'Power Rangers' - 3rd Trailer and Several New Posters Released!

Well here was another surprise this week! We got a new 'Power Rangers' trailer out of no where and of course with a new comes new posters. Take a look at all the goodies!

Man these last 2 trailers have really put the fun back into this movie! There are some cool new shots in here including Jason activating his power sword. Can't wait till March 24th!

These two posters are really cool and probably the best ones we have gotten so far. Too bad they are international posters and won't be seen anywhere in the US. Man why are the international posters always so much cooler than the US...

Lastly we got some new individual ranger posters which I prefer over the weird white background ones we got before.

What do think of all the new goodies? Did these new things get you more excited for the film?

Power Rangers Trailer - It's Morphin time!

Well we've been complaining about the lack of marketing for the new Power Rangers film for awhile now  but that looks to be changing very quickly. Take a look at the full trailer that shows us everything we wanted to see in the teaser. 

So I have been a bit letdown by everything the movie has released thus far but oh man, that trailer was fantastic! It really makes me wish they had held off on the toys and waited until we this trailer had come out. Are the designs still funky? Yes, but seeing everything in motion makes it all look way better. 

I love the new putties but I do think Goldar still looks weird and I am annoyed that he looks to be a generic villain when he was originally one of the more iconic things from the original show. Rita is shown in both he morphed and unmorphed forms so it looks like she definitely is tapping into the Green Ranger coin's power a little bit. Looks like all of those leaks an Rumors are true.

I think the biggest thing this trailer adds is that little bit of fun. This feels like Power Rangers now. Maybe a bit more grounded in reality but it just oozes that style that I felt was missing before.

What did you think of the trailer? Are you excited to go see it? 

'Power Rangers' - New Trailer And Posters Show It May Very Well Be Morphin' Time

I gotta say I didn’t think much of all this 'Power Rangers' dark-and-gritty-and-none-too-witty reboot business. I mean, only an article ago I was making fun of the baffling “zords” we were treated to on the first official posters. But New York Comic Con brought us our first teaser trailer.

It’s not bad! I even switched my Mighty Morphin’ Mood Board from “Purest Apathy” to “Cautious Optimism”. Let’s get into this, shall we?

The first thing we see is the gloomy, blue color that should surprise no one. It’s a standard feature on dark reboots after all. We are briefly (in Zach’s case, very briefly) introduced to the cast. Angel Grove is now a sort of school for delinquents rather than being the whole town (they’re teens with attitude. Get it?) Jason is the strong willed leader-ish figure, Billy the lovable nerd, Kim, a former popular girl entering a rebellious stage. Zach and Trini we barely see. Trini at least has some lines, but we don’t really know much about their characters yet. They stumble across some alien tech in the desert, Billy rigs up a demolition charge (???!!?!?) and everybody gets a pretty translucent disc, which I assume are the power coins.

The next day the all wake up with super powers. Jason breaks his sink and Billy no-sells a headbut from a bully which as a long time Billy fan, is just beautiful to see. They go back to the desert and jump over a canyon. It’s my favorite scene in the trailer, and a nice callback to the countless shots of power rangers leaping from the ground to the top of their zords. The rest of the trailer is just a bunch of images and we get a teaser of them morphing for the first time. That’s it, nothing else of interest, show's over, go home.

Oh, well, we do get what I think is a good sign that I was right about Elizabeth Banks as Rita. She has a nice menacing feeling about her, and apparently she can just show up, in your room, while your sleeping.

So the good news is the trailer looks pretty good. I’d say there’s enough reason to believe the movie might be not terrible. But there’s a little bit of bad news. Lionsgate released a new series of posters with the actors, displayed in their colors, in front of lightening bolts. That’s cool and all, but the tweeted an image of Trini’s poster with a caption saying “Driver’s ed not required,” in reference to the characters age. I’m sure it was just an oversight, but some fans have gotten upset over the caption, it being a little distasteful considering the original Trini, Thuy Trang, was killed in a car accident in 2001. Maybe do a little research next time team. The posters are solid though.

The more interesting posters come from New York Comic Con as well and include a super detailed look at the individual Ranger suits. The coolest thing to note is the glowy dinosaur heads inside of the power coins on their waists.  

Well, I’ve been hurt before in remakes (lookin’ at you, Michael Bay), but I might be getting a little hyped for this.  Power Rangers are a big piece of nostalgia for a lot of people, and the world could always use more color-coded heroes.

Excited? Enraged? Feeling left out because you were a Beetleborg kid? Leave some comments, let's talk about these feelings.

(Editors note: Sorry it took so long for this article to be put up onto the site. Life kept intervening)

Teaser Poster For 'Power Rangers' Unveiled On Twitter

While we wait for a teaser trailer for the new 'Power Rangers,' I can't help but be interested in the direction they are going to take this reboot. It's easy to write it off as a quick cash grab on a well known franchise, and so far they haven't given us much to fight that conclusion. Most of the design we've seen so far has not driven the fan base into a frenzy, and as far as I can tell, general audiences don't know this exists yet. So, I'm glad to report that the official twitter for the film pulled through and gave us our first look at the kind of tone they're going for, and it comes in the form of a teaser poster. Check that out and our thoughts on it below.

There are two ways you could look at this poster. Either you see it as an almost Michael Bay-esque generic blue and orange poster that doesn't tell us anything new, OR, you could try to imagine this next to promotional materials of the original 95' movie. That film played up the jokes and the action; making a kid friendly big screen adaptation of the show to an almost fault.

From this poster alone, it seems like they're taking a little more of a pre-destined approach with the kids. Juxtapositioning them against a dominant night sky implies that they really are part of a crazy intergalactic struggle that they have to step up to take on together. Who knows if the marketing team was really going for any of that, but the idea of a really serious Rangers movie does at least get me into the theater. Whether they can convince me to be there opening weekend or not is another story.

'Power Rangers' releases in theaters March 24, 2017.

Dean Israelite's 'Power Rangers' Suits Revealed, Analyzing The New Look

If you've been following the news for the upcoming 'Power Rangers' reboot, this is the unveiling you've been waiting for. Teasing us with Rita Repulsa and a shot of the main cast in street clothes was just a lead-up for the main event, and Entertainment Weekly brings us our first look at the 2017 feature film's heroes post-morphin' time. Check them out below, along with my personal analysis.

Here's what the director of the reboot, Dean Israelite, had to say about the new designs:

"The show was about kids coming of age, about metamorphosis. These suits needed to feel like they were catalyzed by these kids and their energy, their spirit."

I agree with him about the coming of age aspect to the show, but I don't see where he's coming from with that last sentence. Nothing about these suits seems to be directly relatable to the human teenage experience, but maybe he's hinting at something revealed in the film itself. His production designer, Andrew Menzies, also talked about the immense pressure involved in trying to please everyone:

"It’s tricky finding a new language for a superhero costume. Ours is an alien costume that grows on them, that’s not man-made. You can’t win everyone over, but we are trying to appeal to a more mature audience and gain new fans."

He's right of course, fans are already finding things to nitpick about with these new costumes. I can admit that Kyle and I had similar reactions, but I wanted to break it down a little more and maybe shed some light on what might have inspired these designs.

The image at the top of this article comes straight from the 1995 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie.' Just like we spoke briefly about on the podcast this week, these costumes were mind-blowing to my much younger self, as spandex was replaced by flexible armor that produced gadgets and cool new weapons, I couldn't help be impressed. They kept pretty close to the original show's design while updating them at the same time to compensate for a much larger budget. I think they did a fairly good job in retrospect.

These new suits are similar to the recently revealed Rita Repulsa design in my opinion; they just don't stand out at all. There's nothing inherently unique about them or specifically tied to what the filmmakers have described in the press. There are multiple quotes where they've said that the costumes would reflect the fact that they morph onto the Rangers instead of being suits that you change into. Many people took this to mean that they might have a kind of organic quality to them and I think Elizabeth Bank's character has a feel that conforms to that concept. The Ranger's armor, on the other hand, looks like it stands alongside the standard Hollywood overly-designed "power suit" look. So much so, in fact, that I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen a similar design to these before.

The first that came to mind actually has a loose connection to this reboot. Production designer Andrew Menzies worked on another film franchise that shares many of the elements seen in these new designs: the modern G.I. Joe reboot. I called it a loose connection because he actually only worked on 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation.' I do think the normal costumes that characters wear in both of those films share some DNA with the new Ranger's suits, but in particular, the "accelerator suits" in the first film were the most apparent to me immediately. Here's a reference if you've forgotten that film as much as the rest of the public has:

You can really see it in the helmets and the spaces between pieces of heavier armor. The designs are so busy it's hard to tell what's really going on.

The second image I thought of was 2009's 'Robocop' costume. This is actually closer in the way that it has a more streamlined look to it that's more fitted to the body, but is still trying way too hard to look cool and stand up to an original iconic design.  

At the end of the day, it's the story and characters who are going to make this reboot successful or not. They'll most likely get a decent opening weekend just out of the curiosity and nostalgia of the fanbase, but if they want this to turn into a franchise and bring in new audiences, they're going to have to make something truly worthwhile. I really hope that's the case and we're seeing these designs wildly removed from the context of a good film, but I am definitely starting to have my doubts.

I think with everything they've said about these costumes, they really could have gone for a more organic, skin-adhering type of suit that would have been unique. If you haven't seen it, there was a sizzle reel type fan film that had some b-list (but awesome) actors attached that actually got fans pretty excited for a modern interpretation of this universe. It found a way to update the suits in some really interesting ways. They're actually what I imagined when director of the new film first started teasing what the suits might look like. Below are some shots from that, as well as an embed of the full film if you want to check them out in action (Warning, graphic content and language).

So, what do you think? Let us know in the comments if you think the film is on track, or at least interesting, and whether or not you'll be there on day one of the release.