Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 2 saw growth upon what the first season had built the foundation for.  Now that the characters were established, the show could focus on building out storylines and growing the characters.  It hit a bump in the road when three of the actors departed, but put in some good effort to make an almost seamless transition.  Jason, Zack, and Trini were replaced with Rocky, Adam, and Aisha through an extended story arc ranging from The Ninja Encounter until The Power Transfer.  The storylines kept getting stronger.  The character work kept being better thought out.  Everything about the show was improved with the second season.

Season 2 also saw the production of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, a film based on the television show.  The actors reprised their roles, but the story was in a different continuity.  What happened in the movie would have zero effect on the events unfolding in the show.  Well, mostly.  Some of the television storylines were crafted to allow the actors to spend time working on the movie.  Hence why we got the two episodes where they were turned into children.

Now we’re between seasons and what better way is there to celebrate that occasion than to look at the movie that the actors put so much time into.  The movie saw the main villains of the series step aside so that Ivan Ooze could attempt to take over the world.  A bigger budget, a bigger villain, and a bigger adventure came with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.  That’s what is in store.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie

Angel Grove was celebrating the passing of Ryan’s Comet with a few different festivities.  It all began with a skydiving competition that the teenagers participated in.  Tommy, Kimberly, Billy, Adam, Rocky, and Aisha dove out of a plane in an attempt to hit a target in a field.  They won the competition when they all hit the bullseye.  Soon, they were roller blading through the city and doing teenager things.

A kid named Fred idolized the teenagers, wanting to be just like them.  His dad had competed against the teens in the skydiving challenge, and Fred wouldn’t let him down about his loss.  When the time came to save Angel Grove, Fred did what his idols always do.  He stepped up and helped save the city.  That’ll come into play later.

There was a construction project underway in Angel Grove at the same time as the celebration.  The construction unearthed a giant egg.  Inside the egg was Ivan Ooze, a powerful bad guy who banished Rita and Lord Zedd into a snowglobe.  He took their generals, Goldar and Mordant, and used them to put his plan into action.

Ivan Ooze’s plan was to have his ooze control the parents of Angel Grove and use them as manual labor to unearth his Ecto-Morphicons.  They were two metallic creatures that looked like Zords but were more similar to the monsters that the Power Rangers encountered in each episode.  Once the Ecto-Morphicons were released, Ivan Ooze turned the adults into lemmings by telling them to jump off of a cliff to their deaths.

This was the point when Fred came back into play.  He enlisted the help of Bulk and Skull, as well as every other available child in Angel Grove, to stop the parents from diving head first into the solid ground.  Most of the children pushed against their parents, trying to hold them back from the edge.  Bulk, Skull, and Fred got a firefighter strength hose and a lift and began spraying the adults in an attempt to keep them from moving forward.

Now, through this whole thing, you’ve probably been wondering where the Power Rangers were.  I mentioned the teens at the beginning, but they disappeared as I went on the Ivan Ooze and Fred tangents.  When Ivan Ooze was first released from his egg, he went to the Command Centre and destroyed it, leaving Zordon near death.  The destruction also took away the powers of the Power Rangers.  They needed to travel off planet to find their new powers.

Tommy led his team to Phaedos, where they met a half-naked woman named Dulcea.  She unveiled their animal spirits and sent them on a quest to find the Great Power.  They overcame a few different obstacles on the way, but eventually got their powers and headed back to Earth to fight off the Ecto-Morphicons and Ivan Ooze.

Everything turned out well in the end.  The Power Rangers saved the day.  Fred, Bulk, and Skull led the children of Angel Grove to saving their parents.  They were all able to celebrate the victory and the passing of Ryan’s Comet with fireworks.  It was as happy as an ending could be.

There were a whole bunch of fights in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.  They varied in the stunts because the villains in each of them had vastly different methods of attacking the Power Rangers.  The movie was probably the best example up to that point of the different things that the Power Rangers franchise was able to do with battles between the forces of good and evil.  Minus the final battle, that is, but we’ll get to that soon.

The fights began when the Power Rangers confronted Ivan Ooze at the construction site.  He sent his ooze minions after the Power Rangers.  They morphed up and fought until Ivan Ooze destroyed the Command Centre.  Without the Command Centre, their powers faded away.  This was an interesting fight thanks to the new visuals provided with the movie budget.  The Power Rangers flipped, flew, and dove more than in the show thanks to the added wirework of the movie.  Billy had a new zip line type device.  And the ooze minions splattered into puddles of ooze when they hit something hard.  It was fun to watch on the visuals alone.  The one liners that were added for the movie weren’t quite as good as the mostly quiet martial arts of the television show.

Another fight came when the Power Rangers reached Phaedos.  As they crossed the rock strewn beach looking for their new powers, a team of bird monsters sent by Ivan Ooze arrived to wreak havoc.  The powerless teens had to try their best to fight off the flying creatures, up to the point where they would no longer be able to defend themselves.  Luckily, Dulcea showed up and saved them with the noise of her staff.  Again, there was an added element in this fight that the television show never had.  The minions could fly.  It was an attack from above.  Putties never did that.  It was a fun fight.

To bring a different kind of fight to the movie, as the teens were travelling through the jungle of Phaedos, they encountered some dinosaur bones.  One of the skeletons came to life and they had to take it down before it maimed any of them.  Dulcea said the journey for the Great Power would be difficult, and this fight showed how tough it would truly be.  Tommy rode the skeleton to save his friends.  It was an unexpected threat that was different from almost anything that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had done up to that point.  It was a refreshing reminder of how much more they could do that they hadn’t yet tried.

The final fight on Phaedos put the teens against some rock dinosaur knight creatures.  These creatures were the final obstacle before the Great Power.  The fight helped to showcase the teamwork of the teens as they worked together in different aspects.  One standout moment involved Billy using a vine and branch as a pulley system to lift Adam out of a dangerous situation between two monsters, and place himself behind them for attack.  In the television show, the teens tended to fight putties on their own.  Tommy would fight a few, Billy would fight a few, Kimberly would fight a few, and so on.  Those fights don’t usually have the teens playing off of each other to defeat the bad guys.  This one did, and that was nice to see.

One final fight finished off the movie as the Power Rangers, now with their Ninja Powers and Zords, went up against Ivan Ooze and his Ecto-Morphicons.  This was the one disappointing fight in the movie, and it was supposed to be the most spectacular.  It all came down to the effects.  1995 was the early days of computer animation, and as such, the CG they used for the Zords looked pretty bad.  It looked as though the effects team took their graphics right out of Reboot or Beast Wars and placed it over live action settings.  To cap it all off, the Megazord and Ivan Ooze’s Zord form went into space and Ivan Ooze was defeated by getting kneed in the balls.  Had the effects been better, this could have been a better fight.  As it is, it was lacking.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie tried some things that the television show wasn’t able to do because of budget constraints.  It led to interesting costumes for the minions of Ivan Ooze, a wide array of locations, and extra effects work.  These helped to make it stand out above the regular episodes of the television show, and justified the theatrical release.  That’s not to say that the movie wasn’t without its wide array of notable aspects.

One of the first noticeable things about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie was the licensed music.  The movie wasn’t taking the songs from the show and putting them into action scenes.  It was licensing covers of popular music that people knew outside of the series.  Early scenes featured the Red Hot Chili Peppers rendition of Higher Ground as well as a cover of Free Ride done by Dan Hartman.  The most fitting song for the martial arts action that was occurring, however, was a song called Kung Fu Dancing which was a play on the song Kung Fu Fighting.  The soundtrack was packed with recognizable music, which showed off the higher budget that the movie had.

Another part of the audio that should be noted was the use of one-liners throughout the fight scenes.  In the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers television show, the fights were pure martial arts.  They focused more on the characters’ fighting than they did on anything that was said.  There were fighting poses, different ways of being knocked down, and lots of movement without going in and out of frame.  The movie became a much more American style of action within its martial arts.  There was fluid camera movement, and more than simple punching and kicking with some flips tossed in.  The characters also cracked jokes about what they were doing, tossing in one-liners akin to something Arnold Schwarzenegger would say in one of his movies.  There were puns galore.  It was one of the more irritating differences between the show and the movie.

You may have noticed earlier that I mentioned a general of Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa named Mordant.  He was a character created solely for the movie, for no real reason at all.  Baboo and Squatt were not in the movie, so perhaps he was a replacement for their bad guy comic relief.  He was a pig looking monster who didn’t seem tough and always played second fiddle to Goldar.  This character never appeared in the television show.

Other pieces of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie that keep it out of the continuity of the television show included the costumes, Ivan Ooze, and the Ninja powers.  The costumes had a different design from those of the television show.  They looked much more like rubber or plastic.  It seemed like they had little air holes on them like you would see on the hood of a car like a Camaro, Mustang, Charger, or something.  They didn’t use these costumes much when they fought Ivan Ooze, since he took their powers away so early.  He was a villain in the movie only, coming in and replacing Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa almost immediately.  At no point in the television show was he ever mentioned.

The biggest thing pointing to the movie not being in continuity, though, was the upgrade to the Ninja powers.  The movie came out between seasons 2 and 3.  When the show returned at the start of season 3, the Power Rangers still had their thunder powers.  It wouldn’t be until four episodes in that the transition to their Ninja powers would happen, and the origin of the powers was completely different.  It involved a character named Ninjor and there was no Dulcea.  The fact that the Power Rangers had to once again discover their Ninja powers instead of simply having them when season 3 began should point towards the fact that the movie was outside continuity.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie was an interesting detour from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series, but wasn’t one that was necessary to watch.  It’s a fun movie.  Don’t get me wrong.  I had a good time watching it.  It just has no real connection to the show’s overall story.  There were major differences between the show and movie, and they don’t connect story-wise.  If you’re looking for some good Power Rangers action and you just like hanging around with the characters, the movie is definitely for you.

In the next Mighty Morphin Power Rangers post, I shall be continuing my trek through a few of the specialty things that came out during season 2 or between seasons 2 and 3.  There are three that need to be looked at, with this movie being the first of them.  Next up is a direct-to-video Halloween special called Lord Zedd’s Monster Heads.  It’s all about Lord Zedd and the monsters, so that should be fun.  We’ll see though.  Come back soon for that.