‘Dark and Gritty’ Power Rangers Fan Movie Shows the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Disbanded, Stars James Van Der Beek & Katee Sackhoff
A 14-minute short film called "POWER/RANGERS" has been released featuring James Van Der Beek as Rocky, the second Red Ranger, and Katee Sackhoff as Kimberly, the Pink Ranger, and not-so-kid-friendly graphic violence, swearing and sex, reports MTV.
In the film, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are defunct. Rocky left Zordon and the Rangers to join the Machine Empire, which has control over society. He is on a mission to find and kill Tommy (Russ Bain), the Green/White Power Ranger because he believes Tommy executed the other Rangers. Kimberly is the only living OG Power Ranger, and she's the key to finding him. Despite her ill-fated marriage to Jason, the Red/Gold Ranger, Kimberly and Tommy remain the OTP of this universe.
The film is dramatic and dark, and ends with a twist that will make "Power Rangers" fans nostalgic.
Producer Adi Shankar, who has previously produced movies "Lone Survivor" and "The Grey," and bootlegs of "The Punisher" and "Venom," teamed up with director Joseph Kahn to create the new Power Rangers bootleg film.
Dressed in a black leather jacket, white t-shirt and wearing Alice Cooper-like eye makeup, Shankar explains on a promotional video that, when he was a child, he had two favorite TV shows: the X-Men animated series and "Power Rangers." He came to realize that high school kids recruited and weaponized to fight an intergalactic war would turn those kids into seriously disturbed adults. Hence, the "POWER/RANGER" short film.
"Katee was not my first choice for the Pink Ranger -- Orlando Bloom was," Shankar reveals.
The bootleg succeeds in depicting disturbed adult Power Rangers with its dark plot, intense violence and sex, including an implied threesome between a Power Ranger and two villains played by porn stars.
Kahn, who has directed mostly music videos such as Taylor Swift's "Blank Space," along with films "Torque" and "Detention," said the short film is a satirical take on Hollywood's idea of "dark and gritty" reboot of a series, namely Lionsgate's new "Power Rangers" movie.
"It's not just Lionsgate but all of Hollywood, they all keep toying around with this 'dark and gritty' concept, and they're all PG-13," Kahn explains during a HitFlix interview. "Look at the gunshots. You have a guy going in there shooting a bunch of people and it's just like puffs of smoke. There's no repercussions to these gunshots, which to me is even more dangerous than when you actually show some blood. You're teaching kids that you can shoot a gun and there's no repercussions to it. It just looks like you fall down."
Kahn says the "POWER/RANGERS" fan film shows the true definition of "dark and gritty" with blood, brains, gunshots, sex and violence.
"This is the version I would personally want to see, but I also know this is the version that could never, ever be made in Hollywood. They would be crazy, it would be financially irresponsible, but this is what I personally would like to see out of a Power Rangers film," he said.
If you can handle watching your childhood heroes killed off one by one, "POWER/RANGERS" is available on YouTube.
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