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Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie





For the last month, I've indulged on a random interest in Power Rangers. I think it was spawned from a funny video where someone dubbed Tommy the Mighty Morphin Green Ranger with Tommy Wiseau's lines from The Room. I followed that up with James Rolfe's 2 part review of the series, which I watched only once a year ago prior. The review is from a noob's perspective, and in a way I related to that. I did watch the series as a kid, but barely. I'm not sure if Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was on a rerun cycle back in 1998-1999, as that period of time had the seasons In Space and Lost Galaxy playing. I vaguely remember watching those seasons, on the former, the crossover they did with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah, that happened. I don't remember it being bad though, but since I am committed to watching all the episodes (over 800), I will eventually come to that. Lost Galaxy, I remember that mainly because of the Green Ranger, he was black. So, while people are all over Tommy the OG Green Ranger, my first Green Ranger was a black man. Still, that was about it with the series.


This movie on the other hand, I was all over it for a period of time between 1999 and 2000 or 2001. I have not seen the movie since maybe 2003, so that's an extremely long time. Still, I loved the movie as a kid, and since I watched it a lot, I mostly identified with that team as my childhood Power Rangers. Roll call: Adam the Black Ranger (Johnny Yong Bosch), Aisha the Yellow Ranger (Karan Ashley), Billy the Blue Ranger (David Yost), Rocky the Red Ranger (Steve Cardenas), possibly my first crush, her name being Kimberly the Pink Ranger (Amy Jo Johnson), and the leader, Tommy the White Ranger (Jason David Frank, the most beloved Power Ranger). I learned many years later that Tommy was also the Green Ranger, that title was talked about more, which confused me because I always identified him as the White Ranger. It turned out that he lost his Green Ranger powers, and returned as the White Ranger, and became the leader of the team. This is where more revelations tie in. I didn't know there were previous Rangers before this group of 6. There were 3, Jason (Austin St. John), Zack (Walter Jones), and Trini (Thuy Trang, RIP). They were the Red, Black, and Yellow Rangers respectively. They were replaced after a contract dispute, they wanted more money, and for good reason because their pay sucked. The Power Rangers Wiki site is a great place to learn about all the Power Rangers series, the franchise, even the Super Sentai seasons where Power Rangers comes from. Also, taking over my binge watching of the series have been watching Q&A panels with these 9 actors, and other key players from that series, interviews with them as well. Learning about Power Rangers, the behind-the-scenes stuff, was just as fascinating as watching the series itself. One big reason I halted on binge watching the show, was so that I could watch this movie. It came out between Seasons 2 and 3, and while it's non-canon with the TV show, I have recently learned that certain parts from it were retold in the first couple episodes of Season 3. So, more of an incentive to watch the movie.


I admit that this was a bit scary. I've had a good streak of movies I revisited from my childhood and still loving them. Beverly Hills Ninja, Mortal Kombat, Space Jam, lots of Jackie Chan movies, all stood the test of time for me. How will this fare? I mean, I should start with what drew me to this in the first place. Simple, the fighting. I listed childhood movies where most of them featured martial arts. I love martial arts movies, it was my favorite genre of films, before I even knew what genres meant. Add on that I was at the perfect age when anime crossed over to the United States, and that meant anime with martial arts made its way to my TV. To be specific, a tiny little anime called Dragon Ball Z. All these properties, Power Rangers was right up my alley. I even had a video game based on the series. I vaguely remember it, I assumed it was the Super Nintendo game based on the movie, but I only remember a sea vessel stage, and always using the Black Ranger on that level. Power Rangers specifically at that time was all about martial arts and acrobatics in their fight scenes. Jackie Chan, again, was doing incredible fights and stunts, so coming from that fandom, Power Rangers was perfect for me. Growing up though, I realized what was great martial arts, and what wasn't. I never concluded that Power Rangers was the bad side, but the fact I had not revisited the show until this year does speak of something. One, of course, not being a kid anymore. The other reason, it may just be bad, so I didn't bother taking the risk, though I never was opposed to re-watching the movie, it just never came up as something I wanted to watch immediately. It's easy too to prefer the movie because it's just that, a movie, bigger and better than TV, that's what I thought. Now, since watching the TV show properly, I realized that the martial arts and acrobatics was really interesting. Was it the best? No, these are young people thrown into a series and all they had were their backgrounds, some were martial artists, some were gymnasts, others were even dancers. So, the original 5 actors who played Jason, Zack, Trini, Kimberly, and Billy, came together, helped each other out, and grew into being able to do these ridiculous fight scenes. I think that's something I will miss when I go past the Mighty Morphin Era, the almost family chemistry between the actors. Even when Bosh, Ashley, and Cardenas replaced three of the cast members, the chemistry was still maintained. Different ingredients, but still young people coming together to create some magic, even with their stereotypically written characters. I could just go on and on about why I appreciate Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and why I admire all the people who took part in this particular series, but that would be a novel in the making. I have to rein myself in and focus on the movie.


A little backstory, the movie was part of the contract negotiations for the original 6 (Frank had been a series regular by this point). While season 2 was in production, they'd take a pause, fly to Australia, and shoot the movie. According to Walter Jones in an interview, the deal specifically was for all the TV, which who knew how long they wanted the show to go for at that point (it ended up spanning 3 seasons), and three movies. Saban Entertainment, the company that made and own Power Rangers, had a strong TV deal with Fox Kids, and with that, 20th Century Fox took over in making the movie. The show was, and still is, a non-union one. Austin, Walter, and Thuy wanted to unionize, they got a lawyer to look over the contracts, tried to get a better deal, but it failed. With the show being non-union, it meant there was basically no minimum wage, or protection for any damage the cast members could suffer. With the lack of job security and how brutal the filming schedule was, these three walked off the show together. Enter Cardenas, Bosch, and Ashley. Because they were cast in the middle of season 2, they had to shoot the show nonstop for a month, and then fly to Australia to shoot the movie. They were really thrown to the deepest part of the pool immediately. To make matters worse, production for the movie was originally set for 3 months, but it ballooned to 6 months. Script changes, production delays, a major one being a change in cast. A major character was changed from one actress, to another, and then back to the original actress. That would be the Dulcea character, played originally by Gabrielle Fitzpatrick (who co-starred with Jackie Chan in Mr. Nice Guy, huzzah!) but then replaced by Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order SVU fame. Then Fitzpatrick came back on board. Since production stretched to 6 months, they were pressed to make more TV, so at one point they were shooting the movie and the show simultaneously, wow! And it's not like in the show, you noticed a dip in quality when it comes to physicality. They just kept on going. From what I've learned, they would work on 2-3 episodes per week, with 6 day schedules, 12-14 hours per day or even more. That was the TV schedule throughout the Mighty Morphin Era. So pile that with shooting a big movie? It's insane.


With that bit of backstory laid out, it's time to finally get into the movie...


It's really surprising how much I remembered of it. I pretty much recalled all the scenes. Dialogue is a bit of a different story, I mostly remembered some one-liners from the main villain, Ivan Ooze, played by Paul Freeman. The same Paul Freeman that was Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The one thing I kind of forgot though was the third act when the Zords come out and fight against Ooze's giant mechanical bugs. I forgot how they looked. Now, I was a kid when I last watched it, so I didn't have the perspective of being able to judge special effects as well as CG. As an adult watching this...yeah. I'll get to that later.


The movie is only 91 minutes long, and the plot is really simple. The movie was made entirely by 20th Century Fox, for all intents and purposes, Saban didn't really contribute a lot to production. Going by the credits alone, the most they contributed, other than of course licensing the property, was well, licensing the actors. As stated earlier, the 6 people that made up the cast of Power Rangers at the time were in this. The bad guys from the TV show are also in this but take a backseat to Ivan Ooze, who was created for the movie. The bad guys also have their voice actors reprising the roles, which is nice. Also Alpha 5's voice actor reprises the role. Now...I just learned that the voice actor for Zordon wasn't only David Fielding. I noticed it more in this movie, but not on the TV show, the voice actor was different. In fact it was different after season 1. Fielding only did the first season, Robert Manahan voiced him from season 2 all the way to his demise in the In Space season (1998). He also did the voice for the movie. That just blew my mind because the voice didn't really change in the show, I tried to think back, and well, the voice was a less deep, but that's about it. The face had never changed, it was David Fielding's face. He was only filmed for one day, and they used that footage for 5 years. I thought they used the same voice actor for that time, I was wrong. All that said, it was easy to tell that the face of Zordon was not David Fielding in the movie, instead it was Nicholas Bell. While I'm at it, the people in the bad guy suits are not the ones in the TV show. That doesn't mean much since they're all fully costumed, face and all, except for Rita. Rita Repulsa was originally from Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, the suit actor for that was Machiko Soga. The footage of her was used for all of season 1 of the show. In season 2 when they ran out of Zyuranger footage, they got Carla Perez on board, and she was the suit actor for Rita, meanwhile the English voice has always been Barbara Goodson. I knew she looked different here.


It's a bit silly to describe these details because I doubt anyone here watched the show, at least a full episode. Still, as someone in the middle of trying to watch it all, these differences are interesting to point out. Moving on, the movie started with text detailing the origins of the Power Rangers. Zordon came to the city of Angel Grove, randomly, as he is an interdimensional being. He established the Command Center and with his assistant Alpha 5, the man sought out 6 special teenagers and gave them the power to transform into a superhuman fighting force. When in great need, they called upon giant assault vehicles known as Zords. One thing about the movie is that it straddles a line between informing people who never watched the show about the Power Rangers, while also playing to the TV audience. That's obvious in this text, if they only played to the people who already know the show, this wouldn't be used. Credit to them though, they didn't over-explain everything, but at the same time, knowing this was made also to rope in new people, I believe that since the hero characters aren't really developed in this movie, those people might not remember them after. Of course the fans, myself included remember them, having seen them for 2 seasons up to this point. The lack of character development though can be flipped to the fans, I felt like their personas didn't have time to shine here. Things move pretty fast, which is good, but they could've added more to the characters and still have a 91 minute movie. Or, just make it longer. I've learned recently that a lot of stuff was actually cut out from this movie. I'll get to that later.


The Rangers are introduced in a plane, along with the bullies from the show, Bulk and Skull, Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy respectively. They reprise their roles for the movie too. Quickly on them, they had a bigger role in the script and movie, but that was also cut out. Credit to them, they didn't sit around when not working, they actually volunteered to help around the set. As I watched the show, at first I thought their comic relief status was annoying, but I've since grown to love these guys. A big part of it is watching Q&A panels with them, and also hearing other cast members praise them, as well as learning a bit of their background. They were classically trained actors, Narvy specifically left Power Rangers after In Space to go to college, and eventually become a professor of acting in a Chicago college! Listening to them in interviews and such, they are actually very well spoken, pretty different from their dumb characters. Anyways, might as well praise them here and now since they pretty much disappear after a certain scene and don't come back until the last 30 or so minutes. So with them and the Rangers on the plane, by the way they're not in their suits, it's the whole superhero secret identity gimmick, they all go skydiving! This was one of the scenes I remembered the most as a kid, thinking it was awesome. Watching it now? It is still lovely to watch, but then I recently found out it was all movie magic. That's a bit disappointing, and there's one part where you can tell there's green screen trickery, when you get closeups of their face when the 6 heroes join hands for a bit. Other than that, Jesus man it looks pretty damn real to me. If only that illusion lasted throughout the movie. Bulk and Skull do skydive, but after, they were too scared to go with the 6 Rangers.


Before watching the show these days, I repeat that I watched the movie a lot as a kid, moreso than the show. Now having watched the sow, one thing this movie brought in, licensed music. The music for Power Rangers was all original, most of the songs came from Ron Wasserman and Shuki Levy (he in particular is responsible for the amazing Inspector Gadget theme). Wasserman is a legend because he composed the theme song for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. His version doesn't appear here, a chorus version is used instead, but that was awesome, don't get me wrong. Wasserman also made music for the three seasons right after the Mighty Morphin ones, and came back for the SPD season in 2005. Anyways, the licensed songs here are pretty memorable, inasmuch that I've heard most of them before. The score music was from Graeme Revell, who interestingly enough also was the composer for a little film called Street Fighter. Yeah, but he's a prolific film composer, so let's not hang on that particular accolade. One song I forgot about being in this movie, that “I Got The Power” song. For fuck's sake, the most cliché song to stick into Power Rangers, was used here. I heard too that the song appears in the ending credits of the 2017 Power Rangers movie.


Knowing this was shot in Australia, I did try to catch Aussie accents. As it turned out, not many of the nobodies talked. Later they say one specific sentence, but that was a dub job and sounded like Americans. In order to catch the Aussie accents, the only two people for that were the father of Fred, and Dulcea, remember Gabrielle Fitzpatrick. I think Fred's dad was overdubbed to make him sound more American though, the Aussie in him wasn't so obvious. Who is Fred? Just some kid, he wasn't in the TV show. One may complain about that, but the funny thing about MMPR (let's just abbreviate from now on, okay?) is that there would be characters introduced in one episode, and 9 times out of 10, are not seen again after that episode. The 1 out of 10 last for a few other episodes, but then disappear anyways. That's really funny especially when some of them start a romantic relationship with one of the main characters. Billy in particular, for being the nerd of the group, he had the most girlfriends! Fred is introduced in some Angel Grove event that hosted this skydiving act, the Rangers all landed safely. In hindsight, this and the rollerskating scene that happened shortly after, and them eating out together and watching the fireworks at the final scene, are the only non-hero moments in the movie. The TV show would have those moments basically bookend the episodes, in between there's the action, where you get “unmorphed” fights, as in them fighting without the suits. Then they get in the suits, then more trouble brews, they call upon their Zords and save the day. In season 1, most of the time the Super Sentai footage were the fights in the suits, and the Zord battles. As a result, it was a rare treat to see the American actors in the Ranger suits, you only got to see these 6 actually fight when unmorphed. In season 2, when they ran out of Zyuranger footage, there was more original footage of the Rangers fighting in the suits. I've learned recently that most, if not all the time, the people fighting in the suits are stuntmen. Talented stuntmen, don't get me wrong. There were still scenes with them in the suits, but only when they aren't fighting, and you can tell clearly when their helmets are off. The Zords have always been, and continue to be Super Sentai footage. Just to clarify, Super Sentai, where Power Rangers came from, has the same format of changing suits and casts, and everything each season. So with MMPR, they first used footage from the 1992 Super Sentai season, Zyuranger. In season 2 when they were low on Zyuranger footage, they started to use Gosei Sentai Dairanger footage, specifically for Zord battles and White Ranger footage, they couldn't use footage of the other Dairangers in suits since they were different. Saban held on to those Zyuranger suits for three seasons, after which they adapted and did the yearly suit and cast change along with Super Sentai.


I say this all for two reasons. One, to foolishly make the review longer. Two, to offer the comparison to the movie. Everything you see in this movie is original, there was no Super Sentai footage used. There was a certain gimmick from a Sentai season employed here, but I'll get to that later. Back to the Rangers being just teenagers, another thing is that with the TV, they weren't always together as 6. Sometimes they are alone, sometimes they are in pairs, or groups of 3 or 4, even 5. Movies being different from TV shows, especially one as short as this, I had to accept that they all had to be together all the time. The problem with that, it goes back to the personalities, they weren't fully developed. You'd get glimpses of their personas and charms, but unless you watch the show, you really don't get much. So, I only recommend the movie if you either have watched the show, or intend to watch it and want to explore the characters a bit more. They aren't deep characters, they're teens for crying out loud, but at least you get to see them interact more with people, each other, things. With that said, sadly this means the characters are shaved of their charm. Adam specifically, the Black Ranger, was totally a background player. I'm singling him out mainly because I've gotten a hard-on for Johnny Yong Bosch lately, learning of his prolific voice acting career, and how he voiced characters in shows I enjoyed as a kid, and still would. Trigun for example, small roles in Naruto before a huge one in Shippuden as Sasori, Johnny in Space Dandy, Bojiggler in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (yeah that's an anime, it's insane and fun to watch), Brock in Pokemon Origins, tons others. He's awesome in panel videos, great storyteller too, he would share a lot of cool stories, that I don't get tired of since he would repeat some throughout his many convention appearances. One in particular was the Palm Tree Story. This ties into the movie. One day while they weren't filming, Bosch and Jason David Frank (Tommy the White Ranger) did flips off a palm tree. Bosch would jump to the tree, jump off from it and flip, Frank would run 3 steps up the tree then flip. One time, Frank said “I'm just gonna keep going,” and ran 5 steps up the tree. Two steps too many as he fell face first. One guy would spot the other during these stunts, but Bosch didn't know what to do, so he moved away, and Frank landed face first on the grass. He popped back up, but got a cut under his eye, and swelling on his face. They were yelled at, and that explains why in the rollerskating scene, Tommy's face is not really shown. It was a stunt double, which I did try to catch, knowing this story. Good camera work, because I couldn't catch the different face, except if you pause at the part where they go down stairs. Apparently another reason Jason Frank couldn't do the scene was that he didn't know how to rollerskate. Haha!


The rollerskating by the way happened right after the skydiving scene, I didn't jump in the story. Back to the issue of defining the characters, I will forgive them because, hey, it's better than nothing. This was the 90s, before Marvel did the character building and superhero teamups with amazing results. Also, this was a one-off. There was a second Power Rangers movie, but it served as the lead-in to the Turbo season in 1997. One difference between the movie and the show, the former wasn't so heavy handed with the outfits. They always went with a color-coordinated affair, Black Ranger would wear black, White Ranger would wear white, you get the idea. Here, they all wear white of some kind actually, in shirt form. Rocky's white shirt was a muscle tee, so it's the least visible of the 6, and Tommy of course is wearing all white. Over the white shirts tough, the men would wear colored vests the women would have prominently white shirts, Aisha though had some yellow bits. For pants, the girls would wear colored shorts. The show on the other hand, the colors are more in-your-face, which is funny when you have the weird colors. Yellow for example, Aisha would wear yellow socks, yellow headbands, and they are a bit tacky. I think worse is green, when Tommy was the Green Ranger, his wadrobe had a putrid vibe to it, which is funny. I love green by the way, but when you're wearing a green buttoned shirt, with green sweatpants, that's excessive. Anyways, the rollerskating was fun, I went off on a tangent. Back to the movie, one funny thing about their clothes is that they never changed them. The story happens in a couple of days and they don't take the time to rest. Actually, that's unrealistic, they should've been sleep deprived by the time they came back to Angel Grove to fight Ooze's mechanical bugs. Actually, something cut from the movie was a training sequence, maybe that featured the Rangers sleeping. Otherwise, they just have insomnia!


At a construction site where Bulk and Skull land from their skydiving, workers discover some apparatus holding a big purple egg-shaped thing. That was Ivan Ooze's resting place. He had been trapped there for 6000 years by Zordon, which is funny because Rita was in a space trashcan for 10000 years. I know that for sure since that info is said at the theme song in season 1. Anyways, one of the construction workers touched the egg and got electrocuted. The Rangers were called in to make sure the egg wouldn't hatch. Quickly, the Command Center got a movie quality update, the TV version looks very silly. Alpha 5 got some polish too, which is saying something because the design for him was already great. As referenced earlier, Zordon's face is different, now that it's a different actor, but only for this movie. The Rangers don't make it to the egg in time, as Lord Zedd, with Rita, Goldar and Mordant, crack the egg, releasing Ooze from his resting place. Quick note, Mordant was made for the movie, the other characters came from the show. Mordant is a pig monster, with a monacle for some reason. Zedd wanted to enlist Ooze to eliminated Zordon, but as set in stone later in the movie, Ooze wants to be the leader of this evil offense. He ended up trapping Rita and Zedd into a snowglobe. It sucks they got that treatment, but the movie was pushing the boundaries of how many villains you could have in one story.


Ivan Ooze is such a fun character, and you could tell Paul Freeman had fun in the suit and doing the voice. I saw a Q&A panel featuring cast from the movie, and he expressed some joy in taking up the role, and admitted to having fun with it. He also revealed that the original script had him shape shift into various humans, allowing Freeman to pull out many different voices. Unfortunately that was cut out, though Ooze does shape shift once, looking a wizard, but his face has a tint of purple. Freeman though still pulled out some voices, remembering that character trait of Ooze that was cut out. It actually made the character crazier since he had the same body while making those voices, instead of being in a body where one of the voices would fit. He looks like Freddy Krueger too, just take off the hat and slap a shit ton of purple on him, also not be a burn victim. Seeing as how the Rangers have very little character development, it's easy to point to Ivan Ooze as the best character in the film, definitely the most entertaining.


In hindsight, there were a lot of unmoprhed fights in this movie, they really only had one fight scene in the suits. To me that was some of the most entertaining stuff from the TV show, seeing these actors do flips and fighting moves. Knowing how most of the time it's stunt people in the suits, I gravitated toward watching these actors have a go. That's not to say I dislike the fights from them in the suits, at least the actors dubbed their characters during those parts in the show and movie. I'll probably come away loving MMPR the most out of other seasons because of this, I heard that later seasons don't have much unmorphed fights, which is a shame. Back to the story, Ooze smelled teenagers (that's what he actually said), and brought out his Ooze Men to take care of the Rangers. Fun fact, originally those creatures were supposed to be big rat people. They looked so cheap and cheesy though that they were scrapped from the movie. However, Saban used it in their TV show! It was a season 2 episode, that's when you can tell it was shot in Australia, again shooting the movie lasted 6 months and they really needed to deliver more episodes of the show and ended up shooting the TV in Australia. Also hilarious is that since they basically had no choice but to shoot TV in Australia, that meant not having a costume from Super Sentai that was shipped to them in advance. As a result, that 2 part episode featured a bad guy whose appearance was hilarious. They bought the costume from a Halloween store! So damn cheap, it did go along with the rats.


Back to my man Johnny Yong Bosch, he would say in panels that he had a lot of action stuff in the script originally, but a “certain Ranger” complained about not getting enough of that shine in fight scenes, so they satisfied him, leaving Bosch in the dust. I'll explain what effect this had later, I'm bringing it up now as I go back to the unmorphed fight discussion. For the most part, they are great, what drew me into the movie as a kid was the action, the fight scenes, martial arts stuff pulled off, with lots of flips. Still as an adult, I think the fights here are really good. Awesome and classic? Nah, but very much passable,, not really worth complaining about. Except for Johnny Bosch being left out. Out of all the cast members, he actually went on to do some little action movies that I would like to watch, if I can find them. He studied Shaolin Kung Fu before he got into Power Rangers, thus I feel like I'd have a blast watching his solo action films because I love Kung Fu movies. While he got shafted, there are some sweet moments of him kicking ass. During the Oozemen fight scene, he was the last person thrown into the Rangers right before they decided to Morph. His landing was done after doing lots of spins! It was pretty cool, and Bosch at that time loved doing his own stunts and fight scenes. Interestingly enough, the previous Black Ranger, Walter Jones, loved that aspect of Power Rangers the most as well. So, always good to bet on black. In that first unmorphed fight scene too, you really got to see the gymnast background of David Yost and Amy Jo Johnson in full effect, beautiful flips, they actually backflipped repeatedly to that spot before morphing. It was unnecessary, flashy, but so good.


Their first morph in that scene was also the only time you see them do it like they did on the show. It's upgraded to movie quality with the dinosaur images on the coins on the Morphers projecting to the viewer, and then you see each Ranger do some punches in the air and get into a stance. It's kind of like a music video, and during this morph, the movie version of the classic “Go go Power Rangers” theme played. Beautiful, and then the classic view from below as they jumped and flipped in the air. Also, the suits themselves, these were exclusive to the movie. The show has and still uses spandex, Super Sentai also had spandex suits. The only exception actually was Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, which is set to be adapted into the 2019 Power Rangers season, titled “Beast Morphers.” The suits there were leather. This movie updated the suits from spandex to plastic body armor. It looked great, though if you stop and look at it hard, they do look like action figures. They moved a bit like action figures too, and that was because those suits were heavy to move with, at least 30 pounds of extra weight from those suits alone. So it's amazing that the stunt people were able to do the only morphed fight scene in the movie. It came shortly after that first unmorphed fight scene. The helmets too are updated, with special gimmicks, that are just for show and not really practical. For example, Aisha's helmet had flash lights, Rocky's helmet visor turned into some life form scanning deal. They were ridiculous, but there you go. Also during the morphed fight scene, some of the Rangers pulled out toys, as if they were Batman with his utility belt. They were neat though, I'll give it that much. They weren't on the show by the way.


While that happened, Ivan Ooze made it to the Command Center, destroyed it, messed up Alpha 5's functioning, and put Zordon in a near-death position. When the Command Center destruction was finished, and Zordon was inching closer to death, the Rangers lost their powers. Now this is where I get into canon labeling. What I mean is labeling what would be canon, and what wouldn't. Note, this is all non-canon, but I'm doing this to indicate what so wouldn't be on the show. I'll say that for the most part, 20th Century Fox, the writers, the director, kept the spirit of the show, did not really mess with the integrity, kept that intact. However, one glaring exception is this section. That they lost their powers makes sense. However, the general canon explanation for them losing powers would be if the Morphing Grid, the Power Rangers equivalent of The Force, was destroyed. It's the source of all the Rangers, even when they retire and don't wear the spandex anymore, they are still Rangers deep down inside. In fact Tommy said that in this movie during their powerless phase. It's funny because technically they aren't Rangers anymore at that point, Zordon even said so himself. Silly Tommy. They go to the Command Center, and find Zordon, not as a floating head, but as a humanoid body, covered in a blanket, with his head sticking out. This would never be canon. Of course, I thought it was as a kid, but as an adult I learned that Zordon has been trapped in a time warp created by Rita. Because of this, he had to establish a way to communicate to the outside world, thus an energy tube was constructed and it projected just his head. There was a time in MMPR where Zordon was offline, but that meant his link to the Rangers and the Command Center had stopped, he didn't die. Even then, the Rangers didn't lose their powers. Zordon did die in the In Space season, but that didn't lead to the powers being gone. So, the fact he became a dying body here is a bit stupid if you stick with the canon of the TV show. Ooze also didn't directly hit the energy tube, and thus didn't affect the time warp, he destroyed pillars in the Command Center, and somehow that meant Zordon going from floating head to man dying of rapid aging. However, since this is established as non-canon, I can't really harp on this. Bottom line though, this wouldn't be on the show. In fact on the show, there were times where Tommy specifically would lose his Green Ranger powers. The Green Ranger was created by Rita though, as she possessed a power coin. Them being able to rob Tommy of his powers then made sense, but when Tommy became the White Ranger, he was created by Zordon and Alpha 5, thus that shortcut to robbing his powers no longer existed. At the same time, there was an arc in season 2, where the powers of the Rangers were nearly wiped out by color coded candles. That's what permanently removed Tommy's powers, his candle burned out, the Rangers were saved just before their candles burned out, so there's that. Anyways, I'm going into too much TV show canon. I mean, take all that out, Zordon just looks weird as basically a human male.


With Zordon near death, all hope is seemingly lost. However, Alpha 5 suggested they go to the planet Phaedos to find a Great Power that would restore Zordon to pristine condition. A big risk taken as the machine used to teleport them only had juice for a one way trip, and everyone that tried to obtain this Great Power, perished. Well time for teenagers with attitude to do that.


They teleport to Phaedos, and it's interesting how it does have a bit of an otherworldly view, but then you have to consider that it's actually Australia. So, it's as if Australia is a bit bizarro land. Ivan Ooze goes to the moon-based lair of Lord Zedd and Rita, and basically takes control. That leads to the snowglobe bit. I should mention that in the show, Rita and Zedd are married. They never really establish that in the movie. On the flipside, they maintain the relationship between Tommy and Kimberly. By the end of season 2, they aren't really officially an item. There was a part in season 1 where after Tommy lost his powers, he and Kimberly kissed, and he held her up in the air. Basically they were a “Will they/won't they” kind of couple. That's pretty much done here too, where they are very close with each other, but you don't hear the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” While I'm still on the subject, one thing that really bothered me, as an adult, of course not as a kid, is how Kimberly had damsel in distress moments. Specifically in 2 unmorphed fight scenes. One of them had Kimberly carried off by a Tengu bird. They're Ooze's new henchmen, and have their own score theme, which was interesting. Tommy had to save Kimberly there. Then later when they fight by the place where the Great Power is, Kimberly yells for help at once point. Aisha also had a bit of helplessness to her, but not as much as Kimberly. Now, Kimberly does kick butt most of the time, so it makes these damsel in distress bits really off-putting. Kimberly wouldn't be like that. Even if she was in danger, it was because she was trapped and couldn't get out, and the Rangers would come together to help her, not just Tommy being the hero. There was a time where Kimberly was trapped with some random girl in a cave, but she basically held back on morphing to preserve that alter ego, and then she and the girl were saved. What I'm saying is that most of the time, Kimberly kicks ass, and the few times when she is in distress, they're for good reason. Not contrived Hollywood cliché action like in this movie. I digress, failing against the Tengu birds, the Rangers are saved by a woman in a really skimpy outfit, bikini quality. That would be Dulcea, as I said, played by Gabrielle Fitzpatrick. It's interesting that her outfit was green, she could've been a Green Ranger. She was young, in shape, could kick ass, it's believable. She did kick ass, taking care of all the Tengu birds and then spinning the two parts of her staff, creating a sound that repelled the birds. At first she doesn't take any perceived crap from the Rangers, including having Tommy down on his back, staff to his chest, I loved that. They convince her that they came for the power so that they can save Zordon. Dulcea and Zordon apparently go way back, and knows Ooze as well. So, she offers to help them.


Back in Earth, Ooze's big plan was to get his giant robotic bugs dug up from the Earth where he was buried. Instead of just using magic to do that, he used a manufacturing place to create his own brand of purple ooze. This is when he transformed to a human looking wizard, as he tries to peddle his ooze to children. That sounds so disgusting out of context, but yeah. It was funny how they resisted the ooze, but only when he said it was free, they jumped on it. That's what kids were like back in the 90s, I know I was always down with free stuff. I still am.


I'm going to single out Fred, this kid is an annoying shit. He obviously exists for the kids, someone they could relate to, a white boy wearing an Air Jordan hat, which I felt like was product placement. Actually the product placement here was nonexistent, I think that hat was the greatest extent of that, since he never took it off. I think Adam's sneakers were Nike brand, but there are no closeups to tell for sure. Actually, if Bulk and Skull had more screen time, they probably would've ended up in a popular fast food joint, that would be total product placement. While I'm on them quickly, they had a little funny scene right after they landed in that construction site where they pretended to be managers at that site to deflect a complaining employee. It almost looked like the guy bought their story, which is ridiculous. Back to Fred, his dad checks out the ooze product, and is taken over. Ooze's plan was for the kids to get the product, bring it home, and ensure that parents would see it in some way, and when they touch it, boom they are in Ooze's control. I'll stress this, his dad checked out the product, he found it in his home, meaning Fred got that free product. What bugs me is that Fred eventually tries to get the kids off that ooze fascination, though they aren't consuming it like drugs. Regardless, it's clear that he didn't like this ooze scam, you can see in the scene with the kids and Wizard Ooze that he shrugged at the damn product. Apathetic, indifferent, could not give a crap. Not enough to resist obtaining a cup? Stupid kid. He gets a notable amount of screen time, and while he does play into the story and helps out towards the end, this could've all been Bulk and Skull time. Actually that would be amazing, Bulk and Skull notice the ooze infestation, and they want to change it. The show proved that they can have a heart of gold, as they watched after a baby while his father was trapped in a cave (long story) in season 2. But nope, give that time to some boy who definitely doesn't appear in the TV show. Actually, the Tengu birds appear in season 3, I heard about that, and I'll watch season 3 now that I watched this movie. They are part of the few things that carried over to season 3. Also with Fred, that's such a dated name to give to your son. I want to say stupid, but this was the 90s, I assume he was 10 years old, so born in the 80s. You had Fred Savage coming up, so the name wasn't uncommon at all. Now these days, it's weird to see a kid named Fred.


The adults walk out of their houses in droves, being possessed by the Ooze. They take up the excavation job to get the parts of the mechanical bugs. I don't know why he didn't just use his Ooze product on construction workers and he'd have a more competent work force. This matters because the Rangers return to Angel Grove just as the mechanical bugs are unleashed. With that suggested work force, he could've had more time to destroy Angel Grove. The technical name of these bugs is “Ectomorphicon Titan” but for the reader, it's easier to just say “mechanical bug.” They're huge metal insects anyways. Movie logic, what can you do? There was a part where Ooze was bored from waiting for these humans to find the mechanical bug pieces, and he forced a human to dance for him. That was pretty funny. Still, he could've done that with professional construction workers.


Returning to the Rangers and their story, Dulcea blew some powder and transformed them to Ninjetti. Basically that means giving them cool ninja outfits. This carried over into season 3, though how they got the Ninja powers was different. This is also where the Super Sentai tie-in happens. Researching to see if this was based on Super Sentai, I found that it was. Specifically the 1994-1995 season, Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. With that came new Zords. In the movie, it was explained to them that they needed to discover their spirit animals. These animals were part of Kakuranger as “Super Stealth Beast Gods,” they weren't completely lifted from the show in design. They were made more colorful actually, and with 100% CG. Anyways, that's later. So they got the Ninjetti outfits, their spirit animals are the following: Aisha – Bear, Kimberly – Crane, Rocky – Ape, Billy – Wolf, Tommy – Falcon, the “winged lord of the sky,” and last, not least, most memorable spirit animal, Adam...Frog! It was funny then, but it's even funnier now since I've seen Johnny Bosch tell the story about the line he gave. Dulcea asked a visibly upset Adam what was wrong, so came one of the most memorable quotes from the movie, one where fans even say it to Bosch at his convention appearances.





HAHA! Dulcea said he is indeed a frog, like the one you kiss, to turn into a prince. She kissed him on the forehead, lucky! There's a lot of things to say about this. One, when Dulcea talked to the Rangers one at a time, she explained the traits of the spirit animals. In no particular order, agile, cunning, swift, other really powerful traits. Adam's Frog traits were never explained, Dulcea gives that frog kissing line and moved on to Tommy! Bosch in his panels would bring up this plothole. He also explained that they shot a training montage where he would try to hone the powers of the frog, which was explained in the original script as being fast. During the training sequence, Adam had difficulty catching flies, so he would up using his Blade Blaster (laser gun) to shoot them! That would've been great to see, but alas. I feel like the cut footage could've amounted to at least 15 more minutes, at most 30, making the movie a maximum of 2 hours long. Considering that the 2017 movie is over 2 hours long, I think this one could've pulled it off. It would've meant more Bulk and Skull. Granted, I got the full story in the 91 minutes, but that doesn't mean some extra stuff wouldn't be appreciated. Going back to the Bosch story, remember how he lost his exclusive action stuff to another Ranger? While he doesn't name the Ranger by name, to me it's obviously Jason David Frank. He explained that the Ranger would pull out his seniority card. That said, knowing the personalities of the Rangers to a decent extent, I know David Yost would not have made a pull like that. Amy Jo Johnson is a sweetheart, she wouldn't do it. Steve Cardenas and Karen Ashley were the new blood along with Bosch, so neither of them. That just leaves one person, and that's Jason David Frank. Consider also his love of doing action scenes as well, and knowing how he became basically the golden boy for Saban, it all makes sense. Given his leader status in the show and movie, that means he got the most face time, spotlight for lack of a better term. When Kimberly interacted with him, that's when she becomes a prominent force. Nobody else had that kind of association deal. It's unfortunate for Bosch, but it was a blessing in disguise, because he got bummed out by his action scenes where swept from under him. When shooting the scene where Dulcea explains their new powers, Bosch used this frustration to create the line “I'm a frog” and act upset about it. In the original script, that line didn't exist. Bosch ad-libbed that line, and history was made. Dulcea set them on their way, and explained that she can't come with them to retrieve that power, because if she stepped out of some boundary, she'd age rapidly like Zordon. Because you don't want her to age into a ghoul, she turns into an owl randomly and flies away. Memory now plays into this, because I thought she had more screen time. I assume she was part of the training sequence that was cut out of the movie. Without that, she's just in two scenes. She definitely made an impact, but knowing that there was another Dulcea and they had to reshoot stuff, it made me think going back into the movie that she had plenty of screen time. Ah well, people definitely remember her, especially men. I don't need to explain why.


You know what would've been awesome? If Fred's dad bitch slapped him when he tried to talk him out of being under the Ooze's control. That would be like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when Jones was under the control of the Thuggee Cult, and he slapped the crap out of Short Round! Unfortunately that didn't happen.


The third unmorphed fight scene featured them first trying to take care of a dinosaur skeleton. I couldn't tell what kind it was, I thought it was a triceratops, which would be Billy's original Ranger power. I guess it's none of their Dino powers, someone would've made a reference to it. It's also made clear that they were dinosaurs because Billy said “Welcome to Jurassic Park.” While I'm at it, the dialogue is filled with silly one-liners and puns by the Rangers, too many to list, but that's within the spirit of the show, because there's always cheesy and silly lines like that in the series. There's one I'll mention later that stuck to memory since I heard it used a couple times in panel discussions. This particular section had the Kimberly damsel in distress thing at its worst, because she screamed for Tommy to help him. Also Aisha just stood there a lot of the time, and it all came down to Tommy taking care of the thing. More of a team effort would've been better, but that came right after actually, so the bad effect this left was mostly nullified. I will say that the Dino skeleton itself looked great, didn't really get a whiff of CG, it's actually there. The CG with the ooze rising and forming into creatures like Ooze's sons or his entrances, are just fine. For 1995, they're on point. It's when the mechanical bugs come alive that things start to take a huge turn for the worst.


A really funny thing happened with Ooze. After the mechanical bugs were found and restored, as well as the Ooze product being all packaged by the people, Ooze announced that he no longer needed these people, so he just told them to leap to their doom! Kool-aid drinkers basically were told to commit suicide! Put that in perspective, that's hilarious. They were told specifically to jump from a ledge in the construction site, it's the same one where the Rangers jumped out of to get more space in their fight against the Oozemen. That's a big fall, so no joke that such a leap might kill them.


After that came the big unmorphed fight with some pig-looking beast warriors. Even though they called out their animal spirit names and had a slight transformation, I still consider this an unmorphed fight scene. When I said “slight transformation,” that means they just had their head and faces covered to complete the ninja look. It's funny, I'm typing the rest of this review after watching the first 7 episodes of season 3, and the latter 4 basically had the retelling of certain movie events. As it were, the Ninjetti in the show actually possessed powers. Here in the movie, it was just fashion, see the beast warriors came alive from carvings on the entrance to the Great Power. That means they weren't fully powered up, which is why I considered this an unmorphed fight. The battle here and their debut fight with the Ninjetti suits in the show were different inasmuch as the Rangers dominating in the show and busting out some of their powers. Here, it's more balanced with the beast warriors wrecking shop for a bit, and in the end, the Rangers came together and did some team-up moves. Both have their positives, so I'd rather not compare on which is better. Also, in the movie, they're battling the beast warriors with those outfits, in the show it was the Tengu birds. They made it into the show, but with a different origin since Ivan Ooze wasn't part of the show. Another big difference, they actually explained Adam's frog power, “wise and courageous.” That still merits a kiss from a woman though. Anyways, this was a nice fight scene. I believe the actors did the fight scene. While they are suited up in the Ninjetti costumes, that can still warrant stunt doubles. Looking at it again, I'm convinced they weren't doubled for this scene, which is nice. That particular set was really good too, the Rangers used their surroundings to outmaneuver these warriors. With the warriors defeated, the door opened, and the Great Power was revealed. A giant coin with the animals together, and then it flashed a big light, as the animal spirits came out of the coin, CG trickery, and they went to the coins the Rangers wore on their Ninjetti. As such, the Power Rangers have returned. Notice that the suits are still the same, they were seriously stringent on keeping those designs for as long as possible, because they thought it'd be risky to change suits and merchandise sales would suffer. They changed the suits after season 3 of the show, and over 20 years later, it was a great decision, because the merchandise now is absolutely crazy. I've been looking around the Power Rangers subreddit, and these various Ranger toys and merchandise is not only great to see, but not cheap. Some of them became collectors items.


Anyways, I noticed something about Aisha's helmet when they return to Angel Grove, but this thing actually appeared as soon as the suits were re-introduced. Her helmet doesn't fully close, there's a pretty noticeable opening. I believe this goes back to how the helmets were modified, all of them got hooked up with ventilation and fan systems, and as a result, it made some things problematic. I think for the Yellow Ranger helmet, it made it impossible to fully close. So, woopsy! It's funny how an issue like that was in the movie, because that's really at the level of the TV show. This is 20th Century Fox, they shouldn't pull off things like this. Looking at the helmets more, it looked like some others didn't close all the way, but I still think Aisha's had it worse.


The third act kicks into gear. Ivan Ooze and Goldar are on the roof of a building watching the Ectomorphicon Titans terrorize the city. It's funny overall in the movie how Ooze bitches out Goldar a lot. Goldar in the show constantly got bitched out by Rita and Lord Zedd, I think it was even funnier with Zedd. It's cool they kept that aspect of the show intact for the film. The Rangers made it to Angel Grove, which had been in shatters by the time they got back. They immediately call upon their Zords. Now, this is something the movie did that the show hardly ever did. The Zords got individual shine. With how fast the show moves, the Zords hardly ever have time to just go solo, they would immediately merge to make the Megazord, think Voltron. When a Zord does go solo, it would always be the Red Zord, whether it be Tyrannosaurus, or the Red Dragon, that kind of tradition still carries on, Red rules. Here, every Zord had their moment. Back to the show, when these Ninja Zords first came on, there was a tiny bit of individual shine, notably Billy's Wolf Zord striking a monster with its tail. They still merged almost immediately.


Quickly, fucking Fred acts as as party popper as all the kids from Angel Grove are having fun, dressed in purple, playing around with Ivan's Ooze. I guess it only affects adults, because contact would cause them to fall under his control and eventually leap to their doom. Randomly Bulk and Skull are at that party, which I could complain, but given the fact that they're hardly in the movie and their contribution to the show is immense, I'm happy they just got on camera. Fred stood over a table and tried to convince the kids to help him save all their parents, and he did it so easily, which is weird. Soon after you see them all run to a monorail train, along with Bulk and Skull, and Fred somehow can operate the fucking thing, and they ride on over to the construction site. I was going to question this, but I went back to the factory scene where Ooze told everyone to commit suicide, I forgot that Fred was snooping around there when that declaration was given. The question was going to be how did Fred know to go there through monorail? That's cleared up, but the monorail business doesn't make sense. Another logic gap is incoming, but I have to get into the biggest flaw in the movie.


The CG in the third act is atrocious. It's bad, even by 1995 standards, it's almost as bad as Mortal Kombat Annihilation, which came out 2 years later, but I believe that's been widely considered the movie with the worst CG ever. At least one of the movies with the worst. Childhood ignorance, I loved the effects here, the bugs looked scary, the Zords looked cool, but now it just looks like crap. I do admit to being a bit forgiving of them, I wasn't cringing that much. It probably helped that I saw pictures of the CG images before watching the movie and braced myself for my childhood being a bit broken. Even though this third act mostly took place at night, that wasn't enough to hide the fakeness. What I did like were the closeups to the Zords, and being right there with the Rangers during these moments, because they were on specially built interior sets. I remember Johnny Bosch explaining this movie magic, and being in his Frog Zord set, which indicates that the actors are in the suits during this section. Some of them focused on one of the mechanical bugs, there was some teamwork between Billy and Adam. Aisha tried to stop the other, and she delivered the memorable line I referenced earlier as being quoted a lot in public appearances, “Time to boogie with the bear.” That's great, but then the mechanical bug fired a laser and it launched her to a building. When you see her after this, notice that her coin was no longer attached to the suit. HAHA! Jeez, her suit got it the worst, the helmet, the coin hole not keeping the coin in place, it's crazy. Rocky jumped onto that bug after Aisha got into trouble. In the sky, Kimberly was trying to go for Ooze but got caught by his electrical shock move. She did escape from it though. There's a part where the bug that Adam and Billy tried to defeat had its tail cut off, spewing out ooze. That looked so fake, but they did splatter Billy's Zord set with purple stuff. Tommy once again delivers the final blow, firing missiles at that same bug, and it exploded. One bug left, Ooze said he was angry, so he turned into all ooze, with more bad CG as it stretched from building roof all the way down to the final mechanical bug. This leads to a fusion, and the CG on this Ooze infused giant is even worse. The face, he looked like he could've been in The Lawnmower Man. It was funny, Aisha said he needed a plastic surgeon, but let's be real here. Plastic is more real than that CG, good Lord. Ooze tore off that building they were on, I think it was actually a tower, it served as his staff, Goldar flew away from the action like the bitch he is. Ooze stomped over a part of the monorail track, and by then, it was time to form the Ninja Falcon Megazord. That awesome movie version of the theme song played as the Zords came together, without Tommy's Falcon Zord. Why? He said he had to take care of the monorail track, which leads to what I believe is a plothole.


How the fuck did Tommy know that the monorail was running, and that there were kids and Bulk and Skull inside it? There was no shot of Tommy's Falcon Zord flying over the monorail train, thus there was no established way of him knowing that they were in the train. I guess Tommy's just a god, he's all-knowing. So Tommy being all-seeing and all-knowing as the falcon, took up the empty spot left by the trashed monorail track, allowing for the kids to travel safely. Just like that, Tommy's the best ever. I love Tommy by the way, I don't love that plothole.


Oh, there was an interior set for the Megazord, and it looked really nice. There were a lot of shots inside that, which was good because one needs breaks from watching the eye-burning shitness of the CG. Going back to the show, since Zords are miniatures and the Megazord is typically a man in a suit, you can see the realness of them, they are actually there basically. The Ninja Falcon Megazord on the show looked damn impressive, and looked bulkier than this slim CG abomination. There were also some differences in appearance between the movie version and the TV version, for example the Wolf Zord's jaw became the left hand of the movie Megazord, but in the show, the hands are both solid fists.


I was ready to trash the movie over the construction site scene. The kids gathered to hold off the parents from jumping, but you know the kids are smaller, so they struggled. Fred being the Tommy of this group, got Bulk and Skull to operate some construction vehicle, and turn on the water system there. With that, he sprayed all the parents with water. I thought this would snap the parents out of Ooze's spell, which would have been utter bullshit. Thankfully that didn't happen, Ooze's death reversed the spell. Though they did really draw out this dire situation, realistically the kids would've failed and the parents would've leap to their doom, but this is Power Rangers, logic is kind of a luxury. That doesn't mean some plotholes and gaps I logic are not annoying.


How did Ooze die? Oh, it's elementary, first Tommy's Zord came in and completed the transformation, they fly into outer space. Ivan launches after them, leading to the battle's epic climax. Billy being the smart geek of the group, which you couldn't tell much because of how the movie doesn't take too much time to really define these characters, as I keep saying, suggested that they use Ryan's Comet. Going to space, and lure Ooze to the trajectory of the comet. It was a challenge since Ooze latched himself onto the Ninja Falcon Megazord, leading to a repulsive shot of his CG eyes looking through the window of the Megazord's head. They struggle to break free, and surprisingly, Aisha used some quick thinking to decide this match. Pushing a big red emergency button, the Megazord kneed Ivan Oozed in the balls, causing him to lose his grip, and spin around to where the Comet came and blew him up. It's surprising because Tommy didn't deliver this final blow. The movie really establishes Tommy as basically the decider, having the final say in these battles. I assume this ties into what Johnny Bosch said of how the Ranger he didn't name, ended up getting all the action stuff he was supposed to have. On top of that, Jason David Frank got those winning blows or final acts in the battles. Except for this one, which I enjoyed. It's stupid that this epic battle ended in a crotch shot, but given the dynamic of the team being too centered around Tommy, I was perfectly fine with this. And yeah, Tommy is the leader, in the movie, and the show, but the latter would have many episodes where an individual or even a fraction of the team would decide big moments. Of course, when it was Zord battle time, that is all of them, they all come together and deliver the final blow. Or, if Tommy's in his Dragonzord (when he was the Green Ranger) or White Tiger Zord, he'd deliver the penultimate blow, and then the other Rangers' Megazord would deliver the final blow. While that is falling in line with the Super Sentai footage, where the 6th Ranger doesn't take control as the leader, Saban never changed from that. They couldn't anyways, but still. So, let the record state that in the final battle, Aisha claimed victory for the whole team. Even though it wasn't like the show where they all do synchronized hand gestures and yell out their offense, it was at least unique. Shitty CG still, but a silly fun finale.


Following on from the Zord discussion, further into season 3, it turned out that Billy actually took down a monster all by himself and with his Shogunzord (they get second Zords, long story). That's just an example how Tommy doesn't always get the final say, in fact in that episode, he and the other Rangers save for pink, were turned into bricks (another long story).


Bad CG tends to get laughs from people, but for me, a majority of the time, that doesn't happen. I tend to cringe, like in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, the CG there was just awful. It didn't cross the “so bad it's good” territory. The same thing with this movie, to an extent. I didn't cringe all the way through, I did brace myself for this, and it did lead to Aisha getting some shine instead of Tommy getting the last word in. Oh, that explosion from the comet hitting Ooze, bad CG still, but ah well.


With that, the spell is broken, I bet Fred thought his water trick worked, the fucking idiot. Bulk and Skull shake hands, proud of their dash of heroism in this. American Fred and Aussie dad hugged. Hooray, but then some sadness comes down, the Rangers returned to the Command Center, they were too late, Zordon died. But wait, Tommy riled up the troops with a little speech, they come together joining hands, and that led to not only the Command Center being rebuilt, but Zordon being revived. Logic? I don't know, this particular one is just a case of “It's Power Rangers.” I would complain, but there was a certain resurrection completely out of the blue in the Lost Galaxy season, but it looks like fans didn't complain about it, so if that's passable, then so is this.


Nearly finishing this review, I went to the Power Rangers Wiki page for the movie, and it featured differences in continuity and stuff from the show. I'll list a few notable ones quickly. Angel Grove High and the Juice Bar aren't in the movie, neither is Ms. Applebee, a teacher at the school, nor Ernie, who owned the juice bar. I'll get to one huge difference later, but I wanted to go back to the power loss. I'll repeat, in the movie they basically lost their powers when the Command Center was destroyed by Ooze, which that led to Zordon being on the cusp of death. In the show, the Command Center would be compromised and repairs would have to be done, but it didn't lead to their powers being gone. There was a time where they lost their Dino Zords, but they did not lose their powers. They were given new Zords in season 2. Since season 3 had to do some retelling, their version of how the Rangers lost their power made more sense. Having just watched this series, it's established here that they lost their powers because as they were doing battle using the Tiger Zord and the Thunder Megazord, there was a major flux in power. They were overwhelmed by a group of opponents, one of them being Rita Repulsa's brother, Rito Revolto. Alpha 5 made the decision against Zordon's judgement to boost some power accelerator, think of it like Mario Kart where you try too hard to get that engine boost as they count down to the start of the race. You tried too hard with that, boom your engine blows out a bit and you get that slow start. Here, the boom led to the Zords crumbling. Because of that flux in power and being outright dominated by the villains, the Rangers lost their Zords, along with their powers. That is definitely epic, and was more inclusive of the Rangers themselves. In the movie, the Rangers didn't factor into their loss of the powers. Here, they could've retreated their Zords and recharge, thus not losing their powers, live to fight another day if possible. They didn't go with that decision, and they got their asses whipped. I liked that more than the movie. It also seemed to make it known that their powers are linked to the Zords powers, at least when the mechs are active. So if the Zords crumble, they crumble. Later into season 3, Kimberly in particular has her power drained slowly, she was taken by evil and stuff. I don't consider that being a damsel in distress, not in the cliché sense, she was in true peril, and this all was an epic story to facilitate her departure from the show, and transition smoothly to Kat (Catherine Sutherland) taking over. So you can have damsel in distress moments if they are written well. That was the case in season 3. Anyways...


Their quest to find a new power, I prefer the movie just because of Dulcea, she was hot. In the show, they had to go to some dipshit sounding ninja automaton looking character named Ninjor. Actually I read the comparison to Dudley Do-Right, which is pretty accurate. They admittedly gave too much importance to Ninjor, saying he created the power coins, but Zordon said it was possibly a myth. It then came to be that Zordon and Alpha 5 found the power coins, it was never explained before this arc how Zordon got the coins, it was just stated he already had him and did battle with Rita using them when he was a wizard and before he got banished into a time warp. Along with the power coins, they also found a map which would lead to a temple in the Desert of Despair. There in that temple was Ninjor, the Rangers go there, and prove their tremendous character to Ninjor, leading to him bestowing those Ninja powers as well as the new Zords. I guess it's an apples and oranges thing, comparing a movie to a TV show, different paces, different storytelling methods. So, have to let it go, I just wanted to bring this up, especially since I just watched this TV arc. Actually, when I watched the first 7 episodes of the third season, I did notice Zordon's voice being very different now. I swear it didn't sound much different in season 2, I thought it was still David Fielding. I guess I was oblivious to the fact that Fielding wasn't credited in the opening theme of season 2. They give acting credits only to the Rangers and Bulk and Skull. In season 1, they give those opening acting credits to the Rangers, Bulk and Skull, and Zordon. So, woops.


Anyways, hooray Zordon is back, this would be a feels moment. I didn't have those feels, I'm a grown man dammit. Fade to the big celebration, where “I've Got The Power” played. Bulk and Skull were bragging about their heroism, exaggerating too. Fucking Fred (that's my new nickname for him) came over to the Rangers eating. A little aside, in season 3, Ernie's juice bar moves to an outdoor location. I assume that's to mirror this part from the movie, even though Ernie's Juice Bar isn't in the movie. For all the audience knows, they're eating at a random lobster place in Australia. The Rangers praised Fucking Fred, and he got all big in the head, saying “Fred Kelman, the Silver Ranger.” Then he one-upped himself, saying “Fred Kelman, the Gold Ranger.” Fuck off! There is a bit of truth in his statements though, inasmuch that there are Gold and Silver Rangers in different seasons of not only Power Rangers, but Super Sentai. In fact in the first series after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Zeo, the 6th Ranger there is the Gold Zeo Ranger. He was none other than Jason, Austin St. John returned to the show and went from Red to Gold. I am admittedly eager to watch his return as I've grown to admire the man so much, and in turn realize how amazing the Jason character is, and how he started an American legacy. I had to put “American” down, he himself would clarify that he's the first American Red Ranger, but not the first Red Ranger period. If you count Super Sentai, apparently he's number 26, which is pretty funny. Anyways, I'm going off topic. What was I saying before? Oh yeah, Fucking Fred sucks.


Fireworks light up the night as the Rangers and Fucking Fred watch on, and there's a message from some of the fireworks saying “Thank you Power Rangers.” Bulk and Skull were incredulous at that, they really thought they were the heroes in this. Classic, I had to go back though because I thought they said the final words in the movie before the credits roll. No, it was FUCKING FRED! GAH! He just yelled “Yeah” at the fireworks, which wasn't original because Tommy yelled that just a few seconds before. Ugh, I hate this kid now. Interestingly enough, the main cast credits is listed in alphabetical order with the exception of Paul Freeman, he got billed last with the “And” credit style. Specifically the main cast being the Rangers, then Bulk and Skull. Interestingly enough, Bulk and Skull, Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy respectively, take up one credit black box, just their names are flipped. Narvy is on top of Schrier. If you know the characters, Bulk is more of the leader of this duo. Anyways, I found this credit usage interesting because one, they didn't say this was in alphabetical order, I didn't realize myself until looking at the credits again. Two, this meant that Steve Cardenas and Johnny Yong Bosch got billed first. Considering that Tommy is the leader of the group, he would've been billed first, Jason David Frank. Actually, the Rangers are billed in their own alphabetical order, then Narvy and Schrier in their own alphabetical order, then Freeman. Interesting, and that's me padding this review.


Surprise! Mid-credits scene. I forgot about this, and considering how mid-credit scenes and post-credit scenes are a trend now, it's interesting that this movie precedes all that by over 10 years. Interestingly enough, the 2017 Power Rangers movie has a mid-credits scene too. So the one in this 1995 movie features Goldar sitting on Lord Zedd's throne, getting waited on by Mordant. Oh, now that I watched the start of season 3, I have to make it known, Mordant does not appear in the show, like Ooze and Dulcea, he is confined to just this movie. This is actually Goldar's only kind of leadership shine ever. He doesn't get something like this in the show, which is funny. It only lasts a very short time, because Rita and Lord Zedd enter, I guess with Ooze dead, they were automatically released from their snow globe prison. Mordant and Goldar looked at each other, and both said “Uh oh.” That's it, the rest of credits play. So, let's knock Fucking Fred off, and count this scene as being part of the movie proper. This means that “Uh oh” are the final words said in this movie. I'm not counting the lyrics of the songs that play in the credits.


While I'm on the credits, a techno remix of Kung Fu Fighting played, for fuck's sake. As a kid I never watched the end credits, so this is actually one of the few brand new things to me when watching the movie. It was nice, but still a facepalm moment. The final song in the credits was actually an original one called “Ayeyaiyai (Alpha Song).” That was ridiculous, an Alpha 5 inspired song with lyrics about the Rangers, but they would say Alpha 5's annoying “Ayeyaiyai” line. Also, running down the cast list here, they kept up the Rangers being billed first in alphabetical order, then Narvy, Schrier, and Freeman, followed by the rest of the cast. So even there, Jason David Frank was not billed first, Bosch thus was. I bring up this kind of treatment for JDF because he's...a character. It's hard to describe, he's very admirable for representing the Power Rangers brand super hard, he wears that like a sleeve, and did so before any other Ranger cast member did. At the same time, he runs the risk of being too up himself. Oh and he claims to have ADD or ADHD, which I can buy considering how he speaks in interviews and conventions, he moves at 100 miles per hour. I just imagined this credit treatment didn't make him happy. One big issue with the credits, they didn't play the Power Rangers theme, not the iconic TV version, not even the amazing movie version. Actually the credit for that on who performed the song is the “Power Rangers Orchestra.” Yeah man, I recommend listening to the movie version, and the TV version, audio sex, seriously.


Welp, that about does it, right? I still have more to say. First, I have to go back to the fight scene with them in the suits. I forgot to bring up some observations. Quickly, one is that Tommy brought out his sword, which never appeared before or after this scene in the movie. Saba is the name of the sword and it talks. Seriously, but it doesn't talk in the movie. It just flies around on its own and fires lasers at cables, dropping a large dumpster thing onto the last of the Oozemen. It barely talks in the show. A good thing, that gimmick was stupid, even though it came from the Dairanger season of Super Sentai. Also, surprising fact, the White Ranger in Dairanger, Tommy's Super Sentai counterpart...is a 9 year old kid. Apparently it explains why Tommy's first fight as the White Ranger had him appear to be shorter. I didn't notice such a difference, but that is crazy. While I'm at it, his Green Ranger counterpart in Zyuranger was actually the brother of the Red Ranger. Even more of a shock, in Zyuranger, the Green Ranger dies! There was a moment in that morphed fight scene where Tommy did some bicycle kicks, though he was doing it from his side, not with his back facing down, because then that would be identical to Liu Kang's bicycle kick from Mortal Kombat. I thought that was neat though, the same year, the Mortal Kombat movie came out. Actually, this movie came out in June of 1995, Mortal Kombat came out in August of that year. That fight scene's music also sounded like something that would be in Mortal Kombat the movie. Another note I totally missed out on, and was a theme throughout the whole movie, are these cartoon sound effects. They're more prominent in that fight scene with them in the suits, but they just sound ridiculous. Cartoon sound effects were in the show, but mainly for Bulk and Skull's antics, not for fight scenes and stuff in a whole movie.


I mentioned earlier a major difference between the movie and show. Here it is. Despite this being rated PG, Karan Ashley would call the show “Rated G with extra cheese.” The fighting though to me makes it an extremely light PG show. I stress “light PG,” because a hard PG would be something like Ghostbusters, which that is more extreme than this movie. Anyways, the big difference, the use of words like “kill” and basically intents to murder as well as death. The show being for the kids, never used those kind of words, at least at the time. There were Ranger deaths later in the franchise, but up to this point, such a concept wasn't really mentioned. “Destroyed” would be the most vicious word in the Power Rangers vocabulary. Fucking Fred said “If you don't come with me right now, our parents are going to die!” That's a kid saying that! Wow, actually I didn't pay too much attention to this major difference, it was only through reading the RangerWiki page for the movie that I realized this. That alone does show that Saban didn't have much say in the movie. They sure did have control of the money. I learned from a panel featuring cast members of the movie, that the money Fox wanted to pay the Ranger actors, didn't make it to them...yeah. It's actually interesting, in a Q&A, Austin St. John said that Jason David Frank is the only Ranger actor that had a good relationship with Haim Saban, the main behind Saban Entertainment (now Saban Brands), and still has a good relationship. Based on a pretty recent interview, JDF kind of hinted at him being part of the 2019 season of Power Rangers. So there you go, he also says that he talks with Saban Brands. I won't speculate on why this relationship is strong...cough he sucked Haim Saban's cock cough. I'm joking. Or am I?


I have a feeling I missed out on some other notes, but I think I covered the gist of the movie. I'll move on to production notes, courtesy of the Power Rangers Wiki page for this movie. Before I do, interesting note, in some versions of the movie, as well as the DVD one, they cut off the “Mighty Morphin” part of the movie's title. The version I watched this time around was a DVDrip, and it said just “Power Rangers: The Movie.” Now onto some production notes, it aired on Fox Kids apparently only once. A remastered TV edit did come to ABC Family, which was Fox Kids rebranded after Disney acquired that channel. Saying that, I'm trying to think of where I watched the movie. I have a feeling I watched it on a premium movie channel, either that or on VHS because I did not watch commercials in all my viewings of the film. If it was a premium movie channel, I assume it would have to be HBO Family. At that time I no longer had any Disney channels in my Dish Network service, I'm pretty sure that included ABC Family, I checked out that channel many years later, on RCN's cable service actually.


According to Paul Freeman, the movie was originally going to be done in the style of the TV show, but they scrapped the idea and put more resources into the production. I'm fine with that though I have a feeling this explained the weaker characterization of the Rangers. I mean you can tell who they all are but with the movie, you can only do so in short sentences, one per Ranger. I could describe them from the TV show in at least 3-5 sentences, what does that tell you? That kind of segues into this next production note, the original Tengu Warrior fight scene in Phaedos was more brutal. Kimberly was in a chokehold, Tommy was being viciously pecked, and according to one of the Tengu Warriors, a Ranger was thrown off the rocks and into the river! Damn! It was of course toned down for the child audience, but that could've worked. It would've made them in peril more visually stimulating, and thus the impact of Dulcea's intervention would have been greater. As in, she would've been saving their lives, instead of just doing all the work for them.


An example of Fox trying too hard to be different from the show, and I heard a bit of this also on that movie panel I mentioned earlier, the helmets at one point were altered to have the visors slide in and out. With that, the Ranger actors' eyes could be seen, and it was production wanting to show emotion coming from the Rangers. They missed the point of the show, it's tradition, it's from Super Sentai too, their faces have to be completely covered. They're a superhuman fighting force when in the suits, not just teenagers. From the panel, Steve Cardenas said there was also the idea of them painting their mouths silver. The helmets in the movie and the show had the mouth molds that wouldn't move. Tradition but production's silver paint idea would've looked really tacky and also seeing their lips move while wearing the helmets would've been really weird. Despite these fallacies, they actually shot a month's worth of footage with the visor modifications, and after they changed their minds, they had to shoot all that footage again! This original footage with the even more modified helmets has never been shown. It was never included as a bonus feature in any home media release. I would like to see personally, for a laugh.


Following up on that, with the Ninjetti wardrobe, you can see their eyes completely. I should've mentioned this earlier, but in the show, the Ninjetti outfit covers almost everything. You hardly see their eyes, they look like dots. I take that as a way to disguise the stunt people, meaning in the movie, that is most definitely them doing the fight scene in the Ninjetti outfit. Back to the armor replacing the spandex, the 30 pound weight of those suits actually put a physical strain on Karan Ashley and Amy Jo Johnson. They would shoot up to 10 hours in a day and wear those suits throughout. As a result, they suffered from back and neck pain, fair play to them and the stunt people for braving through those suits. I'm sure the stunt people had an easier time, but the actors, not being used to that added weight, it's admirable they pulled through.


Oh, interesting tidbit, this movie was the first time the Rangers used something other than their weapons, Zords, powers, whatever, to destroy a villain. They essentially used a comet, a force of nature. I didn't realize that tidbit, so there you go. If you want to see the Power Rangers destroy villains with their own weapons, watch the show. Otherwise you're left with this extremely convenient plot device. Yeah! That comment was never referenced before Billy brought up the idea, I don't think so at least. So wouldn't that count as a Deus Ex Machina? If I'm right about the comet not being referenced before, they should've had a scene where Billy looked up at the sky, someone comes to him, let's say Aisha, and he gives a little speech, and he fact dropped Ryan's Comet coming. This definitely could have fit in the Ninjetti section, like right after they got the suits and Dulcea disappeared. They received the powers at night, and their journey to the Great Power was first shown in a daytime setting. There you go, easy.


Something I also learned from that movie panel, mentioned in the production notes too, Catherine Sutherland auditioned for the Dulcea role. She didn't get the part as it was thought that she was too young. Interestingly enough, she actually became the Mighty Morphin Pink Ranger, replacing Amy Jo Johnson in season 3. Sutherland's character's name in the show is “Katherine Hillard.” Yeah, and apparently that was pure coincidence, the name of the character was created before she was cast for the role. Her character shape-shifted into a cat for a period of time. Sutherland also appeared in Power Rangers Zeo, doing that whole season then the first half of Turbo, as well as the second Power Rangers movie. She's Australian too by the way.


YES! Fuck, I kind of forgot about this, but I got the confirmation here, Johnny Yong Bosch did most, if not all of his stunts in the movie, including the Morphed scenes. His stuntman was injured at the time, and Bosch took the offer of doing his own stunts. I just have an increasing crush on this man. Even though he was the quiet and shy type in both the movie and the show, he admits that himself, I already feel like he left an indelible legacy on the show. I'm sucking him off here, and I'll keep doing that, I want to watch some anime he voiced, first in that list would be his very first voice acting job, Trigun. I haven't seen that show since I was a kid, so, why not after learning of this man's greatness? He's also amazing in panel discussions, great storyteller, I mentioned this already. Well, I'm saying it again, he's awesome. Oh, and Jason David Frank did many of his own stunts. Good on him, it's clear how he and Bosch hit it off quickly, as well as get into some antics together.


Going into more detail about Mariska Hargitay, she replaced Gabrielle Fitzpatrick during filming. A couple weeks of her footage was shot in the Chinese Gardens at Darling Harbour, I assume that's where they shot the training sequence that got cut out of the movie. They thought she wasn't fit for the role, and brought back Fitzpatrick, leading to more reshoots. I'm curious if footage of Hargitay was saved, because I'd like to watch that. I looked at the IMDB trivia page later and it turned out that Fitzpatrick had an ovarian cyst removed, so that's why she was replaced, to have the operation and recover. So when they got rid of Hargitay, they brought Fitzpatrick back in as she had recovered from her operation by that time.


Some note about the sets, a lot of them were built with aluminum over constructed wood frames. That sounds pretty cheap to me, at the same time the sets mostly look great.


A huge fact I never caught, there was blood in the movie. This was the first instance in the whole franchise of blood, and it was when the first beast warrior wakes up and slashes at Tommy, his gut area apparently had dry cuts. I personally can't see them, but the Wiki points them out. The dry cut status was intentional, they didn't want to show actual bleeding, the show already had some controversy at the time for depicting violence on TV. It's hilarious about that now because it's the least violent fighting based show ever. Meanwhile there were cartoons that predate Power Rangers that are straight up brutal, like Tom & Jerry and Wile E. Coyote.


There was a note about Billy's glasses. David Yost requested for Billy to get out of the glasses because the fake lenses messed up his eyesight, this also was an evolutionary step for the Billy character, who arguably had the strongest character development and evolution among the entire Mighty Morphin cast. This was in the movie and made it into the TV show. I was about to debate this because going chronological order, Billy sans glasses debuted in the Return of the Green Ranger arc which aired in February of 1995. This movie came out in June of 1995, but I have to remember that both TV and the movie were shot in Australia at one point in time, and since the movie was started first, and then overran its schedule leading to them needing to do TV at the same time. Meaning, though the episodes aired before the movie, they were filmed after production of the movie started so going by the chronological order in the actual production, Billy's first taste of not wearing glasses happened on this film. Funny note, David Yost also fought for Billy to get out of the overalls, that was a big part of his wadrobe in season 1. I miss the overalls, they were hilarious.


A movie goof that I missed. When the Megazord came together, the head was already present before Kimberly's Crane Zord came down. That particular Zord is the head, so a serious editing error. The people that made the movie version of the theme song, "The Power Rangers Orchestra:" a collaboration that featured credits of Mr. Big front man Eric Martin, guitarist Tim Pierce, former Pablo Cruise bass player John Pierce, singer-pianist Kim Bullard and former Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum. That's an interesting lineup.


Funny fact, the movie played in the UK before “The Wedding,” which was a 3-part episode that had Rita Repulsa return to the show after being banished back into her space trashcan by Lord Zedd. She put Zedd in a love spell and that led to them getting married. The problem is that the movie basically spoiled Rita's return to the show. The correct order was that “The Wedding” came first, then the movie, as it did in the States.


Whoa, a major post production tidbit. Originally when the Rangers teleport away from Phaedos, they went to the Command Center and revived Zordon, then go back to Angel Grove to fight Ooze. It was edited with the order you see in the movie, which I admit was rather smooth because I definitely couldn't tell the order was messed up. Something I missed in meaning was Adam and Rocky said “Hang on Zordon” and “We're on our way” respectively, before they teleported. I didn't really think too much of that, it made sense to say that and get rid of Ooze first before tending to Zordon. That they said it actually meant they were going straight to Zordon, but editing had other plans. Really, this change actually worked. In the show when Zordon lost contact with the Rangers, that was during the “Green With Evil” arc where Tommy was introduced and became the evil Green Ranger before being saved from Rita's spell and eventually joining the team. During Zordon's off-time, the Rangers mounted up and took care of business, they didn't focus on Zordon and then take care of business. The show tends to put saving the world over saving individual people. A similar example is with the Green Candle angle in the first season, Jason had to make the ultimate decision of whether to save Tommy before the candle burned out, or save Angel Grove basically. He went with the latter, Tommy lost his powers for a period of time (not the first time). Knowing this, I wonder if someone from Saban, or someone who knew the show well enough, made that editing change. One big issue with this though was that in the back of the VHS cover, there was an image of the Rangers helmetless, about to teleport out of the Command Center. That part wasn't in the film, but footage of that exists as it was shown in a behind-the-scenes featurette of the movie. It was also part of a sneak peek of the movie on the VHS of The Pagemaster. That scene was filmed before the Command Center set was destroyed, to go along with Ivan Ooze destroying it. Again, good decision, but they should've made sure the proof of that different order was scrubbed from the VHS box, the BTS special, and that sneak peek. I imagine that confused some people back in the VHS era,


Some IMDB trivia, because why not? Paul Freeman ad-libbed a line in his scene where Ooze destroyed the Command Center, he gave examples of things he missed while being imprisoned in that egg. The Black Plague, the Spanish Inquisition, and the ad-libbed “Brady Bunch Reunion.” That is funny. There was an advertisement in an Australian Newspaper inviting people to be with the Rangers as fireworks were being shot. That was the final scene in the movie, cheeky bastards used that ad to draw in people so they didn't have to pay for extras! The setting for that scene was actually Darling Harbour, so that location did end up making it in the film.


I was stunned at this trivia bit, because I thought I missed it, but it's a big one you can't miss. Red Hot Chili Peppers did a cover of Stevie Wonder's “Higher Ground,” and it played in the sky diving scene. What I didn't know was that the same song was used in the unaired pilot of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I haven't seen the pilot yet, but there was an episode in the Lost Galaxy season where Austin St. John and Walter Jones hosted a compilation show of previous seasons and it showed clips from the pilot. I'll check that out eventually.


The trivia filled in something I kept forgetting to bring up. One huge omission from the movie was Baboo and Squatt, lackies for Rita Repulsa, been that way since the first episode of the entire show. They were replaced by Mordant, that bitch. The voice actors for those characters, Dave Mallow (Baboo), and Michael Sorich (Squatt), were not approached to reprise their roles. Robert Axelrod, who voiced Lord Zedd, didn't pull double duty, as he also voiced Finster, who was Rita's monster maker. Finster was not in the movie as well. Apparently Mordant came in as a cost-cutting measure, why pay two voice actors and suit actors when you can just pay for 1 of each? That's a shame, but who knows if they'd get a lot of screen time. Well, Mordant was right up there up until the third act, but Goldar edged out since he had more shared screen time with Ivan Ooze. Mordant's monocle might've been inspired from Babboo, I think he had one, it would indicate that Mordant's a combination of Babboo in Squatt in terms of certain physical features. Still, the big difference is he's a pig, those two are not. By the way, Goldar's costume in the movie was great, his TV version, not so much because it was used in Zyuranger, and then shipped on over to the USA, so wear and tear, and it must've smelled bad. There was a period of time, specifically in season 1, where Goldar's mouth would either move fine, or not at all, and it was inconsistent.


They didn't do makeup on Paul Freeman's tongue for Ooze, which I guess would've been very hard to do? So Freeman would drink black currant juice and hold it in his mouth, then spit it out before each take. Dedication, to be honest, I don't think people were that laser focused on Ooze's tongue to try and spot a logical fallacy. Paul Freeman had to spend 7 hours in makeup to be Ooze, which is incredible. Fellow cast members pay a lot of respect to Freeman, he was the elder statesman of the group after all.


Dulcea had a rich backstory that was in the script, but cut from the movie. She was the sole survivor of an alien race called the Nathadians, who created the Ninjetti powers. Remember, in the TV show, Ninjor was the creator of them, as well as the Dino power coins. Dulcea revealed she was a member of the Order of the Meledan, pretty much a very old version of Power Rangers that imprisoned Ooze on Earth. Zordon was a member of that group. Interestingly enough, and I heard this, I still have to watch the movie, but in the 2017 Power Rangers movie, Zordon's backstory was that he was a Red Ranger. That's essentially similar to being part of this Order of Meledan. Interesting.


The movie's morphing order was different from the show. In the show, it was always White, Black, Pink, Blue, Yellow, and Red. In season 1 and part of 2, Green was that first spot. I had a hard time remembering this order, but I got it down now. In the movie, the order was Pink, Blue, Red, Black, Yellow, and White, putting more emphasis on Tommy's leader status since his call was last.


I never really kept in mind who was the suit actor for Alpha 5, since I learned 3 women (I think they are based on the names, no pictures of them are accessible) took on the suit. The voice was the same, at least for MMPR. Well, Peta-Marie Rixon was the suit actor for this Alpha 5, and only did the movie, she wasn't of the 3 suit acting women. She had trouble seeing and breathing when the helmet was on and would need a fish tank pump air line running up the suit's interior to help her breathe.


They cut a character named Snoggle, and the description of the character reminded me of Snarf from Thundercats. So, that he was cut out, good! He was supposed to be Dulcea's pet, and spoke in a language only she would get. Small, green, anteater looking alien. Its footage though was when it was with Mariska Hargitay. It was cut out due to that reason and it was deemed unnecessary. Huzzah.


For the Morphed scenes, stunt actors were in the suits, which is a kind of sad, but well known fact. I'm from the school of loving it when actors do their own stunts, like Jackie Chan. That's why I popped when I read about Bosch doing his own stuff. The following stunt actors were credited, but not specifically on who they doubled. So here we go: Hien Nguyen was the White Ranger, Sophia Crawford was the Pink Ranger (in the MMPR show at least, all the Ranger stunt actors were male, that includes Pink and Yellow, yeah), David Wald as the Blue Ranger (he was also the Blue Ranger stunt actor in the show), Bridget Riley was the Yellow Ranger, Stuart Quan was the Red Ranger, and Danny Stallcup before he got injured and Bosch himself filled in, was the Black Ranger. They were dubbed “Ranger Actors” by the crew. Give those guys props, especially in the fight scene that ended with them losing their powers.


One of the beast warriors, IMDB describes them as gargoyles, was in the background during an episode of Power Rangers SPD, which is really interesting. That was the 2005 season, so, 10 year anniversary Easter egg. Filming for the final scene with the fireworks was difficult because radio shows advertised this shooting day a “Meet the Power Rangers” contest. Cheeky. Brian Spicer, the director of this movie, never watched the series. He did a speedrun of it, and it really shows. I would say this didn't hurt the movie too badly.


Thankfully IMDB explains the sky diving scene. So, it cuts back and forth between real skydiving footage, which would have to be the stunt people, when you see their faces, it's definitely the main actors. Magic tricks revealed. More magic tricks, the cockpits for each Zord were created on set, but there were only 3, so two of each Ranger had turns in their respective cockpit. Yellow and Blue Ranger had one cockpit, Red and Black had the other, and Pink and White shared the third. These sure made a lot of sense.


So there was a part in the movie where Zordon explained about the Order of the Meledan, and how they defeated and imprisoned Ooze in that egg. The theatrical cut omits that, as well as Zordon going on about the helmet gimmicks discussed earlier, Aisha's headlights and Rocky's scanner. The DVD version I watched though pretty much has those same omissions, Zordon only said “Young warriors like yourself” and didn't mention the helmet toys at all. This does remind me of something said at that movie panel by Johnny Yong Bosch. A scrapped scene featured the ears of his helmet, coming out of place and basically making himself look like Dumbo, its function was I guess super hearing. If you look really close, you can spot that helmet effect on Adam but it's very quick and it was dark, which mixed with the black color made it barely visible. A good thing too.


As I said earlier, Ernie was not featured in the movie, but it turned out that the place where Fucking Fred found the kids partying and he made his rally cry, was at Ernie's Waterside Cafe. They never established that location, as Ernie wasn't in the film. The actor who played him on the show, Richard Genelle, was actually present for all of shooting, of course he was on the show when they filmed on Australia, I said earlier Ernie's juice bar stretched to an outside location. It sucks, but he would've just said “It's on the house,” he always seems to give crap away for free. There was a season 1 episode where he was at the brink of selling the Juice Bar because he barely turned a profit. I thought that as so obvious, because he threw free stuff at people, the Rangers included. Even after he had his business saved, he still gave the Rangers free stuff.


This trivia bit explained the training sequence that was cut out. It was 12 minutes long and the Rangers slept over at Dulcea's home, with color-appropriate sleeping bags. They trained on how to use their Ninjetti powers, which never really came out in the movie, hence me labeling it as an unmorphed fight. The scenes were filmed, and one of them was included in a making-of special in the DVD. That one was Tommy swan diving off a rock near a lake to try and fly like a falcon. All that footage had Mariska Hargitay, so that explains why they were cut. Despite the fact they were reshooting a bunch of scenes So, why not reshoot that? I wanted to see Johnny Yong Bosch shoot flies.


I didn't really notice this because I admit to never watching the movie, when the Tengu birds fly off after Ooze instructed them to kill the Rangers, the shots for that were copied right from Wizard of Oz. The new weapons the Power Rangers would use changed a bit from what was in the original shooting script. The Pink Ranger's Pterodactyl Thunder Whip was originally the “Raptor Ribbon,” while the Stega Stinger was supposed to be the weapon for the Black Ranger. In the film, the Stega Stinger is the Blue Ranger's weapon. These weapons were in that one morphed fight scene with the Oozemen. Again, they weren't in the show. They did have weapons in the show, but were from Zyuranger. Red Ranger had the Power Sword, Blue Ranger had the Power Lance, Pink had the Power Bow, Black had the Power Axe, and Yellow had the Power Daggers. They were more featured in season 1, as well as their laser guns. With the power weapons, they'd combine them to form the Power Blaster, which would shoot a rainbow colored final move. It's awesome by the way.


Something I never heard before. Steve Wang worked three months as director on the film during preproduction, but he quit over disagreements with producers. Apparently this was a period when they wanted to shoot in the United States. I thought Australia was always the plan. Bryan Spicer was then hired as director. The production moved to Australia due to the availability of the cast from October to December 1994 (which clashed with winter in the northern hemisphere), and location possibilities such as Sydney substituting for the fictional setting of Angel Grove. If you're curious, the second movie, Turbo, was shot in Torrance, California. Quite the change.


After Ivan blew up his Tengu Warriors for failing, he originally created a colorful-feathered "Queen Tengu" out of their feathers. In the movie, when he blew them up, they died. They failed to destroy the Rangers, so they died. I have a feeling this “Queen Tengu,” would've been some homosexual stereotype, they wouldn't risk that for the movie I guess. That's just my guess.


A look into how much more stuff Bulk and Skull had. They responded to a Help Wanted flier and ended up working as Ivan Ooze's assistants. Ivan said he wanted brilliant, good-looking assistants, and Skull responded that he was brilliant, and Bulk said he was good looking. Far from the truth, but alright. When they realized Ooze was bad news, they tried to back out, but Goldar prevents that from happening. Ivan reluctantly hires them, and he has them set up a booth at Angel Grove Park to hand out the ooze product to children. Ivan controls their minds later, and Bulk gets some ooze splattered on his face after a child throws ooze at him when he's at the booth. Bulk and Skull are freed from the control when Fucking Fred sprays them with a fire hose at Ernie's Waterside Cafe. All that potentially fun stuff was cut from the movie, but a photo of Bulk with the ooze-covered face is in an official BTS scrapbook for the movie. Considering who was featured in the movie, rather than the unfortunate omissions, Bulk and Skull got the biggest shafting. The two grew on me, and I think they peaked with their season 3 story where they become police officers. So, now being fans of them, it sucks that they got shafted.


Instead of fighting the four stone gargoyles that protected the Ninjetti Temple, the Power Rangers were supposed to fight a second, stronger batch of Tengu Warriors and their leader, a Tengu queen. The fight between the Rangers and Tengus was set to take place on and about a long rope bridge that went over a deep crevice and lead to the monolith. The bridge set had been built and was set up in front of a green screen for filming in February of 1995, but it was never used. Talk about a wasted expenditure. I liked what replaced that though, and really, the Tengus are jokes. If you really liked them, go watch season 3 of Power Rangers, they take the place of the Putties, which made me sad because the Putties were hilarious. Granted, the Tengus in the show got their own theme song, and it's pretty good too. So, give and take.


Oh, small difference I should've mentioned earlier. When Tommy makes his morphing call in the show, it's “Tigerzord,” but in the movie it's “White Tiger.” In season 3, none of those were used, they instead say their color and then “Ranger Power.” So, “White Ranger Power” became Tommy's season 3 morphing call. This really showed them sticking to the suits hard, by season 3, they had used footage from 3 different seasons of Super Sentai. Zyuranger in season 1, some Zyuranger and Dairanger in season 2, Kakuranger in season 3, and Kakuranger's animals were adapted for the movie as well as season 3. After season 3, they finally gave up on the suits and strengthened the tradition of using a season of Sentai footage for a season of their show, and change the suits according to that. A good decision, again all the merchandise and options for people. At the same time, because those original suits took up 145 episodes of the show, they are the most iconic in the franchise. Looking quickly, no season after MMPR went over 50 episodes. So there you go.


A crew member was apparently electrocuted on set and almost died. Poor guy, with all the sparks flying, all the lights (the Megazord displays alone used over 3000 lamps wired over 71 different state circuits, and 90% of the lights were tungsten), it seems like being electrocuted was bound to happen.


Jason Narvy (Skull) bought a 1965 Ford Falcon and made crew guys jealous. I looked up the car and it can be impressive, I can imagine that, but mostly it doesn't look appealing to me. I thought it would look better than Tommy's Falcon Zord. The CG one? I guess. The one featured in the show? Hell no.


I didn't know Paul Freeman's eyes are gray, he wore brown contacts. Huh, I wonder why they didn't go with purple, he was that color in every other part of his body. Oh! I thought it sounded familiar. When the Rangers fight the Tengus, the score really sounded like Star Wars. I didn't go further into that, but the trivia page noted that John Williams not only did the score for Star Wars, but also Raiders of the Lost Ark, which starred Paul Freeman. All the connections, 6 degrees of separation.


Something I'll add that wasn't in this trivia page, the Rangers weren't all that nice. Jason David Frank is a legendary prankster for example, and when he, David Yost, and Amy Jo Johnson were about to hop on a plane to the States from Australia, he egged Yost to take his Ninjetti costume. They were in a rush, and Frank didn't want to wait I guess. Because of that, Yost still has that costume. If he ever auctioned it off, he'd make a lot of money. Johnny Yong Bosch also kept a memento from the movie. A Planet Hollywood in the US had his Black Ranger costume from the movie on display, but it was missing the Frog medallion. Why? He has it. Also, Yost blatantly stole crystals that were around Zordon's body, and he naively gave it to fans at conventions many years later. He should've kept them because those are probably worth a lot of money as well. Fake crystals by the way, but still. Also, the people who received the crystals probably don't know what they have in their possession. A piece of movie history. That's just the movie alone, some of the cast on the show would steal or inherit items from the set. Walter Jones, the original Black Ranger owns a skateboard that was in the unaired pilot, and the neon sign for Ernie's Juice Bar, which would be a hot auction item.


Strange trivia bit here, the Rangers in the original script were supposed to look for a master warrior who could tell them the secrets of how to get the new power after the Command Center is destroyed. Tommy's line of “We'll find this warrior” was dubbed to “We'll find this power.” That's a good change actually, it made Dulcea's entrance less expected. Also, if Zordon or Alpha mentioned about a warrior, shouldn't they have said her name was Dulcea? There's no other warrior on Phaedos, so yeah.


That about does it, as usual I extended the review with trivia bits and going too much into differences between movie and source material, and it took much longer to type this out as a result. Still, I have a lot of bases covered, so it's time to conclude this. Having not seen the movie in at least 15 years, I did worry that I wouldn't like it as much as I did back then. I think what softened me up for the movie was not only James Rolfe's review of the series where he mentioned the hideous CGI and I got mentally prepared for it, but also just watching the show. I knew before watching the show, and just by the movie that Power Rangers was a super cheesy property only for kids. I had no grand illusions, and I easily fell into the rhythm and fun of the original series. So with that, the movie became a guaranteed easy watch. Compared to what I thought as a kid, I will admit the movie lost some of its luster on me. It's expected, I was a child for crying out loud, all of it looked awesome. I've since seen stuff that did this kind of content better...like the show itself. The show had better characterizations but that's because it's a TV series, lots of time to develop characters. The show had better effects, I mean, practical beating out CG, let's be honest, even though the practical effects are cheap, you can see the damn things. With CG, they aren't there to begin with. I'm not saying though that they should've left it as a TV show, this was definitely a natural progression from the show. It captured the spirit of the series just fine despite a lot of omissions and the trimming down of Bulk and Skull. The CG was just the worst part of the movie, maybe I'll turn around on it and laugh at how bad it is, but like Mortal Kombat Annihilation, that's kind of a low possibility of occurrence. I didn't like Kimberly having multiple damsel in distress moments. Since watching season 3, yeah she has some, well, one so far into my viewing, but 9 times out of 10, she takes care of business. The rate in the movie felt like a noticeable 7 times out of 10. Also, if it wasn't for Aisha's crotch shot, she probably would've ended up being the third wheel. Or in this case, the 6th wheel. That's not on Karan Ashley at all, you have a whole series to spotlight 6 protagonists, and this movie had to do that in 91 minutes, that's just hard to do. As far as Adam is concerned, him being good is all because of Johnny Yong Bosch. He admits his ad-libbed “I'm a frog” line did lead to a logic gap where Dulcea gives a kiss to him instead of explain what his powers were, people could assume he needs a kiss to use them then. Despite that, for the material he gets, sadly less than originally intended (there's no confirmation on which Ranger lobbied for more action stuff for their character, but my educated guess is Jason David Frank), he does his best with it. Also, he deserves praise for taking over his stuntman and doing his stunts after his double was injured. I'm very interested in watching his action movies, of course I'll indulge in the anime he voiced. Because of the ad-lib and his trooper status for taking up stunts, he's my MVP of the movie. There is a bias because I absolutely love his Q&A panel discussions, and I do love the anime voices I've experienced so far that he's made, all these make me watch him closely on the show. He admits he was a “Background Ranger,” and makes fun of that, and of course that was his first gig, and the greenness really shows, even his voice sounded really young (he was 18 when he started being a Power Ranger) and didn't sound like the amazing voice he has now. But dammit, he was the shy and quiet type on the show, so even that alone gravitates me towards him. There is a theme in the show where Rangers would get individual storylines, and Adam has had a few. This goes back to the movie not being able to give a lot of dimension to the 6 main characters. The show gives dedicated plots to them. Rocky, Steve Cardenas, got 2 straight episodes about him in season 3, and he was pretty much a Background Ranger in this movie as well. Still, for the movie alone, he was just fine. Billy, surprisingly didn't show off his intelligence much, but that goes back to the lack of characterization. Billy as a result is kind of in the middle. You have the Background Rangers in Rocky, Aisha, and Adam, you have Foreground Rangers, and he's in between them. Actually it could be argued Kimberly was in between too, but since she got into damsel in distress situations, had even a solo scene with Tommy, she edges out 4 of her co-stars. Still, very lovely to watch. Kimberly isn't a complex character at all, so a lack of characterization didn't hurt her, and it just falls on charm. She has so much charm that I can't be hard on her. So she passes in this movie. Now, the Foreground Ranger, Tommy. That's so obvious. The show makes that clear too, but with storylines focused on other Rangers, even Rocky being what the Red Ranger is always designed to do and lead the team sometimes, Tommy's position in the show wasn't as in-your-face as the movie. Despite not being billed first, which is just a case of alphabetical order, Jason David Frank is basically the de-facto lead of the movie. Does he do a great job with that? I wouldn't say so, serviceable. He's definitely legit in his martial arts, and showed that off a bit. He also did a lot of his own stunts, which is a bonus as well, though he couldn't do the rollerskating sequence. Even though JDF isn't my top Ranger, I totally understand why he was the leader, Saban's golden boy, he dedicated himself to the brand, maybe too much, and got handed the keys to the kingdom, whatever that means by Saban terms. He was also at one point the finest written character on the show, specifically the Evil Green Ranger arc, and he did maintain a famous relationship with Kimberly. By the way, I got more of a strong feeling of Tommy and Kimberly being boyfriend and girlfriend on season 3, they even kissed in a Christmas special episode. You can guess why, but still. He stayed on past MMPR through all of Zeo, half of Turbo including the second movie, and then came back for a one-off episode on Wild Force that brought together a total of 10 Red Rangers (he became the Zeo and Turbo Red Ranger), and then even came back in a mentor/Ranger role as the Black Dino Ranger on Dino Thunder. All that amounts to a staggering 242 episodes under his belt. Not too bad. Anyways, he has my respect, and again, he was fine in this movie. Moving past the Rangers, the show stealer was clearly Paul Freeman as Ivan Ooze, consistently entertaining and worked with the silly material given to him, true class and it really shows what experience can do. Fucking Fred, yeah, just by the nickname I gave him, that about sums up my thoughts on him. Not enough Bulk and Skull unfortunately, but they were fun for how much time they got. Alpha 5 is Alpha 5, I've softened up on him but he's still pretty annoying, on the show and in the movie. There's no change, his suit looked upgraded for the movie though. Zordon, since learning Bob Manahan took the mantle in season 2 voicing him, that disappointed me. I have a hard time saying he's a great Zordon voice, rather that he matched up David Fielding's voice decently enough for me to not realize Fielding only did season 1. Manahan passed away in 2000 from a heart aneurysm, so unfortunately he can't enjoy the fan love at conventions and social media. His continued existence might've made it clear to fans that he took over for Fielding after season 1, because every time I hear, read, and see anything about Zordon, it was always David Fielding. If I had not have looked at the credits of this movie, I would've still thought Fielding did Zordon for the character's 5 year run. I looked for the Zordon credit because I thought the voice sounded different, and lo and behold, different actor. Still, Fielding's head as Zordon never changed, so there's that. Except for the movie, which brings me to Nicholas Bell. Ehh? Would've been awesome if David Fielding was roped in for that role, but he wasn't, so ah well. I'll say Bell's work was...work. Nothing bad, nothing great, just there. Other characters like Rita and Zedd didn't get a lot of time, but I'm glad the voices reprised their roles. I don't know why Carla Perez wasn't booked to be Rita's suit actor. Fun little thing I learned a few days ago, I watched a Power Rangers fan film on Youtube that's famous now for being super violent, gritty, R-rated and stuff. I recommend it since I assume nobody here is really a Power Rangers fan. As a Power Rangers fan, I'll just say the name got it the attention, otherwise it's just a well-made violent Youtube video. Not bad, don't get me wrong, but take away the Power Rangers stuff, it's just what it presented basically. Anyways, Rita appears in that, and playing her was Carla Perez! That was nice to see. Mordant, don't give a crap. Fucking Fred's dad, don't give a crap. Dulcea? Yes please! I wish there was more of her, not because of the acting, that was serviceable. That outfit, her look though, sexy! She was every father's favorite Power Rangers character back in the 90s. Gabrielle Fitzpatrick said that skimpy outfit apparently cost $70000 dollars. Jesus! It's hot though.


Ultimately, I can't recommend this movie to a general audience. I think you'll only like it if you are already a Power Rangers fan, and watched the original series. Or, if you want to see a cheesy and stupid 90s Summer movie. It made quadruple it's $15 million budget at the worldwide box office, but I'm sure it got destroyed by Independence Day, which came out shortly after this. Still, a family friendly blockbuster movie with 90s stench all over it, may be worth a giggle for the non-Power Rangers fan. Given my attachment to the show, I can only judge the movie based on that combined with my general movie tastes. In conclusion, it's a fine watch. It's not classic, even as a fan I won't worship the movie, but I will never not watch it again. I would like to one day see it with a bunch of people, at a theater screening even. It has a party movie vibe to it, and there are definitely some legitimately good moments, but also laughably goofy ones that make up a majority of the movie. I still have to watch the 1997 Turbo movie, and also the 2017 reboot, but I'm sure this will stand tall as the best Power Rangers movie. Actually, I would recommend the movie if you haven't watched the show, but you're intrigued to try it out. This is definitely a nice gateway into the show. If you watch it like that and enjoy it, I'm sure the show will be even better. Stomaching the CG filled third act, it's a fun movie to watch for me.

[73north]

Rather than copy and paste - War and Peace from a website -

I would review a film I watched again today , after I took a few days off from working - Otoko-tachi no Yamato ( Battleship Yamato )

This is a superb Japanese War Film ( with English subtitles ) which I bought in late 2005 from ebay , from a Japanese seller - and never regretted the purchase - its like ' Saving Private Ryan ' except its Japanese and
its April 1945 - and Okinawa has been invaded , if that Island falls Japan will be next to be invaded ( like losing the Isle of Wight for the UK ).. the combat scenes are incredible

Note - they built a full scale replica for the Film ( see 2nd photo )
Recommended 5 stars
( see the Trailer on you tube for an idea how good )

[Sir Honkers]

Metropolis. No not Superman's home, but the 1927 Fritz Lang movie. I first saw it when I was fourteen and it inspired a passion for film history I still have. If you can get pass the silent movie era histrionics, it's still a powerful and moving story. And sad to say, still as relevant to the human condition as when it was made.

[Wendigo]

The Midnight Man (2016)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5629964/


1953 and three childhood friends find a game in the attic that when played summons a creature known as The Midnight Man, who uses their worst fears against them.

Cut to the future and Alex is staying at Grandma's house looking after her, whilst looking for a mirror in an old trunk in the attic she is joined by her boyfriend, they come across the same game and having opened it are compelled to play The Midnight Game to summon The Midnight Man, scary .... well maybe not

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3N8mUcw4_I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7jTn06itzA

[Nobody1]

JCVD (Belgium/Luxembourg/France, 2008)

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Jean-Claude Van Varenberg, a somewhat successful but ultmatively failed and aging Hollywood actor (so, actually, himself). During a botched bank robbery.

Except for the self-pitying monologue (good performance by 'The muscles from Brussels'), this film was very entertaining, very sympathetic and skilfully staged. Beat me with a bratwurst (not the one in your pants), but I like it.

Nevertheless, it is not a film I have to see twice.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130988/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z_6UfkQ-c0

[Mal Hombre]

The everyday story of an alcoholic police officer Lou Garou who becomes a werewolf,He doesn't let it stop Him laying down the law,though. Leo Fafard,Appropriately enough chews the scenery as the lycanthropic lawman in this Canadian horror comedy.The transformation scene is very much in the style of An American Werewolf but bathed in red semi darkness unlike the bright light of that classic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WolfCop

[Silicone Carne]

Tomb Raider



IMDB
YouTube Trailer

Young Lara Croft is searching for her dad on an isolated dangerous island...

I didn't have high hopes about this movie so I wasn't that much disappointed. Aaaaaaand... it's awful!
Vikander tries to look tough but doesn't seem that concerned in her non-Oscar worthy performance. And to be honest, it's not (only) a "boobs" thing but it's still hard to imagine her as the title character. Even if the Lara from the reboot game from 2013 wasn't the sexual icone she was in the first game, she was still a sexy immature doll with curves, a rich student with no fighting experience. Here she's a sort of nonsensic rebel who's practicing close combat and is a biking expert...

The all daddy plot is so common and cliche that it quickly drowns the script into the abyss of generic action adventure films, the main villain is a villain, the director isn't that good (his early northern european horror flicks were way better) and the movie looks some kind of cheap. For Christy Canyon's sake, it cost one hundred million to produce so where's the money?!

I'm not pretty sure that's gonna be a box-office hit and it'll probably never get any sequel but another reboot in five years or so. And both games from 2013 & 2015 were adult games, with gruesome and tense situations. The film is nothing more than the usual PG13 flick made for family viewing. And frankly, it's a very boring one. I almost felt asleep twice. Truly!
Tomb Raider is a worthless piece of crap that can't even be hated because it's too basic and transparent to be hated.

[Wendigo]

Monkey Farm (2017)
www.imdb.com/title/tt7255374/


A group of really annoying amateur film makers are looking into animal testing and get a lead about a monkey research laboratory that was apparently closed down but the site still exists and is close to where they are.
They visit the site and amongst the damaged buildings they find paperwork that refers to a large 6 foot tall chimpanzee called Samson. In the town they hear from two hunters that Samson is apparently still living in the ruins so that night they visit the site accompanied by the younger hunter in an effort to track Samson down.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4O5BJnUVNU

[Wendigo]

Razorteeth (2005)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435314/


A plane carrying weaponised piranhas crashes into a lake unleashing its deadly cargo who start to feed on the locals, a not-so special government agent is sent to investigate and kill anyone who knows about the fish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG0GEvpBCMA

[CARLTON BROWN]

American Made 2017

Tom Cruise's latest movie, which tells the story of a slightly dishonest TWA pilot who is recruited by the CIA to undertake special operations south of the border during the 1980s. I won't say too much more about this film, although if you liked Breaking Bad, you will almost certainly like this. Much of the story is apparently factual.

For me, this was an 8/10 and a really good watch.