Power Rangers

If you’ve seen Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, you definitely remember the alien warrior Dulcea. But did you know that Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay was cast in the role at one point, and even filmed several scenes for the movie? Eventually, producers decided she wasn’t right for the part and replaced her. That’s just one of the mighty facts featured in the newest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

This past week, Beauty and the Beast raised quite a few public eyebrows (mostly in Malaysia) with its so-called ‘exclusively gay moment,’ in which Josh Gad’s LeFou fleetingly reveals that he like-likes Gaston. While this was not breaking news to any gaydar-equipped viewers of the 1991 original, it still made quite a splash online, with conservative voices objecting to the homosexual agenda imposing on innocent kids' entertainment and progressives leaning the other way, calling for a more meaningful expression of queer identity than a three-second glimpse of two men waltzing.

This week’s most high-profile release is the big Power Rangers reboot (I’m sorry, that’s Haim Saban‘s Power Rangers, please nobody sue me) and the earliest round of reviews has begun to surface over the past few day or so. They are, to put it somewhat charitably, mixed. The early consensus is that the film squanders what could have been remake-ready material — a multiethnic group of telegenic teens working together to form a gigantic robot that battles evil aliens sounds like a pretty hard concept to foul up — with a generic and often painfully unfunny take.

So far, the new Power Rangers movie has unleashed nine (9) whole TV spots upon us that, all together, pretty much allow us to piece together the entire plot of the movie. Five kids somehow get glowing coins, stumble upon a spaceship that grows colorful suits on their bodies, and then Rita Repulsa shows up with her magic staff to wreak havoc on their small town of Angel Grove. These teens will have to acclimate to their new superpowers, learn how to drive their prehistoric creature-shaped Zords, and save the world, all while trying to survive high school!

With a new Power Rangers movie opening in theaters in mere days, interest in the the ’90s children television show is reaching a fever pitch. You can relive the entire series in an eyeball-obliterating marathon, or eat Power Rangers donuts until your colon morphs into a giant fire-spewing monster. Or, if you want to get really crazy you can buy the original film, 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, on VHS because Amazon still has it for sale for some reason.

When the mind thinks of the densest, most sprawling narratives realized over the past couple of decades, the kaiju-influenced action show Power Rangers usually doesn’t pop up first. But a quick scan online would reveal that the series has run for a mind-boggling 837 episodes (and counting!) over the course of 24 seasons since 1993. The series has assumed many forms since then, rebooting itself as a show about ninjas (Power Rangers Ninja Storm), samurai (Power Rangers Super Samurai) and dinosaur-themed warriors (Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Power Rangers Dino Charge, and Power Rangers Dino Super Charge — kids love their dinios). It is, by anybody’s measure, a lot of television.

As ScreenCrush managing editor Matt Singer recently noted, March is now the beginning of the summer movie season. That means saying goodbye to all the middling horror movies, low-concept boutique pictures, and genre films we used to see in March and cutting straight to the $100 million dollar blockbusters that are looking for any competitive edge. Last year, the big release at the end of March was the gloomy Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice; this year we’re going to get the gentler kid’s version of that movie in Power Rangers, a film about people in bulky suits and flying machines fighting CGI monsters. It’s kind of a nice parallel.

You know when you’re taking a walk with your friends, and you find a spaceship buried underground, and you go inside for a look around, and then the front door vanishes and you’re attacked by a 2-foot-tall robot? You don’t? Well, these kids in Power Rangers sure do, in this new clip from the movie that, shockingly, is still coming out later this month.

The high temperature in New York City last Sunday was 44 degrees. The official start of summer is still 113 days — almost four full months — away.

New York’s hottest club is today’s Power Rangers trailer. It has everything: teens breaking sinks, dinosaur robots, Bryan Cranston’s giant head, and Bill Hader punching a tiny homunculus made of dirt. Not to mention Elizabeth Banks in an uncomfortable green suit building a monster out of metallic Silly Putty. Man, there’s a lot going on in this movie.