Pilot Review: Power Rangers Megaforce

Over the weekend the newest addition to the Power Rangers family aired on Nickelodeon: Power Rangers Megaforce, adapted from Tensou Sentai Goseiger  Of course I watched it, and….I have mixed feelings. There’s some good stuff here, don’t get me wrong. I did enjoy the first episode but…well here’s the basic plot.

When aliens invade the Earth 5 teenagers are chosen by a giant head and his robot sidekick in a secret headquarters to fight them. (The aliens, not the head and the robot.) The teens become Power Rangers and do battle with amazing powers and weapons given to them by their “morphers”, when they aren’t hanging out at Ernie’s anyway.

See, something about that description sounds so…

Oh, right.

It’s not just the basic premise of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers that’s stolen, there are actual lines! When the Rangers first get into a battle, the Red Ranger remarks “Gosei (our Zordon stand-in) said these morphers would give up power. I say we use them”. At the end of the episode the Pink Ranger jokes that she can’t agree to sign up because of how her hair gets messed up inside the helmet. And those are just the ones I caught. Granted Pink Ranger’s line here is better than Kimberly’s in the original but it still sticks out like a Megazord in a high-school robotics competition.

The question is of course, are these blatant rip-offs (and some more I’ll be mentioning) of the original Ranger series balanced with enough originality. Well, future episodes will tell but there are some ideas worth looking at. For example, the new Ranger base appears to be cave-like, just as in Power Rangers Dino Thunder but Tommy and Haley had a better decorator while the new Ranger HQ looks more like the Wizard’s from Captain Marvel/Shazam! than a “Batcave”. There’s also a huge exhaust fan for some reason. Gosei was supposedly recruited by Zordon to watch for another alien invasion but he certainly didn’t get the same high-tech base. Just a slab with a built-in iPad (or possibly a Microsoft Surface tablet) and two shelves with the Ranger keys from the next Sentai, which according to the Power Rangers wiki will be used in Super MegaForce, and I’m hoping this isn’t going to become a trend and is just a way to catch up with the Sentai series.

But let’s look at the characters. There’s only so much you can tell from one episode but we’ll do what we can:

• Red Ranger: Troy Barrows> Yes, not only do I finally get a Power Ranger namesake but he’s the RED Ranger! How do you like THEM apples! Troy is the new kid in town and doesn’t interact with anyone until they’re all whisked away to Ranger HQ. I’m betting this is going to come into play or will go the other way and be completely ignored. He has to lead four teens he doesn’t know while trying to get used to new surroundings. There’s some potential there, but not enough yet to not connect him to Jason, right down to a strong interest in martial arts.
• Black Ranger: Jake Holling> He likes soccer, which would connect him more to former Turbo Ranger Carlos, the only other thing we know about his is that he has the hots for the Yellow Ranger…which reminds me of Carlos’s mentor and former Black Ranger Adam but it’s been long enough since the previous Ranger romance…if it isn’t dropped like a hot potato like Lost Galaxy. Seems like a nice enough guy and friends with the Blue Ranger (Wild Force…hey, it’s not my fault the show has me looking for these connections). Now we need a Ranger named Leon. If you don’t get that reference, neither do most of my long time readers I’m sad to say.
• Blue Ranger: Noah Carver> The obvious Billy replacement right down to the glasses. But he’s the black guy now because the “obvious”–to everyone except me–racial overtones of making the black guy the Black Ranger. I’m waiting for him to invent the communicators that accidentally connect to the teleportation device, but if he builds a flying car I’m facepalming harder than Pink’s reuse of the “can’t join because of my hair” prank. Not much else here outside of some potential disagreements with the Pink Ranger. At least he doesn’t spit out a lot of huge sciencey-sounding words that need to be translated.
• Pink Ranger: Emma Goodall> Environmentalist, photography and BMX enthusiast. I’m guessing she’s going to be the catalyst for most of the private life subplots because of all those activities. She’s not the valley girl that Kim was which made the prank fail even with a better delivery. I like her, though and her tangling with Noah over nature vs. technology should be interesting development fodder for both of them as they learn the two CAN work together. Plus she owns a SLR digital camera.
• Yellow Ranger: Gia Moran: I know absolutely nothing about her outside of being Jake’s love interest. She doesn’t seem like a bad person and I can believe she and Emma are friends but that’s really all I have from her.
• Gosei and Tensou: Our stand-ins for Zordon and Alpha. Nice rework of the “teenagers with attitude” bit from the first MMPR episode by the way. Gosei was charged by Zordon to keep an eye out for aliens and form a new team. Considering how many aliens have landed on Earth since Zordon’s sacrifice he’s really been slacking off. Tensou isn’t a blatant Alpha 5 ripoff beyond “robot sidekick to a giant head”, which is now implanted in a wall rather than floating in a tube. (If Gosei is supposed to from Eltar like Zordon they’re a weird bunch over there.) Tensou does, however, resemble a Kinect connected to one of Johnny 5’s old bodies in Short Circuit so I’m not impressed. We’ll see what happens with these guys as well.
• Warstar: Our enemies for the series, using a bug motif (waiting for “Edenoi” to be namedropped next episode, where hopefully we’ll get the backstory on these guys) and referring to their henchmen as “Loogies”, my nomination for the weakest cannon fodder trooper name in Ranger history. Hopefully next episode will flesh these guys out.

I do have my disappointments (forgot to mention the theme song is just another rework of the Mighty Morphin’ theme, which is becoming a horrible trend since Samurai) but overall I thought it was a strong enough pilot that I’m going to be watching for at least a little bit longer.

However, as an open letter to director Jonathan Tzachor, please don’t keep ripping off the previous series. The franchise has done different things each season/series, especially starting with Power Rangers In Space. I don’t want a retread of the original. That’s out on DVD and available online. It’s easy enough to find. I want a new series that continues to expand the universe and mythos/saga of the Power Rangers. I know you’re a Sentai fan as well, which is why Samurai is so close to the original, and I’m assuming you took Megaforce far from GoSeiger because Sentai fans seem to hate it for some reason. But instead of remaking Mighty Morphin’ how about making a completely original series and plot? I don’t care if this is the franchise’s 20th Anniversary. That doesn’t excuse the laziness of the theme song or taking WHOLE LINES from the first series. Make Power Rangers Megaforce into its own creation and you’ll do a better job paying tribute to the franchise…by building it even bigger and better.