UPDATED 2/27: Due to a legal battle concerning Power/Rangers and the “official” Power Rangers movie still planned by Lionsgate, Joseph Kahn’s film has been pulled from YouTube and Vimeo. Producer Adi Shankar promises to fight this ruling. Read the original story below:
Hollywood’s habit of rebooting campy old properties into “dark” and “gritty”, Nolan-esque movies has grown tiring for a long time. No material is sacred, and no material is too ridiculous to be unironically rehashed.
One of the lesser titles on that long list of remakes are the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, a horribly silly ’90s staple that by 2016 when the official Lionsgate movie is released will be 20 years removed from when the original show went off air.
Joseph Kahn’s short film Power/Rangers isn’t that.
Starring Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) and James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek) in Kahn’s “fan film”, one that doesn’t “reboot” the old property but extends its story threads to their natural, grim and bloody conclusion, Power/Rangers is an intense and dense fan story that takes fan filmmaking to a new level.
Kahn is a music video director who had previously directed Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” video as well as his own films Detention and Torque, and he joined up with producer Adi Shankar (The Grey, Lone Survivor) in order to do what Shankar called a real “bootleg” movie, not just a darker version of old characters.
“I think the trick that I really wanted to do with this was to make that dark and gritty version that everybody keeps talking about, but really do it. Really see if I could totally accomplish it with essentially a really incredible, incredibly silly property,” Kahn said to Drew McWeeny in the film’s World Premiere story over at Hitfix.
Suffice it to say, Power/Rangers is kind of awesome. A hybrid of an insane Robert Rodriguez action flick and a convoluted sci-fi caper and conspiracy story, Kahn’s short film is as good as any “official” reboot is bound to be.
Shankar has also produced a handful of other fan films including one on Venom and another on The Punisher. Here’s Shankar talking about why he decided to reimagine the Power Rangers.
Watch the video above, and check out Kahn’s full Vimeo page.