Original vs Remake: Power Rangers

Call me weird if you like, but I like Power Rangers. It's the cheesiest TV show on the planet (and has three million seasons) but it's also lovable. Who doesn't like teenage dinosaur ninjas and giant robots and monster? So today we're going to be comparing what I've seen of the TV shows with the movie they made and seeing how it translated over. It's morphin' time!

Plot

Original: The TV show episodes are pretty similar every time. The person they're fighting sends a monster after the Power Rangers, along with a bunch of minions, who they fight, get almost defeated, and ultimately kill. Then he or she is grown to the size of a skyscraper and the Power Rangers have to get out their zords and defeat it again. The fun part of the episodes is where they add various personal conflicts between the Rangers and their regular life and such.

Remake: As can be expected, they grounded the new show more in reality, spending more time building characters and plot than just fighting monsters, which is good. This one follows five delinquent teenagers as they discover special gems that make Power Rangers and their fight against Rita Repulsa. It's a lot more serious than the original, but not terrible.

Characters

Original: There are always five original Power Rangers- Billy, Kimberly, Trini, Jason, and Zack (in the original show. Every new show has different characters). But they always get more until there are like ten of them in all the colors of the crayon box. Most of the time the shows spend too much time fighting monsters to do much character development, but there is some. And I'm not even going to start on the original villain, Rita Repulsa, who made monsters out of clay then when around shrieking about having a headache when she loses. Hyde, though, from Dino Charge, was awesome.

Remake: The remake reuses the names of the original characters and ethnicities, but making Billy African American and autistic and Zack Chinese. It was fun because they made the characters a little more real and that helped the audience relate better. Although I feel like they could have done without the delinquent part. As for Rita, she was okay, but creepy. (Also, can I just mention how much this movie is like Lemonade Mouth, but with martial arts instead of music?)

Old vs new Rita Repulsa

Setting

Original: They always take place in fairly generic towns with all the normal town sorts of things. The school features heavily and so does the surrounding countryside. Not a lot to mention there.

Remake: This also takes place in a normal kind of town called Angel Grove (the same as the original show) with all your normal town stuff. It's not that much different than the original show's setting, really, just with more product placement.

Other

Original: The shows are well known for their corny brand of humor, making jokes and puns the whole time they fight bad guys. It can be annoying (and the puns are bad), but it's a trademark.

Remake: The biggest problem the movie had was striking that balance between the original show and a more serious movie. That led to it not always having the same tone, with some scenes being overly serious and others full of humor. But they did try, which gives them a few points.

Which Is Better?

Ultimately, I think it depends on what you want. If you want something more lighthearted, the show is better. But the movie has its own virtues and did better than some remakes that have been tried. (The Max Steele movie, for example.)

Have you watched either Power Rangers? Which do you think is better? Tell me in the comments.

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