The series of our childhood are slowly becoming fertile ground for new projects. A few years ago we saw the short Voltron: The End — a dark take on the famous robotic defender. Now it's the turn of POWER/RANGERS, with none other than Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck in BSG) playing the Pink Ranger, and James Van Der Beek. Gunshots, fights, lots of blood and dead Rangers set the pace, but guess what? Saban already wants it off the Web…
Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm the right person to add something about the Power Rangers. I was 12 or 13 when they appeared on television, and I thought they were horrible. My tastes were much more focused on anime back then, so the Power Rangers were always ignored while Fox Kids repeated their episodes to boredom, at all hours. We all know the franchise's ability to recycle the 2,200 seasons (maybe more, I'm not sure) of the Super Sentai saga, and unbelievably, the Power Rangers are still as alive as ever, with a new series called "Power Rangers Dino Charge" that started airing a couple of weeks ago. However, in the last few hours something related to the Power Rangers emerged that is far from the "heroic" tone aimed at the little ones. (Note: NSFW, not suitable for minors, etc.)
What you just saw is POWER/RANGERS, directed by Joseph Kahn and produced by Adi Shankar. The actors' English is a bit hard to follow in some parts (and there are no subtitles for now), but from what I've gathered so far, we have Katee Sackhoff taking on the role of Pink Ranger, while James Van Der Beek is Rocky, who seems to have switched sides when the Machine Empire started winning the war. From there we see the brutal fate that all the Rangers faced. The Red Ranger was Kimberly's husband for eight hours, until they left him like a colander. Bulk and Skull got an "upgrade" from school bullies to traitors. Zack ended up addicted to cocaine, making gym videos and playing superhero for the Empire. Billy became a multimillionaire, although that didn't help him much. Trini appears dead, without further details. And Tommy spends his time playing detective, to find an unpleasant surprise at the end.
Why did Shankar make something like POWER/RANGERS? His explanation is that a group of teenagers turned into weapons to fight an intergalactic threat would only create a group of very disturbed adults, and if we go by the content, there's no doubt he captured that essence. Personally, I'd tell you to take your time to watch this short, but there's a problem: Haim Saban and his legion of lawyers have already raised the alarm. The version published on Vimeo, "barely" a bit more NSFW than the YouTube one, has already been removed from the Web, and the one we share here will remain online until the "cease and desist" hits Kahn and Shankar on the head...
