By Ben McEachenTuesday 28 Mar 2017The Big PictureMoviesReading Time: 2 minutes
Power Rangers tells the story of five teens, united only by the fact that they have all failed to live up to the expectations of the people around them, discover the wreck of an alien spacecraft together in a quarry on the edge of Middle America’s Angel Grove. Amongst the wreckage, five glowing coins that – hey presto! – Save them from a car wreck and give them impressive strength. They have been chosen as the new guardians of the galaxy – the Power Rangers – but they don’t stand a chance of defeating the evil Rita Repulser if they can’t learn to fully activate their abilities.
RATED: Power Rangers is rated M for Mature Themes and Science Fiction Violence (as well as one pretty poor taste cow joke)
AUDIENCE: It’s hard to say. The first half of Power Rangers is clearly aimed at late teens and twenty-somethings, but the back half is so nostalgic it’s hard to know if it would appeal to anyone other than a die-hard fan.
WHAT’S GOOD: The opening to Power Rangers has something of the same feel as Chronicle and has a lot of complexity to the characters that’s cool, lifting it above your average teens-gain-super-powers film.
WHAT’S NOT: Half-way through Power Rangers it dips way into ‘telemovie territory’ complete with a theme song and super-powerful vehicles that ultimately prove ineffective. There’s not much here that the Transformers don’t do better. The Avengers are in no danger of having their lunch money stolen by the Power Rangers.
SPIRITUALLY SPEAKING: Sacrificial love takes a starring role in the plot. The Power Rangers don’t become Power Rangers in fact until they come to the realisation that they would be prepared to die for each other. This is the highest, purest form of love they – and it seems Hollywood – can think of. But Jesus goes one step further, to save us from the punishment we deserve, while we are still sinners, while we’re not his friends but his enemies, Jesus lays down his life for us.
RELEASE DATE: March 23, 2017