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I have never been a huge Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fan, I watched a fair bit of the first couple seasons way back in the day, and basically nothing after that, I know literally nothing about the teams that came after the first one and for the most part have been pretty content with that situation.

But the show does stick with you, the theme song, the silly villains, the earnestness. I did see the original movie in theaters way back when, it was terrible but I had fun. But since then I pretty much ignored it, and was prepared to do so again with this new movie.

Then I watched the trailers and despite myself got interested, they were treating it seriously almost, like putting effort into characterization and shit, telling an origin story that was more than "find me five teenagers with attitude", and making a villain be just slightly more nuanced than "It's time to destroy the Earth!", but only slightly with that last bit, as the villain does wake up after sixty five million years and proceeds to attempt to destroy the Earth with little to no hesitation.

It's basically a reboot of the original series, our main five are now kids in detention, they do indeed have attitude, but they are pretty nice folks for the most part. The villain is still Rita Repulsa, and with a name like that you'd think her old friends would have seen this coming. Zordon is still the floaty face, there is still a wacky robot, though it seems to be more K2 inspired this time, including the penchant for violence. It's all different enough though that it isn't a retread, Zordon is not exactly all knowing, nor even right most of the time, but there are good reasons for that.

Anyway, if you've seen the trailers you know the gist, the kids stumble across strange coins, they get powers, they learn about themselves and each other and become the best of friends just in time to wreck the villain's plan and set up for the sequel. But it is just so damn charming, the actors carry themselves well, and Elizabeth Banks hams it up as Rita Repulsa almost as much as the original did.

The cast has been mentioned before, but I should go over it again, of the main five there is exactly one white guy, he is the leader and POV character for the movie, but the rest of the team gets plenty of screen time as well, the remaining characters cover multiple ethnicities, sexualities, and neurotypes, and does so in such a way as to not feel like they were shoehorned in, they are much more than their label, but their specific backgrounds all work to make the characters better without having them be nothing more than "the asian one, the black kid, the lesbian". The casting was strong and is something I think studios are slowly starting to figure out actually works, but obviously we do have a ways to go there.

It isn't a perfect film, as much as they try, the silliness of the concept overwhelms the attempts to show how serious the situation is, I mean yes the world is at stake, and the villain is deadly, but also her monster is a giant made out of gold, and is being fought by five dinosaur robots smashed together, sometimes it overcomes the suspension of disbelief is what I am saying.

Anyway, I liked it, I will see the sequel if they make one, I recommend you check this out if you like MMPR, Sentai stuff, or silly action movies with good casts. Definitely a lot worse ways to spend an evening.