⚡️Power Rangers (2017) 🍩🦖💥

Here’s the trailer… enjoy? Or maybe use it as a warning sign.

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Non-Spoiler Rundown 🎬

Oh boy. Where do I even begin? This movie takes everything that made Mighty Morphin Power Rangers a cheesy, fun, Saturday morning icon and grinds it into a gritty teen soap with product placement so blatant it practically shouts, “Hey, Krispy Kreme paid for this scene!” No, really — the most powerful artifact in the galaxy is buried under a donut shop. Not because it’s a clever meta-joke… but because apparently “grounding” the Power Crystal meant sticking it in the middle of mundane suburbia.

This is also one of those rare cases where the movie feels like the advertisement, not the other way around.

Before this, I only knew the guy playing Jason (Dacre Montgomery) from Stranger Things Season 2 as Billy the abusive racist brother, so watching him leap from that role to this — in the same year — was jarring. And while that casting curveball was interesting, it wasn’t enough to distract me from how this film managed to both “modernize” and completely butcher MMPR.

The characters are “reimagined” in ways that either ruin them entirely or turn them into shallow checkboxes for fake progressiveness. And that’s not even counting the design downgrades — the Zords now look like rejected Transformers concept art, the suits are Iron Man-lite body armor with zero personality, and Goldar? Oh, we’ll get to Goldar.


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Character Breakdown 🎭

Jason / Red Ranger (Dacre Montgomery)
Once a good-hearted, karate-chopping leader… now reimagined as a moody, ankle-monitor-wearing ex-football star who opens the movie with a cow joke that feels like it escaped from a bad frat comedy. Not exactly the inspiring hero kids grew up with.

Kimberly / Pink Ranger (Naomi Scott)
Fan favorite in the show. Here? A cyberbully who shares private images to humiliate classmates. Then, instead of having a redemption arc, she gets petty revenge on the same girls and laughs about it. Inspirational? Nope.

Billy / Blue Ranger (RJ Cyler)
In the original, he’s an ultra-nerdy, quirky genius. Here, they decided to make him autistic — not to actually explore it in a thoughtful way, but as an easy “representation” checkbox. He’s still likeable, but it feels forced and tokenized rather than organic.

Trini / Yellow Ranger (Becky G)
They finally didn’t cast an Asian actress for Yellow Ranger — good! They made her gay — also good in theory! But instead of treating it with any nuance, the movie uses it solely to show her religious family sees her as an outsider. So much for meaningful representation.

Zack / Black Ranger (Ludi Lin)
At least the racial casting awkwardness of MMPR is fixed — the Black Ranger is now Asian. He’s one of the more entertaining characters here, but the script still doesn’t give him much beyond “mom’s sick, I’m reckless.”

Zordon (Bryan Cranston)
Yeah, that Bryan Cranston. He should’ve elevated the role, but instead, he’s written as a selfish jerk whose big plan is to resurrect himself instead of helping the team. Even when they try to “redeem” him, it’s too late.

Alpha 5 (Bill Hader)
Alpha has always been annoying. Bill Hader’s version is obnoxious in a completely different, “SNL sketch that went on too long” kind of way.

Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks)
Instead of campy evil, they went for a creepy, sexualized villain who looks like she wandered in from a different movie. She spends most of the film hunting gold like a pirate with head trauma so she can make… well, we’ll get there in the spoilers.

The Rita Repulsa Green Ranger Problem ⚡🟢

One of the boldest but most controversial choices in the 2017 Power Rangers reboot was making Rita Repulsa the original Green Ranger. At first glance, this seems clever: it ties Rita directly to the mythology of the Power Coins, gives her a personal grudge against Zordon, and explains why she has such intimate knowledge of the Rangers’ powers. On paper, it makes sense.

But in execution? It’s a problem.

For one, it undercuts Rita’s identity. In the original series, Rita wasn’t compelling because she was a “fallen Ranger” — she was compelling because she was pure chaos personified: a sorceress who delighted in destruction and manipulation. By tying her too tightly to the Rangers’ legacy, the film stripped away the otherworldly, campy menace that made her unique. Instead of a powerful witch waging war against Earth, she became “the angry ex-Ranger with a grudge.”

Second, it boxes in the Green Ranger legacy. Fans have waited decades to see Tommy Oliver brought to the big screen as the Green Ranger. But by making Rita the original owner of that mantle, the movie creates messy baggage. If Tommy shows up, is he just inheriting Rita’s leftover powers? Does his story just become “the sequel to Rita’s arc” instead of his own? It leaves less room for the Green Ranger saga to stand on its own — which is one of the most iconic and beloved arcs in the franchise.

Lastly, it felt like a “shock value” retcon instead of an organic twist. Rather than deepening Rita or Tommy’s stories, it stitched them together in a way that limited both. Instead of building hype for what comes next, it made fans question whether the filmmakers understood why the Green Ranger story worked in the first place.

In short: making Rita the original Green Ranger wasn’t just a weird decision — it was one that muddied the mythology, weakened Rita’s character, and risked robbing Tommy of his iconic arc.



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Final Thoughts & Rating 🎯

This movie is a Frankenstein monster of tone — unsure if it wants to be gritty Breakfast Club, MCU-lite, or a donut commercial. The “upgrades” to designs look like downgrades, the pacing is all over the place, and the big morph moment? It doesn’t happen until an hour and a half in.

As a Power Rangers fan, I found it insulting. As a moviegoer, I found it boring. And as a human, I’m still offended by the Krispy Kreme plot point.

Rating: -5/10 🍩⚡ Because somehow I left the theater feeling dumber than when I went in.


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Spoilers Ahead 🚨

We open with prehistoric Zordon (yep, he used to be the Red Ranger) burying the Power Coins to hide them from his teammate-turned-traitor Rita, the Green Ranger. Meteor hits, Rita ends up in the ocean.

Fast-forward to modern day: Jason gets into trouble, under house arrest, and meets Billy in weekend school. They click after Jason defends him from a bully. Kimberly’s there too, but now she’s disgraced for blackmailing cheerleaders. Zack and Trini are random loners who happen to be at the quarry when the Power Coins are found.

They all “bond” in ways that feel like screenwriter checkbox work. That awkward “I’m black” / “No you’re not” exchange between Zack and Billy? Yeah… that’s the closest thing the movie has to witty banter, and it lands like a wet sock.

They can’t morph, so they train. Rita wakes up (literally drains life from a fisherman), goes gold-hunting so she can make her monster, Goldar. And this is where the MMPR fans start crying — Goldar is now a molten butter statue, completely unrecognizable.

The crystal? Hidden under a Krispy Kreme. Yes, really. They even stop mid-battle so Rita can slowly walk into the donut shop, eat one, and savor it. Subtlety, thy name is not this movie.

Rita kills Billy, Zordon is revealed to have been planning to bring himself back, but — character growth! — he revives Billy instead. The team finally morphs,

Then fight some rock monsters pretending to be Putties, forms their Zords (which look like alien insects mated with Michael Bay’s Transformers), and defeats Butter Goldar.

Kimberly still never apologizes for her cyberbullying — she just drops rubble on her ex-friends’ car and laughs. Jason saves his dad. The Rangers slap Rita into space (literally) where she freezes solid.

We get a tease for Tommy Oliver in a detention scene mid-credits, but the movie hadn’t earned the right to bait that nostalgia.