Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie is a movie filled with many absurd excesses. A combination of the intense mania surrounding the ’90s phenomenon and a big-picture budget, it is a film that constantly asks the question, “What if we could possibly be doing the most at all times?”
The film also constantly answers that. From the opening skydiving sequence to the Rangers’ new “armored” super suits slapping layers of plasticky padding on top of their now even shinier, faux-leathered Spandex suits, to a climactic CG smackdown that includes perhaps some of the most chromed but worst-aged visual effects of the decade, Power Rangers: The Movie might as well have just been called Power Rangers: More instead. Which is why it remains absurdly funny that that excessive CG showdown that wraps the film up comes down to one simple moment.
It’s the moment Aisha decides to defeat the big bad of the piece, Ivan Ooze, by kneeing him in the dick. Okay, she’s admittedly kneeing him in the dick to punt him in the direction of a passing comet so he can violently explode into, well, ooze. But still, it’s a moment of sheer simplicity in a climax that’s already about doing the most that remains profoundly funny to this day, even if much of the movie around it struggles to hold up.
Let’s rewind a little. The battle between Ooze—who becomes giant-sized, as the third act of any Power Rangers story demands, by taking over the body of one of his Zord-esque minions, the Ecto-Morphicons—and the Rangers’ brand-new Ninja Megazord begins on Earth, a brief but titanic battle that is now best remembered for its absolutely wild CGI. Ooze and the Megazord themselves are rendered in the chromiest chrome to ever grace a chrome-silver screen, and while rudimentary to modern standards, you can still see the spirit of what the creative team was trying to capture here. This was a chance to do more than what could usually be done with Power Rangers‘ TV budget and people-in-suits mecha/monster action. It’s clunky, sure, but not clunky in that live-action, model work, and rubber suit way, and brief because there’s no doubt that, for as laughably off as it looks to us now, at the time this looked expensive. There are rolls, there’s a smoothness to the Zord’s and Ooze’s action; there is even a great, quick cut to a practical model when Ivan tosses the Megazord through a building—it’s just that you can barely see it because it’s not illuminating the screen with the sheen of polished chrome that the VFX Zord model has.
The fight takes to the skies and into space (because again, if you were asking “more,” where else would you take it?) as the shiny CG models of Ooze and the Megazord hurtle around each other, locked in supposedly dire combat. Sparks start flying in the cockpit; things look bad for the Rangers as they try to free themselves in time to enact their last-ditch plan of using the passing comet to destroy Ooze. And it’s only then that Aisha decides enough is enough. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she says, flicking a series of switches at her console before cracking open a comically huge red button labeled “FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY.”
Slamming it with all the might she can muster—heralded by the equally comical blaring of a horn that sounds more like a clown car than the weapons system of a giant robot—what happens is not some massive beam attack or some otherwise unholy flashing of visual effects. The Megazord just… knees Ivan in the dick. Sure, it looks like it hurts; the Ninja Megazord has a spiked piece of knee armor that no one would be comfortable getting hit in the junk with. But this is the attack that saves the day, that sends Ooze spinning off into the path of the comet so he can explode in that typically Power Rangers flourish of pyrotechnics.
There’s something charming that in a movie about giving in to excess, this simple move—one that feels ripped right out of Power Rangers and its Japanese sibling Super Sentai‘s practical stunts work, of people just grappling and punching at each other in oversized rubber suits—is what seals the deal. And 30 years later, it’s still an utter delight to watch unfold.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
English (US) ·