First, a bit of necessary background knowledge. The first Power Rangers movie was non-canon - this movie actually exists to bridge the gap between seasons 4 (Power Rangers Zeo) and 5 (Power Rangers Turbo) of the TV show. Thankfully, the plot of Power Rangers is such that it can be explained very easily with little confusion, even for those unfamiliar with it.
At the end of season 4, the Zeo Rangers defeated the evil Machine Empire, thereby temporarily restoring peace to the earth for the first time since the show's beginning. The Rangers use this time away from fighting evil to, of course, compete in a martial arts competition to try and raise money for a youth shelter. During one of their practices, Rocky, the Blue Ranger, suffers a major back injury, making his future as a Power Ranger very much uncertain.
Meanwhile, on a distant planet, an evil space pirate named Divatox and her crew are trying to capture a wizard named Lerigot. Lerigot, apparently, has a key that can unlock the way to a mysterious hidden island that contains, of course, an ancient malevolent force named Maligore. Don't ask why a friendly wizard is given this key. Also, don't ask why they designed him to look like this.
Anyway, Lerigot eventually flees to earth to try and hide, and Zordon, quickly figuring out what's going on, sends Tommy and Cat, the Red and Pink Rangers, to try and rescue the fugitive wizard.
This whole "chase Lerigot" arc takes up, I'm not kidding, upwards of 30 minutes. Keep in mind the movie itself is only a little over 90 minutes - that's about 1/3 of its runtime being spent on something that a talented director could have accomplished in less than ten minutes. There is absolutely no reason why this arc should have been stretched this long - even if we do get this inadvertently hilarious scene of Lerigot being lead around a jungle by monkeys.
In a way, this one arc encapsulates everything wrong with Turbo as a whole. The original movie knew exactly what it was and what it needed to be - Turbo throws all that away, and attempts to tell a story. Here's the thing - the story of Power Rangers isn't important, nor does it have to be. Every season is a variation on the same formula: evil empire tries to invade earth, Rangers get powers, Rangers fight bad guys, Rangers beat bad guys. What makes Power Rangers good or bad isn't the story, but the spectacle of the fights and compelling characters. The "creative talent" behind this movie disregarded those two things and focused almost exclusively on the one aspect of Power Rangers that matters least.
The Rangers obviously save Lerigot in the end, but he actually ends up going with Divatox anyway, because, surprise surprise, Divatox is holding his wife and baby hostage! So now, the Rangers have to rescue him and stop Divatox' evil plans, and to do it, Zordon says their Zeo powers won't be good enough. They need new Turbo powers.
This pissed me off for a few reasons. My suspension of disbelief is pretty damn high when it comes to Power Rangers plots, as it should be, but the introduction of the Turbo powers was so badly done that I couldn't take it seriously. Apparently, Zordon just had these powers lying around and didn't tell anyone about them until this moment? Normally, the Rangers have to literally travel across time and space to obtain new powers - I guess now Zordon can just create them whenever he wants to? To add insult to injury, the new motif of these Turbo powers is...cars.
Yes, it's car powers. I understand that the original Japanese show Turbo was based on was, in fact, called Carranger, so they didn't really have much of a choice. But Carranger has a few things going for it: first, it's unconnected to the shows that preceded it, and second, from what I understand, it was trying to be a bit more comedic, if not an outright parody. Turbo is a direct sequel and it plays everything dead fucking serious, and it's really hard to take it seriously when it earnestly wants to convince you that the most incredible Ranger power thus far, even more incredible than those based on dinosaurs and mythical beasts, revolves around fucking SUVs.
But hey, as stupid as the concept might be, I think the Zords look pretty neat, and I actually quite like the suit designs, so more power to them, I guess.
Some of you may be thinking: Rocky was injured early in the movie, so what's going to happen to him? Oh, let me tell you. They do, in fact, replace him as the Blue Ranger, and who do they replace him with? Oh, you're not gonna fucking believe it.
This, my friends, is Justin, a 10 year old piece of shit and the new Blue Ranger. If you can't tell by my tone, he's basically the Scrappy Doo of the series - nobody likes him, and the only reason he was even introduced, I'm guessing, is so the young kids watching will have someone they can directly relate to. Well, you know what? I was like 7 when this movie came out, and I had been watching Power Rangers since I was 3, and at no point did I ever feel a prepubescent child was necessary for me to better identify with what I was watching. Even in the show, when he was introduced as the newest Ranger, the other Rangers honestly look pissed off, which made me laugh.
With the team assembled, they head to the island where Divatox hopes to summon Maligore. How do they get there? Why, on this thing, of course!
Now, here's the thing. You're telling me that Zordon can basically make ultra-high tech Zords at will, but to get the Rangers to this island, he needed to use the fucking Queen Anne's Revenge? Why???
It should also be noted that it is only at this point, when we are over an hour into the fucking movie, do we get an actual fight - and honestly, I don't even consider it a real fight, because it's so obviously contextualized in the movie as a joke. But think about it: it takes a goddamn hour, into a fucking Power Rangers movie, for them to have a fight. By this time in the original film, we probably got five or six fights. Clearly, their priorities were in the right place.
We get the first real fight in the penultimate scene of the film, where the Rangers storm the island. It's not a bad fight, but at this point, we as an audience are so worn down by all the boring shit we've seen that we don't really care.
The best scene of the movie comes last, when the Rangers form the Turbo Megazord. It's the best scene because it's the only one in the movie that actually feels like Power Rangers - but hey, it's over in a matter of minutes. And that's more or less the end of the movie - Maligore and Divatox are defeated, the Rangers get accustomed to their new powers, and they win the martial arts competition to boot.
I distinctly remember seeing Turbo in theaters when I was younger, but unlike the original film, I have no good memories, no nostalgia, regarding the experience. Even when I was seven, I wasn't that impressed by what I saw, and it wasn't until now that I've been able to understand why. It's an unfocused, sloppy mess of bad ideas that heralded what is undoubtedly the low point of the series' Zordon Era. I stopped watching the Turbo TV series about half way into its original run, and I didn't watch any of the subsequent series that followed it. Looking back now, the Turbo movie foreshadowed my lack of interest in the series' future - in that sense, Turbo isn't just a bad movie, but the end of the Golden Age of Power Rangers. And for that, I cannot, in good faith, recommend it to anyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment