guy, a RoboGoat, a Goo Fish or a Pineoctopus. Every movie should have a Pineoctopus.
0058:39 The ninja Rangers power up. And they didn’t even do that cool hand gesture thing.
01:00:15 So the gargoyles dissolve in water? Probably wasn’t a great idea building the monolith right next to a waterfall then.
01:01:40 More bad puns, and Rocky nearly gets it in the nuts.
01:02:05 For the second time in the movie, Tommy does something very similar to the Zeo flying power kick. Spooky.
Actually, any Super Sentai fans who saw this must have been completely bemused.
01:03:46 The animal spirits flying around the team are “new Zords”, apparently.
01:04:00 Alright! The Rangers are back online, with new power coins. The helmet designs retain the dino theme, as in the show. Pity they couldn’t have changed them to reflect the animal spirits, just for the movie.
Although, thinking about it, since one early (and utterly insane) idea for the movie was to remove the visors and mouth pieces from the helmets, so that that actors faces were visible while suited-up, we should just be grateful this movie didn't turn out a complete travesty.
01:04:25 Bye, Dulcea!
01:04:33 Ecto-Morphicons on the rampage. These things are supposed to have enslaved the universe? They’re not even that big. Any of the TV Megazords could have just stomped on them.
01:05:19 Has the Scorpitron gotten smaller since the last scene? This whole battle has some serious issues of scale.
01:06:50 The Zord-summoning thing they do with their morphers is very nifty.
01:07:07 Comedy Sound Effect! There’s no way that loud "ribbet" the Frog Zord makes can be there for anything but comic value. Made me laugh, anyway.
01:07:33 “Nice stereo” says Kimberley, in a sweet nod to “Day of the Dumpster”. So whoever wrote this movie saw at least one episode of the show, that’s good.
01:07:42 “Ribbet!” There he goes again!
01:08:50 What the..? Why is Tommy flying around the city looking for the Ecto-Morphicons?! They were right in front of them just a minute ago.
01:10:00 The Ninja Zords have been given a predictable make-over from the TV versions. The polished metallic look doesn’t exactly work with those bright colours, and a lot of extra detail has been added to make them look more mechanical and less plastic. In fact they look more like they’ve escaped from a video game. The Ape Zord is also made to look specifically Gorilla-like.
Oh, and those close ups of the Zord cockpits are terrible, they don’t remotely match the CGI models and just look very cheap.
01:10:44 Bulk and Skull look somewhat incongruous amongst all those kids.
01:10:05 “You think she’s cute too, huh? Mmm”
I love Goldar! Now we know why he really hated Tommy.
01:11:18 Kim: “Ivan’s got me in some sort of electromagnetic deadlock!” Anyone else think maybe that line was meant for Billy?
01:12:02 Hooray, Tommy’s back in the game! Cos the others would be totally lost without him, as the movie is at pains to point out.
01:12:50 Weird sound effect: The Hornitor makes dog begging noises when it looks to Ivan.
01:13:44 Megazord time
01:15:00 Tommy saves the monorail. Let’s face it, he’s a God amongst men.
01:15:15 This Megazord fight bites. Both Zord and monster ought to be skyscrapingingly huge, but instead the relative size seems to change from one shot to the next and the MZ never seems bigger than about 60 feet tall.
Angel Grove First National seems to be made entirely of glass.
01:15:49 "NINJA FALCON MEGAZORD!"
Oh, come on, this is getting silly. This movie fetishises Tommy to a ridiculous extent.
01:16:25 “Leap to our doom...”
I’m told Anthony Kiedis, of the Chilli Peppers, is in the crowd somewhere
01:16:55 Well, whaddyaknow! Fred has a plan.
Is that long-haired kid a boy or a girl?
01:18:03 So Bulk turns on the hose, what’s Skull doing? I’m rather grateful the pair doesn’t appear much, they always stole too much screen time from the Rangers on TV. Compare this to the Turbo movie, where for every minute our heroes are on screen, Bulk and Skull seem to get ten.
01:19:20 Funny we never saw the Emergency kick-the-monster-in-the-balls button in the TV series.
01:19:30 Orion’s Comet is shown as...A giant flaming ball of rock. Who says PR isn’t educational!
01:20:41 Too late?
The Rangers’ close-up reactions are a priceless; Billy looks like he’s forgotten a line, Rocky looks embarrassed, Kim, well AJJ always gives the material her all, so naturally she’s crying very convincingly (you want to give her a hug, actually), Tommy seems to be forcing some tears out, Aisha’s expression suggests somebody just let one, and Adam simply hangs his head in shame.
01:22:36 The real Zordon’s back! Well done, gang.
01:23:38 At the party, Fred contemplates one day becoming a Ranger himself. A precocious preteen as a Ranger? Not in my lifetime, thanks.
Note also that Rocky doesn’t look up from his meal once.
01:24:19 Aw man, Tommy should have kept his soft rock locks tied back.
01:24:40 Tommy and Kim snuggle up. It’s as much physical contact as they’re allowed.
01:24:53 Credits: Screenplay by ARNE OLSEN (WHO??)
01:24:55 Van Halen’s “Dreams” is such a great song, even to a bitter old cynic like me. One of the greatest air guitar solos ever.
01:25:09 Nice to see the names of the Ranger actors are listed alphabetically, two at a time, so nobody takes top billing.
01:25:45 Zedd’s back. Uh-oh.
The movie should have ended with “Go, Go Power Rangers”, dang it!
The songs they do use are fine, the jazzed up remix of "Kung Fu Fighting" is great fun, but the “Ayeyaiyai” song smacks of a college band trying to be hilariously ironic.
The credits reveal that several different effects companies handled different costumes and props. Interesting. Seems the movie Zedd was created by Optic Nerve, who went on to do all the make-up and creature designs on Buffy.
THE END
I won’t lie, I enjoyed that. It’s not our Power Rangers, but it’s slick, good-hearted fun, and it’s not often we see our favourite super team looking so well-funded.
Overall, I give the movie a B- (like you care).
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