Turbo: A Power Rangers movie.

What I like the most about Turbo is that it’s not as much of a sequel as it is a movie long first episode of the new season of Power Rangers. One of the things I hated about the first movie is that it, in the overall spectrum of the Power Rangers saga was a waste of time. I love the movie, one of my fav watches of all time, but I thought it sucked that when the next season of Power Rangers came out they acted like the movie never happen. eventually the new powers and Zorids from the movie would appear on the series but they created a new story all together to explain them rather than using the origin from the movie. that was weird to me. I herd that the movie did not do well and I wonder if that had something to do with it.

I must have not been the only kid that thought this was weird as for the second movie they used it as the beginning of the show. If you watched the first episode of Power Rangers Turbo they do a flashback that shows clips of the movie and bam you are all caught up.

Now the ironic twist of this is the fact that this movie is just a 90min episode of Power Rangers Turbo makes it god awful. Everything that made the Power Rangers a great show was only met to be done for 30mins at a time. Turbo had it’s moments when it tried to develop itself and get more into depth, using the budget of the movie to broaden the world of the Rangers. When they went to Africa it actually looked like they went to Africa. The Rangers did not have to work out at the Juice bar they had a marshal arts arena to do it.

Then you had moments that for me did not transfer well into movies. Like Argo, some little person in a monster costume who has healing powers. They tried to give all the monsters in costumes more screen time  they did not need when all we really need them to do was go after the Rangers, grow and get destroyed by the Rangers. This Argo was actually a good guy the Rangers were projecting from the bad guys but even Alpha 5 does not get this much airtime. I don’t need to know anything personal about Alpha and if I can’t get it from him I’m not gonna want to know it about someone else.

The only thing that made this movie feel like a movie is the cinematography that was obviously done on film and the art direction that did showcase larger sets than you would see on a TV series. Everything else was not changed from the series. Not sure if this was because of less money than the last film or to assure the continuity from film to series, or a little bit of both. They kept to standard spandex costumes (although I myself liked the armour from the Mighty Morphin movie I herd others did not).

Also did not like Justin as much as I should have. I understand the reasoning of having a Power Ranger who reflects the demographic of the viewers watching the show, this little brat stumbles onto the powers and everyone seem to be ok with it. One thing I realized is that it makes Zordan’s portrayal in the 2017 Power Ranger movie make sense. The guy seems to have not trouble putting underage humans in danger for what he thinks is just reasons. Now with Turbo he goes even younger and the way that Justin just overheard who the Rangers are was enough to allow him on the team. This guy would not make it in a 2020 version of Power Rangers, he’s only a step up from a pedifile.

Also, the car zoids were very lame. Could they have done better? Maybe not, after all they still have to use the footage from the Japanese counterpart, but man for a movie about cars the cars were not cool looking.

I end with positive note, however. It was great fan service to have the original Red and Pink Ranger in the movie. I remember when the first movie came and they released some marketing that suggested the orginal Red, Black and Yellow Ranger were going to come back, but they didn’t (Maybe that was why the first movie failed?)

The idea of Turbo is great but implanting the idea did not work for me