Power Rangers film would’ve been better as a CW series

A phenomenal teen-acting ensemble gets screwed by feature-length aspirations, bad VFX.

If you think Marvel and DC superheroes receive too many reboots, you clearly haven't kept tabs on the Power Rangers TV series. What began as an excuse to reuse costumed-battling footage from the Japanese show Super Sentai has spawned 24 incarnations since 1993. Twenty-four! Who knows—if Batman had gotten close to that number, Val Kilmer might have worn the suit a second time.

Despite all of those years and versions, Power Rangers waited until this week for its first motion-picture treatment (well, okay, not really, but the less said about the 1995 film, the better). Weirdly, the results don't feel all that interesting as a film. Instead, viewers get a taste of what could have been the best TV treatment the series has ever seen.

Mighty Friday Night Lights?

The film follows five small-town teens going through various adolescent crises. The town's football hero falls from grace after a prank goes awry. The popular girl burns all bridges with an ill-advised text. One autistic kid misses his dead father in a big way, while two others have very different stressful issues with their own parents.

Before long, these teens conveniently wind up in the same place at the same time, at which point they unearth a mystical power (which, we learn in an opening spaceship-filled sequence, has been buried since the Cenozoic era). Sounds like standard hero-origin stuff.

Yet this 45-minute chain of events—learning about each teen, seeing them begin to weave a web of frayed friendships, and watching them discover their powers—turns out to be one of the most refreshing all-teen sequences in a film in years. It's right up there with the best seasons of Friday Night Lights or the horny-teen half of Cabin in the Woods.

Director Dean Israelite keeps the kids' stories and banter in constant motion. Each teenager gets the right amount of time to appear as a just-grounded-enough character, with believable backstory and "I see why they're sullen" context, before moving on to the next and having each eventual Ranger bounce off the others. By the time the major characters realize they have ridiculous superpowers and start busting them out, you'll have seen each character earn a truly laugh-out-loud moment. RJ Cyler steals the show as an on-the-spectrum version of the Blue Ranger, especially when he vehemently reminds the eventual Black Ranger that, no, he is not black.

Once they collectively realize they are imbued with superpowers and can do crazy-powerful moves, it's hard not to feel exhilarated alongside them. Each teen has gotten to this point via a different, difficult path, and I wanted to encourage them to "go go Power Rangers" and all that jazz.

But, sadly, it keeps going

This 45-minute sequence, which has some "special effects" in the form of realizing their strength, jumping long distances, and other tricks, could have stood alone as the pilot of a TV series. It looks like the polished stuff you'd see on FX or HBO, with just enough CGI and pristine framing to stand out from average-looking TV.

But this isn't a serialized show that can take its sweet time. The kids' criss-crossing jealousies, frustrations, and friendships have to resolve, and fast, because this Power Rangers must end with all of the teens discovering their true strengths and beating the crap out of a super-sized villain. Once the Rangers are told their ultimate mission—to figure out to "morph" into their ultimate, plastic-costumed forms—we are hurried and rushed to a resolution, because we still have to leave room for a final 20-minute action sequence.

Once that switch is flipped, the film's incredibly likable cast of 20-year-old actors becomes criminally wasted. One-dimensional pleadings for unity and vulnerability take over the script. Bryan Cranston shows up as a taciturn guide (the original series' Zordon) who does nothing but badger the kids into getting their act together. Elizabeth Banks chews a reasonable amount of scenery as Rita Repulsa, a long-dormant villain who has just woken with a desire to destroy the Earth, and while her performance would've felt perfect in a cheesy episode of the original series, it doesn't quite fit with the brisk, decently acted sequence we see at the outset. (The same can be said for Bill Hader as the voice of a robotic assistant, but he has fun with the script and gets a few memorable zingers.)

The stinky cherry on top of this glide to disappointment is the final CGI-filled battle. The effects work is pretty low-grade, with lighting and animations that look quite dated. The martial-arts battling is subpar, which is apparent even through a slew of unnecessary quick-cut edits. And Rita's super-sized monster gets the worst of it, looking like a giant, badly rendered version of Cinder from the 1994 video game Killer Instinct.

(Also, I am not sure how much money Krispy Kreme paid to be in this film, but it must have been a lot. The donut chain is so intrinsically linked to the plot that it seems less like an ad and more like absurdist modern art.)

I would have liked a Power Rangers film that resembled the dark POWER/RANGERS short that went viral in 2014. The beginning of this film went in a much different direction—a slight taste of Breakfast Club, but more Goonies, with excited, troubled kids coming together for the sake of an adventure. Thanks to the quality cast, the first half's lack of morphin' and might actually turned out to be one of its best aspects, and I was pleasantly surprised by Israelite's vision there.

Sadly, the end result feels like a project with big ambitions ruined by rush-to-the-end film editors. What could have been a must-watch CW series is now another forgettable superhero movie to toss onto the pile. I suppose we'll have to wait for the 27th or 28th Power Rangers reboot to really see the series figure things out.