Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie Retro Review

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers has been a force on TV for 24 years, spanning almost as many teams and billions of dollars in advertising revenue, toy sales, VHS & DVD sales, and god knows how many other things are out there with the Power Rangers logo or images on them. So in 1995, only 2 years after the series turned into a mega phenomenon worldwide, Saban Entertainment (Now known as Saban Brands) thought it would be worth dropping $15 million on making a full length motion picture. While the movie did do a $66.5 million box office and more in video and eventual DVD sales, the movie itself wasn’t one of the better things to come out of the Power Rangers brand… Till they botched it up completely with Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie in 1997. So let’s go back in time to the first time that the “Teenagers with Attitude” appeared on the big screen before we head into the modern reboot Power Rangers on March 23rd.

Title: Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie
Production Company: Saban Entertainment & Toei Company
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Directed by: Bryan Spicer
Produced by: Haim Saban, Shuki Levy & Suzanne Todd
Starring: Karan Ashley, Johnny Yong Bosch, Steve Cardenas, Jason David Frank, Amy Jo Johnson, David Yost, Jason Narvy, Paul Schrier & Paul Freeman
Based on: Power Rangers by Haim Saban / Super Sentai by Toei Company
Release dates: June 30, 1995 (United States) / September 14, 1995 (Australia)
Running time: 95 minutes
Rating: PG (United States) / PG (Australia)

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers as a TV show had a very simple formula:

• Introduce monster of the week
• Rangers face off against Putties as a warm up and to get the initial transformation out of the way
• Fight with the monster of the week till it’s defeated
• The monster grows to huge size
• Summon Megazord, kick monster’s ass, save the day

The movie does follow the same style of formula. The movie opens with the Rangers, along with Bulk & Skull, doing some sort of skydiving event to save the local observatory. The Rangers hit their marks and get the charity event out of the way successfully. However Bulk & Skull, who after a bout of vertigo, jump out of the plane late and land in construction site just at the same moment that the workers uncover a chamber in the ground. The Rangers are summoned to the Command Center to be informed that Zordon & Alpha have noticed a flux of evil energy and that the tomb of Ivan Ooze, a powerful entity that was locked away for 6000 years, has been uncovered. Lord Zedd and Rita appear on Earth with Goldar and Mordant (A random pig monster) and open the tomb that contains Ivan. The Rangers arrive late to the construction site where they meet Ivan for the first time and take on a bunch of Ooze Warriors that Ivan has created, leading to them morphing. During the battle, Ivan is able to enter the Command Center and destroy it, shattering Zordon’s containment chamber in the process. This effects the Rangers just as they finish their battle and they make their way back to the Command Center to find a dying Zordon. Alpha lets the Rangers know that while their normal powers are gone, there is another power on the planet Phaedos that might be able to return their powers as well as save Zordon.

Meanwhile, Ivan goes to the castle on the moon and captures Zedd and Rita in a snowglobe. Goldar and Mordant join Ivan out of fear as they see the Power Rangers fly past on their way to Phaedos. Ivan creates a bunch of Tengu Bird Warriors to follow the Rangers to Phaedos. The Rangers arrive on Phaedos and begin looking for the power that will restore Zordon; while Ivan begins his plan to use his Ooze to brainwash the adults of Angel Grove to dig up his ultimate weapons: The Ecto-Morphicon Titans. Back on Phaedos, the Rangers are attacked by the less than intelligent but lethal Tengu Warriors. The Rangers are overpowered till a hooded figure gives them a hand. The figure is Dulcea, the protector of the power and Phaedos, who is also an ally of Zordon. After hearing that Ivan Ooze is free on Earth, Dulcea takes the Rangers into the forests of Phaedos. Back on Earth, Ivan tricks the children of Angel Grove to take bottles of his Ooze; leading to the adults to touch the Ooze and getting instantly brainwashed. The Rangers and Dulcea arrive at the Temple of the Ninjetti, where Dulcea awakens the spirit animals of the Ninjetti to grant them a small power boost. Tommy goes from White Tiger to Falcon, Kimberley goes from Pterodactyl to Crane, Billy goes from Triceratops to Wolf, Aisha goes from Sabertooth Tiger to Bear, Rocky goes from Tyrannosaurus to Ape, and Adam goes from Mastodon to Frog (Something he feels is a bit of a cop out); complete with new Ninja style outfits. With their new powers available to them, the Rangers head out to get the Power from the nearby Monolith, leaving Dulcea behind due to her connection to the Ninjetti Temple keeping her from dying. After a battle with the Monolith guardians, the Rangers get their powers back and morph once again before heading back to Earth.

By the time the Rangers make it back to Earth, the adults of Angel Grove have uncovered the Ecto-Morphicon Titans. Not needing them anymore, Ivan commands the adults to jump off the edge of a cliff. Fortunately a kid named Fred, who is a friend of Tommy, bands together with Bulk, Skull and other children to stop the adults from jumping. While all that stuff is happening, the Rangers summon their new zords and fight off against the Ecto-Morphicon Titans, which are a giant Ant and a Scorpion. Once the Ecto-Morphicon Titans are defeated, Ivan puts himself into the corpse of the Ant Titan. The Rangers respond by combining their zords into the Ninja Mega-Falconzord. The two colossal robots (I guess?) face off and battle. The Rangers figure that a comet that is passing by the Earth will be the perfect way to defeat Ivan once and for all. Using their most powerful move, a knee to the groin, Ivan is cleaned up by the comet and destroyed. With Ivan destroyed, the brainwashing wears off of the adults and they are returned to normal.

Having won the battle, the Rangers return to the Command Center and use their new powers to restore the containment chamber, which in turn saves Zordon from death. Back in Angel Grove, the city uses fireworks to thank the Power Rangers while the teens look on; Bulk and Skull talking up their involvement in saving the adults from death. In a mid-credits scene, Goldar is relaxing on Zedd’s throne thinking he is the new boss till Zedd and Rita enter the chamber, released from Ivan’s containment in the snow globe.

To be honest, there’s not too much to talk about here. The characters for the most part are the exact same way they are in the show. The Rangers are a bunch of do-gooders with average acting chops but great martial arts skills. They are exactly like they are in the show, so there is not much reason to go into them at all. Lord Zedd, Rita, Goldar & Mordant are the same as they are in the show, the only thing being that Mordant is a combination of Baboo & Squat since for some reason the producers decided that they didn’t want to bring those two across… Or they didn’t have the money to recreate all the monster suits (Given how badly they remade Goldar, it wouldn’t surprise me). Alpha is still an annoying little shit with his catchphrase “AYA AYA AYA!” in tact and Zordon is just some old dude. You’d think that with this being the first and only time that we see Zordon outside of the “big floating head” style that we’ve come to know over the years, you’d think there would be more to him. But hey, the dude is over 10’000 years old so what did we really expect.

The only character worth talking about is Ivan Ooze since he is a 100% new creation and the main villain. Unfortunately Ivan Ooze isn’t that much of a threat as a villain. While he does knock the Rangers back a fair bit with his minions, destroys the Command Center on his own and also goes toe-to-toe with the Rangers in zord form; Ivan Ooze is mostly a wise-cracking one liner giving villain. He rips quotes from much better villains like Freddy Kruger, just without the scare factor to back it up. Paul Freeman plays Ivan in the movie and his higher than normal, almost Rodney Dangerfield-ish style of voice and talking really gives the character a unique edge that makes him stand out from your garden variety monster of the week or new threat from the TV show.

When it comes to things that worked in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie, I’m going to have to give it to one thing only: The suit upgrades. Just about everyone got some sort of new look in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie. The Rangers themselves got a more armored look to their morphed suits which makes them look more than just a bunch of kids jumping around in leftover spandex. Zedd, Rita & Goldar got new costumes as well, with Zedd losing the tubes on his body in exchange for looking more chrome plated than usual. However Goldar doesn’t get a great new look, but he still gets one. Alpha looks a lot shinier and streamlined, plus he might have dropped a few pounds too. Zordon looks a lot more like an aged mentor, which works well for a being who has been alive for over ten thousand years. The cream of the crop is Ivan Ooze, who has a LOT of amazing solid detail that makes him look like a threat and not just some usual monster of the week. Plus there are the Ninjetti outfits, which are more detailed than the ones we’d see in Season 3 of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.

Outside of the looks, the action is a lot more cartoony, which works for and against Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie. While the action has a lot more flips and spins than the normal fight footage, which works in the fights a lot more here than on TV, the sound effects are so over the top looney tunes cartoon style that it pulls the tone of the fights into being more slapstick than actual fights for survival.

In contrast, the thing that hurts Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie is how dated the whole thing feels. The soundtrack is comprised of tracks from Snap!, Devo, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Shampoo and Van Halen to name a few. Ivan Ooze, as I mentioned earlier, tend to quote movies from the era, including one of the things he hated missing out on bring “The Brady Bunch Reunion” (Which was a movie that came out the same year). A lot of 90s phrases like “radical” are used by a lot of characters, again adding to the dated feel of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie. The worst offender of all being the TERRIBLE 90s CGI zord and Titan graphics used in the third act. I know that during the time we had very basic 3D modeling to work with, but this made the minimal nature of shows like Beast Wars and Reboot look like award winners. Overall this movie has aged Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie terribly, which is something that even the TV show managed to avoid.

One other thing that annoyed me through the whole movie was how bad the face on Goldar was. The original suit, which we know they had access to at the time, had a great detailed face with somewhat broken jaw movements. While the armor part of the new suit was fine, the flat lineless look of the face really threw me off anytime it was on screen. Which is a real shame given how great all the upgrades to every other suit or character was in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie.

All dated references aside, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie is not that bad. It’s not as cheesy as the TV show, nor is it as terrible as Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, but it’s still not a great example of what could have been done with a movie budget or setting. Instead of a great epic fight story we got what felt like a double episode of the TV show with a bigger budget. Hell, it was so much like the show that when it came time to work it into the TV show (Something very few TV shows have the guts to do; with only Transformers: The Movie actually succeeding.), they removed Ivan Ooze and just about everything to do with Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie with exception of the Ninjetti outfits and the zords. You know that when things get so bad that you barely keep anything from the movie for the TV series, you know that this is a mark of shame on an otherwise great franchise.

If you’re a Rangers fan, then of course you’ll be willing to give it a shot. However don’t go into it with fresh eyes thinking that Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie will be different from the TV show at all… And for the love of god, avoid Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie… AVOID IT!! However, if you want to skip the movie and just have a laugh at how weird the movie was, you can watch this Honest Trailers video instead.

And if you really want to look into another joke video about how dated and cheesy the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie was, then you can also check out the “Everything Wrong With” video too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpaIRIJtV84&t=0s