Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Season 1 // Episode 1 “Day of the Dumpster”
This episode begins with some guys in a desert finding this random space object that they say looks like a dumpster, opening it and then letting all the evil out. Umm… yeah. I’m pretty sure that there were protocols for such things even back in 1993, where you couldn’t actually touch it until someone with half a brain showed up to take charge. But yeah, these guys from the beginning should be the real villains or even try to stop Rita Repulsa because, hey, after all, they let her out.
So Rita Repulsa decides to take over Earth for unexplained reasons (I assume because she’s heavily overacting) and we get a group of teenagers brought aboard a space vessel and told they are the chosen ones. Okay, so when they were magically teleported from their normal everyday lives onto the space ship, they didn’t seem to care. Then, a robot appears. Still not phased. Then a giant head on a screen appears and explains he’s stuck in a time warp or some such scenario and they’re all just nodding their heads like this is something that happens every day. Why aren’t any of them freaking out and having heart attacks?
So we have a battle scene against the putties, and then they have to form the Megazord to face a giant Goldar. You know, back when he was handing out the dinosaurs for each Power Ranger to summon their power from, I’m surprised no one spoke up and wanted to be a different dinosaur. Oh well. I guess I’m the squeaky wheel.
So in this episode we learned that nothing can affect the 1990’s Gen X teenagers. Apparently they can literally be sucked up onto a spaceship with real aliens and all that jazz and they just shrug it off.
As far as the characters themselves go, there are five. They all actually wear the colors of the Rangers they are about to become, which is kind of funny, but, hey, little nuances like that seem to be popular in any form of storytelling, right?
What bugs me is that when I was a teenager I didn’t have four really close friends. If I did, I would have clearly been the Billy of the group. So that leaves me with one girly-girl, one Asian girl, a black dude and the popular karate loving dude to be my clique. Yeah, that wasn’t happening either when as a teen I only ever remember having one black kid in my entire school. (And he moved)
Now we all know that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is “influenced” by a Japanese show. But to look at this objectively from the standpoint of someone viewing it for the first time and not really knowing that (Obviously if you know about the Japanese version, you’d know it seemingly goes on forever, so thus this version should work as it has a lot of source material to borrow) The scenes of fighting weren’t that great, but seeing the zords turn into a megazord would probably be the only thing to keep someone’s interest in this show. Otherwise, the acting is pretty terrible, there isn’t a lot of plot or character development so far (I mean, the kids decide to quit at one point and as a viewer you have to ask yourself why you should care that they do) and quite honestly if I was watching this as a first ever episode I probably wouldn’t go back to it. Luckily I know that it only gets better from here.
In this episode we also learned the three conditions to being a Power Ranger:
1) You can’t use your powers for personal gain.
2) Don’t fight unless Rita provokes it.
3) Never reveal your identities.
Thus far, number three should be a breeze because aside from Skull and Bulk we have yet to really see anyone else with a speaking part in this show. They don’t have that sixth, suspicious hanging on friend to try to keep it from. They don’t even appear to have families. The world is coming crashing down and everyone thinks it’s a huge earthquake? No, my mom won’t mind if I’m teleported into a spaceship instead of somewhere accounted for and known to be safe.
Number one basically says that these guys are the good guys, but at the same time I’m not really sure what they could do without potentially leaking their identities anyway. Let’s say Billy wanted to get a sports car, so he morphed and robbed a bank. Being that he is just a teenager, wouldn’t everyone then be all like, “Hey, Billy, where’d you get the car?”
The second one of these rules is the most ridiculous of them all. I know I’m thinking way too much into all of this, but that’s what I do. Now let’s say, hypothetically, an elderly woman was being beaten and robbed by a gang of thugs. And all five Power Rangers happened to be walking by to witness it. Do they stop and ask the thugs if they’re aligned with Rita Repulsa? When they say no, do the Power Rangers just then say, “Sorry, grandma, we’d love to help, but no Rita means see you later”?
I understand the idea of not confronting someone and using their powers as self defense, because that’s what karate is in a lot of ways, but at least they could have simply been told not to initiate a fight but still be allowed to protect people from non-Rita related evil.
All right. Onto Episode 2.
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