“Power Rangers” fans, prepare to have your collective childhood morphed because your favourite 90s kids show just got a mighty morphin’ makeover. For real.
While Lionsgate is hard at work making a big screen adaptation of “Power Rangers“, a new 14-minute “Power Rangers” film was released on YouTube recently.
The work of art, titled “POWER/RANGERS” is produced Adi Shankar (of “A Walk Among the Tombstones” fame) and directed by Joseph Khan, and it offers a glimpse of what a full-fledged, gritty “Power Rangers” movie would look like – their own interpretation, of course.
But that’s not the best part!
“POWER/RANGERS” stars James Van Der Beek (of “Dawson’s Creek” fame) and Katee Sackhoff (of “Battlestar Galactica”fame ) as former rangers at odds in a bleak future controlled by the machines.
Instead of the multi-coloured “Power Rangers” world that you’re used to, the project depicts what happens to the popular colour-coded rangers Tommy, Jason, Kimberly, Billy, Zack, and Trini after they are recruited to fight in an intergalactic war that they have no business being in.
It’s bloody, it’s grim, it’s somewhat more mature than 90s kids would expect. What, you don’t believe us? Watch the 14-minute, darker version of “Power Rangers” you probably never expected to see. Oh, and we need to add that you really shouldn’t be watching this at work:
“POWER/RANGERS” is Ali Shankar’s fourth “Bootleg Universe” project and it follows previous online shorts following popular comic book characters The Punisher, Venom and Judge Dredd.
As to why he decided to make the above film, he said:
When I was a child I had 2 favourite TV shows – the X-Men animated series and Power Rangers. I eventually came to the realisation that high school kids weaponised to fight an intergalactic threat would turn those kids into some seriously disturbed adults.
He explains it here.
Meanwhile, the actual “Power Rangers” reboot (by Lionsgate) is set to be released on 22nd July 2016.
