Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Remastered Is Amazing
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers remaster is upon us, and as you can see by that promo video above, ABC is being a little sneaky and implying this is a new series. The ads that played when I watched referred to the episodes as “new”, which it sort of is for the kids watching today. It also is “new” to those of us who watched it as kids thanks to amazing new additions that make the show even more amazing and goofy.
New Opening
Rita freezing while lightening goes off was the first sign that things were different. When the sunbursts started appearing, I knew something amazing was about to happen. Then there is the Red Ranger kicking with a cheesy sound effect and a spinning video screen and I knew then that this remaster would be amazing. The part that tied it all together was the giant “GO GO” that appeared when they sand that part of the song that really brought it all together. Keeping the song and basic themes of the opening the same shows that ABC is smart. These new additions show that they are geniuses.
Batmanification
The Adam West era of Batman is perhaps the greatest example of camp gone wild. So when ABC decided to make Power Rangers even campier, they added the classic BIFF! POW! THWAP! BANG-ETH!(Yes, that last one is actually from Batman). I unfortunately could not find any images of this online, so I recreated the effect using a really ugly picture screen-capped from a Youtube video of the original show.
That is what happens, only shinier and with better image quality. Thankfully it doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens enough to be quite silly. The first time I saw it, I thought it was in the original series and I had just forgotten about it. When it happened a few more times, I realized that I would not have forgotten that detail, so I looked up the original on youtube to compare. It wasn’t in there. This was something they decided to go out of their way to add to this remastering. A friend of mind had an excellent theory as to why they did this: the footage was damaged in parts; the sound effect balloons covered up the damage. This theory probably explains a lot of the weird design choices.
Things That Look Like Comic Book Narration Boxes
These don’t show up very often, but look really out of place when they do. When characters are introduced, these trusty boxes are there to help us figure out what’s going on. Except they’re not really necessary and feel really silly.
Weird Borders Around the Show
Once again, I made this mock-up from images online, but the show does this whenever it feels like using the entire screen is for wusses. It’s jarring, pointless, stupid, and probably there to disguise the fact that they lost that part of the original footage and are just using low fidelity videos they torrented to fill in the blanks.
Weird Shapes That Cut Off Part of the Action
Yeah, the ugly image is my own invention, but the idea is all ABC. This gives further credence to the “broken footage” theory. While the odd shapes are usually bigger than that, they seem so pointless. Why would you even add that?
Shaking Video & Sound Effects + Border
This hastily made gif looks about as bad as the actual effect in the show. You can’t get more ridiculous than this one, and I actually laughed out loud when I saw it happening. The video kept playing while shaking around, so that was interesting. I really don’t have anything to say about this one besides bravo ABC. Bravo.
All of this together makes the new Power Rangers even better than the original. It’s as if they realized how idiotic the original was and just went wild with it. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is just parodying itself at this point, and I welcome it. It’s airs every Saturday on ABC, so check your local listings and watch it. It’s just as morphtastic as the original.
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