The Power Rangers movie, now on Netflix, shows a better path forward for big franchises

A reboot of Power Rangers made in 2017 has absolutely no right to be good. In fact, it shouldn’t even be tolerable. It should be unnecessarily dark and gritty. It should be violent and mature, and completely embarrassed of the IP it’s based on. And yet, somehow, none of that is true. Instead, the 2017 Power Rangers reboot movie, which is now on Netflix, is kind of great; it’s charming, entertaining, and unselfconsciously fun, and it absolutely deserves your time. 

Power Rangers follows a fairly recognizable story that’s more or less ripped straight from the first episode of the original series: Five teenagers find themselves thrust together by fate when they discover magical coins that give them superhuman abilities and costumes. At the same time, an ancient evil sorceress named Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks) is released from her prison (in this case underwater instead of on the moon), and dives straight back into her scheme to take over the world. In order to stop Rita, the five teens form the Power Rangers, under the tutelage of Zordon (Bryan Cranston), a giant floating digitized head, and his robot Alpha 5 (Bill Hader). 

In other words, just like the original series, this plot is unambiguously silly. And the movie, to its credit, is well aware of that fact. Unlike recent entries in the MCU, for instance, Power Rangers embraces its silliness rather than running from it. This gives the movie a genuine heart and goofy charm that it cleverly uses to its advantage, both to land cheesy jokes when it needs to and to give the characters surprising depth and emotion at just the right times. 

Adding to this unexpected emotional depth is the quality of Power Rangers’ cast. The main five include Naomi Scott (Smile 2), Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things), RJ Cyler (The Harder They Fall), singer Becky G, and Ludi Lin, who stood out in 2021’s Mortal Kombat reboot as Liu Kang. For what could have been a simple cash-grab reboot, it’s a knockout cast of incredible young actors just before they broke out. Meanwhile, Banks plays Rita with an impressive and absolutely ridiculous commitment to silliness, while Cranston somehow marries the goofiness of Malcolm in the Middle’s Hal with Walter White’s intensity, and Hader adds a bit of necessary worried-robot silliness to the voice of Alpha 5. 

Every single member of the stacked cast is on exactly the right wavelength for the movie, all hamming it up when they need to and generally seeming to have an excellent time together, which is crucial for any worthwhile Power Rangers project. The chemistry and quality of their performances give the movie an inescapable charm that lasts even through the brief moments when the script’s commitment to cheesiness becomes slightly overwhelming. 

None of this charm would matter, however, if the action sequences didn’t live up to the rest of the movie, and thankfully they do — although just barely. The action is muddy and poorly shot, and it rarely shows off the actually interesting choreography, which proves to be the fight scenes’ saving grace. However, Power Rangers ultimately falls prey to the same sludgy, gray CGI that plagued many movies from this era — though this stunt team’s exceptionally cool previz video proves that none of this was their fault. 

The good news is this fighting barely takes up any of the movie’s run time. Instead, much like the original series, most of Power Rangers is just the core team hanging out with each other, figuring out how to stop Rita, and generally dealing with being teenagers who have exceptional powers — or it’s Banks doing some wonderful yelling and scenery chewing in her ridiculous Rita outfit. Thankfully, this keeps the movie from getting buried by the less-than-stellar action, and lets things stay focused on the elements of the film that work. 

Watching Power Rangers now, with nearly a decade of mostly bad franchise movies between us and its original release, feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s light, silly, and extremely fun, with performances that don’t mind dipping into ridiculousness. It’s a movie that trades on nostalgia, rather than preying on it, and is more interested in building interesting characters than setting up a dozen-movie-long franchise. In other words, it’s really no wonder it didn’t get a sequel. But, now that it’s on Netflix, we finally have the chance to go back and give the movie the attention it deserves.

Power Rangers is now streaming on Netflix.