Saban’s Power Rangers (2017): A Dumpster Fire Reboot?

Power Rangers franchise needed a Breakfast Club-style coming-of-age drama — and brought in Matt Sazama (yes, the same guy who’d later co-write Morbius and Madame Web) to write it. In 2017’s Saban’s Power Rangers, five delinquent teens in a dying mining town stumble onto glowing coins in a cave and are immediately expected to save the world, despite barely surviving a team-building exercise without someone storming off.

Join Dallas and John — one a lifelong Power Rangers kid, the other coming in with zero nostalgia to protect — as they morph through the multiverse of feelings this movie gives them, from a surprisingly great performance from Billy to some seriously questionable tonal choices, and land on a verdict using their signature four-shelf rating system. Does this reboot honor Angel Grove’s legacy, or does it belong strictly in the dumpster?

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This week, Dallas and John watched Saban’s Power Rangers, the 2017 reboot directed by Dean Israelite. Dallas grew up on the original series. John didn’t. That split in background shaped a lot of the conversation. The following is a collection of quotes from the episode, but we highly recommend you listen to the entire thing.

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

Much of the non-spoiler conversation centered on how far the movie strayed from the source material. Dallas, speaking as a longtime fan of the franchise, walked through how the core team was reworked:

“As a fan of… Power Rangers, they fundamentally changed all the characters to the degree. Jason’s no longer a martial arts expert who has good morals and standing. He’s a football jock that blew his knee and was kind of rebellious. Kimberly was still kind of a cheerleader and she was a butthole and she got herself thrown off of the team… Zach is a fun loving pop dancing dude. And this guy was just kind of a maniac.”

The suits got a more favorable read. Dallas, still working through the same fan lens, argued they held up better than the originals, though not without a gripe about a design detail carried over from the comics:

“The suits were actually kind of lit. And dare I say, for the most part, I think they were better than the Power Rangers suits from the Power Rangers of the movie from back in the day… For whatever reason, every time they were illustrated, be it in comics, whatever, they cut their coin medallion symbol in the middle of the chest. And in the movie, they did the same thing. Thought it was stupid, it looks stupid. There’s no reason for it whatsoever.”

Spoiler-Filled Discussion

Once the show hit the spoiler section, the conversation split along the same fan/outsider line established earlier. Speaking again as a fan of the source material, Dallas zeroed in on how badly Jason’s character had been rewritten:

“As a Power Rangers fan, you’re going, this isn’t right. This is not Jason in any form. And they tried to give him this noble aspect later where he didn’t give up his friends, but there still was no real point to anything… This movie was just poorly written.”

John, who identified himself throughout the episode as coming in with no history with the franchise, offered a different diagnosis of the same problem, one about the script itself, not the fandom:

“I can’t reliably speak to the fandom tropes that they did or did not hit. What I can say as a blank slate third party, is that this movie felt like it was written by somebody who said, hey, let’s make a gritty Power Rangers movie, and didn’t approach the script writing to be anything beyond just that specific idea.”

That outsider perspective came up again later, when John described watching the movie with no nostalgia to lean on:

“I’m frustrated watching this movie because I can see how it could have been better… unless you were a part of that fandom, there’s not a whole lot for you to hang on to for the first parts of this movie. It frustrates me as someone who wasn’t a part of the initial fandom.”

Final Verdict

The Bottom Shelf Podcast rates movies on a four-shelf scale: Top Shelf, Middle Shelf, Bottom Shelf, and Dumpster Fire.

Dallas gave his verdict:

“Well, John, as I’ve said, in this podcast, this is not good. I would put Dragon Ball Evolution above this… I bought this movie for 50 cents from the library… I’m gonna put this on the bottom shelf. Like the edges are slowly melting from the dumpster fire… this is not good, John. Dumpster fire.”

John gave his verdict:

“Complete trash. This movie’s trash… The only redemptive quality about this movie was Billy, and I’m willing to burn Billy’s part just to make this movie cease to exist. This movie’s garbage. I hated this movie… In my unholy trinity of movies, the mist will forever be my most hated movie of all time, but this is sitting in second place alongside Billy Madison… I can relate so much to having somebody just completely spoil something from your childhood.”

Weak Connection

“Today’s weak connection is that… this moment in the movie where Kimberly is talking with Jason, she reveals that she was a butthole, she did something inappropriate… And Jason’s talking to her, he goes, look, you did an awful thing. But it doesn’t mean that you have to live your life as an awful person. And aspect of redemption really is something that’s important. And I wanna point us to 2 Corinthians chapter five, verse 17… Christ is therefore, he loves you, he can redeem you. He can transform you and help you become who you’re supposed to be. And as Christians, our job is to restore people.”