Power Rangers director Dean Israelite reveals why classic villain Goldar was redesigned for the 2017 film, and created by Rita Repulsa’s (Elizabeth Banks) powers. With the rebooted Power Rangers recently released on Blu-Ray and DVD, it’s time to start looking a little deeper into the Saban film from Dean Israelite.

Part of the plot saw Rita Repulsa use all the gold buried underneath Angel Grove to build a giant monster to do her bidding. Once it’s reached the final stage she names it ‘Goldar’. Of course, fans of the original television series will know that Goldar was a griffin knight working for Rita and Lord Zedd.

When speaking to ComicBook, Israelite spoke about completely redesigning the mythology of the show to match the style of the reboot. Part of this was taking away the original backstory for Goldar and instead tying it directly to Angel Grove and the Power Rangers themselves. It basically meant that the filmmakers weren’t constrained when creating their own take on the villain, and trying to craft a fresh design.

“I said with my production designer language lets sort of push the envelope on him. And it seemed to start … and I said, we always have to go back to the mythology we’re creating. And the mythology that we are creating is that Rita can … has control over elements around her. And if she has control over the elements around her that’s how she physicalizes and creates the Putties that are then made out of whatever environment is around her and that logic should hold true to Goldar and Goldar then should then come out of this debunked gold mine that the whole movie is set around.”

Since Israelite mentions that they wanted to see Rita in control of the elements and creating the putties, it does make sense that she’d be able to control gold. And in a movie so chock full of out-of-this world concepts and characters, another alien villain alongside Rita might have overstuffed the movie a little more than it already was. But there’s a definite organic theme running throughout, and that was intentional.

“Well, the honest answer is that I feel like we’ve just seen a gargoyle type monster so many times now since the show has started. And my goal, with the movie, was to really give Power Rangers its own aesthetic and its own language. And you’ll notice the each of the Zords, and the space ship, and Alpha 5, and even Zordon … they’re all very organic. All the shapes are very organic. They’re very alive. They’re biomechanical. We came up with this design that felt to me both terrifying and kind of beautiful at the same time.”

Whilst the Power Rangers reboot wasn’t perfect, it did manage to be somewhat entertaining. The scenes in the high school and between the lead characters were actually handled quite well. But it was the transition into the blockbuster, action sequences didn’t flow too well. Perhaps this is something they’ll fix in a sequel, if it manages to get the green light. Talk of a Power Rangers sequel are taking place, but it hasn’t been confirmed just yet.