What 'Power Rangers' gets right that other superhero movies don't
Forget flying, super-strength and morphing. In the new reboot, it turns out the Power Rangers' real superpower is friendship.
Okay, that might be overstating the case a bit. But while Power Rangers may be no one's idea of an A-list property, it manages to stand out from the pack by getting right what so few other films like these do. Namely, it actually establishes its superhero team as a team.
To back up a bit, the new Power Rangers movie functions as an origin story. Jason, Kim, Billy, Trini and Zach (the future Red, Pink, Blue, Yellow and Black Rangers, respectively) are five teenagers who attend the same small-town high school but barely know each other. That all changes when they happen to be in the same abandoned quarry at the same time, at the exact moment that they uncover five mystical glowing coins that grant them superpowers.
The next day, the kids return to the scene of the crime and goad each other into exploring their newfound abilities. Eventually, they find themselves inside an ancient buried spaceship, where Zordon (a former Ranger who now exists only as an incorporeal talking head) explains the plot to them: they comprise a team destined to protect the world from the megalomaniacal ambitions of Rita Repulsa.
So far, the film has been going along a familiar track, not so different from, say, Suicide Squad, The Magnificent Seven, or Rogue One. All these movies start with a bunch of different characters who barely know each other, but who must band together for some higher purpose – and become ride-or-die besties in the process. In a lot of these cases, it's a leap. These films generally don't spend much time showing us how these characters become friends, and mostly rely on our own assumptions (of course all these people are ride-or-die by the end, because that's how these stories work) and the chemistry between the actors (of course stars as charismatic as Will Smith and Margot Robbie are fun to watch together) to sell these unbreakable bonds.
Where Power Rangers differs, though, is that its team camaraderie isn't just a happy side effect of a dangerous mission. It's the whole point. As Zordon explains, the only hope the Rangers have of foiling Rita's plans are to "morph" into their power suits – and their only hope at achieving that is to cohere as a team. So the kids train together, freak out together, joke together and even start to become friendly in school. In the second act, there's even an extended scene of the Rangers sitting around a campfire, spilling their hearts out to each other. Zach explains what's going on with his mom. Billy reminisces about his late father. Trini opens up about her inability to open up. And so on.
None of this information is strictly plot-essential. It's a scene that could have been cut for time and it's to the film's credit that it wasn't – even with the running time bleeding past the two-hour mark. By the time their bonds are tested late in the movie, it's actually believable that these people would be willing to support each other, defend each other, even die for each other. Power Rangers isn't Logan – it's too goofy to be that emotional. But it's surprisingly effective when it counts most and that's entirely due to the relationships established in the first two acts of the movie.
That groundwork also helps smooth over a lot of Power Rangers' other rough spots. Individually, the Rangers struggle to transcend the archetypes they've been assigned (Jason is the leader, Billy is the nerd, Trini is the oddball) but it's easy to like them because we understand what they mean to each other and why. Similarly, the tonal shifts are less jarring and the clumsy pacing more tolerable when there's a consistent emotional arc undergirding the entire story. At one point, one of our heroes asks, "Are we just Power Rangers, or are we friends?" The answer is as obvious as it would be in any other superhero team-up. But for once, it feels earned.
