It was a nice hit of nostalgia and a decent enough Power Rangers plot, but it definitely had some deficiencies.
WARNING SPOILERS
Pros: + The ranger suits look amazing + Use of Trini and long overdue dedication to her + Minh Kwan has a decent story + Walter Jones remains incredible + Alpha 9 is perfect + The way they remove the rangers who aren't there feels like classic Power Rangers, part Terror Toad and part Peace Conference + A lampshade on Billy & Aquitar towards the end + The billboard + Down the road + Barbara Goodson
Nitpicks: . The acting for Minh Kwan. I don't blame the actress; it's clearly the same sort of direction current casts get. I was getting huge Beast Morphers flashbacks from the way she had to emote. Great fight scenes. . Budget. It makes sense that this passion project doesn't have much money. The huge lack of extras, limited cast, empty sound stages, CGI that came from a PC game that runs on Windows 95 (yet still looked better than the first movie!), and music rights. There was an emptiness to it all, especially in the graveyard and command center. Not a negative because it's the budget.
Cons: - David Yost's acting. I don't know if it's past trauma, old age, pain, heavy amounts of botox, or medication, but he was an absolute mannequin the entire time that was super distracting as a main lead. Jones, Sutherland, and Cardenas were actual people with expressive faces. I feel like I'm bashing but I also feel like... hmm. Like, anxiety and vanity sent him to go plastic before the shoot because he seemed mostly natural from some con vids I saw a few years back so this is definitely a recent choice. I love Billy and he is one of my favorite rangers, and Yost is a wonderful human being, but there was something so stressful and upsetting about his whole being here that I can't not mention it. - The CGI Megazord battle. I get it. You want to include it. And the CGI summoning of the zords was actually really good, but I think setting it on the moon to try and hide its flaws made it look worse than it actually was due to the lighting. - The Command Center set. It was just too empty. Why did it need to be so wide? Why was the room so empty. It had two consoles, Zordon's tube, a viewing globe, and an endless expanse of blue. Absolutely terrible set.
I enjoyed it well enough and got nice hits of nostalgia. I'll definitely watch it again and just wish for it to have at least a few extra thousands in budgetting, if not hundreds of thousands. The effort was there and I'd love to see a sequel.p
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"In my headcanon, some staffer saw Trump pull out his phone and start typing so they just Terry Tate Office Linebacker'd him out of his shoes." - FFD