Power/Rangers shows us an R-rated deboot of the Mighty Morphers
(Disclaimer: Saban Entertainment is on a crusade to have this thing removed from the Web, so watch it while you can! If it’s not available after the jump, you know why.)
(UPDATE: As expected, the YouTube video has been pulled, but it seems like Saban and producer Adi Shankar have made peace. The short has been re-uploaded to his page, and it is still available after the jump.)
No, I didn’t misspell “reboot” in that header, because that’s what director Joseph Kahn is calling his brutal Power/Rangers short film that’s been making the Web go a bit crazy today. If I’m being honest, the short felt more like an episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy than it did Power Rangers. Lots of blood, one or two drops of the f-bomb, and even a second of nudity have turned the kid’s show into something else entirely. On top of all the NSFW bits, we only get to see the whole team suited up in a short, choppy 20-second opening sequence. I wasn’t as blown away as the cinemascape seems to be, but the adaptation is worth the watch if you’ve ever been a fan of the Power Rangers.
Watch James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff take center stage in Power/Rangers after the jump.
What did you think? With a new Power Rangers movie on the horizon, coming from Lionsgate in July of 2016, it’s a safe bet the PG-13 film will be looking at merchandise and toy tie-ins. That means we probably won’t see a hard R-rated adaptation any time soon, if ever. Kahn’s short film may be the closest thing we’ll get.
So, if you dug this short, here’s a little snippet/disclaimer from the director unfortunately letting us know this was pretty much a one-off he did for fun:
Deboot of the Power Rangers. My take on the FAN FILM. Not a pilot, not a series, not for profit, strictly for exhibition. This is a bootleg experiment not affiliated or endorsed by Saban Entertainment or Lionsgate nor is it selling any product. I claim no rights to any of the characters (don’t send me any money, not kickstarted, this film is free).
And here he is saying he’d never actually direct a full-length film:
The irony here is that I wouldn’t even want to make “Power Rangers: The Movie’ for real. Like if I had to make a ‘Power Rangers’ movie, this is it. It’s 14 minutes long and it’s violent and this is what I have in me. If they offered me the 200 million version, the PG-13 version, I literally wouldn’t do it. It’s just not interesting to me.
If you really loved this thing, you can head on over to HitFix to read an exclusive interview shedding some light on the project, and also read how the director is getting pestered by Saban Entertainment (the production company that owns the Power Rangers rights) to the point where the original video has already been removed from Vimeo. Seems like Saban is hellbent on having the short disappear ASAP. I suppose that means there’s a good chance Power/Rangers could be removed from YouTube sometime soon, so watch it again while you can!
