Power Rangers General Discussion Thread

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
All I want out of a new Power Rangers thing is an Allosaurus Zord. I was a dinosaur obsessed kid in the 90s, MMPR had me hooked instantly, but I've always wanted a Zord of my favourite dinosaur.

#2:30amThoughts
 

ZakuConvoy

Well-known member
Citizen
Wait, in ALL the many dino-themed seasons of Power Rangers we've never gotten a Allosaurus toy?

*Googles*

Oh...well, okay. If you want to get technical, there is one Allosaurus "zord". Depending on how liberal you want to get with calling something a "zord".
 

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
Wait, in ALL the many dino-themed seasons of Power Rangers we've never gotten a Allosaurus toy?

*Googles*

Oh...well, okay. If you want to get technical, there is one Allosaurus "zord". Depending on how liberal you want to get with calling something a "zord".
Yeah, not counting that 😛
 

LBD "Nytetrayn"

Broke the Matrix
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
Came in about 20 minutes into the first episode, watched the rest. Good lord that's some bad writing. Every character would need development to reach one-dimensional except for the woman in charge of the project, and she seems mostly there to roll her eyes at everyone else being stupid. The actual storywriting has gems like making a big deal out of not knowing who'd bond with what dinosaur and then giving them strongly dino-themed suits. Oh, and the suits are several-years-old TV CG and the hands are totally uncanny valley (they got one okay joke out of the suits being hard to operate and using deliberately janky animation for a little bit).

I'll watch tonight's episodes, I suppose, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope for the show being any good. I'd rather just watch the original untranslated Chinese episodes, to be honest.

---Dave

I'm not even sure what you're talking about, but I'm pretty sure I'll find reviews like this more entertaining than whatever it is itself, so I hope you keep doing them! 😸
 

Videomaster21XX

This is how a unicorn comments
Citizen
Yeah I have to agree. The topic of the last few posts at least have been about how the Power Rangers show never had an Allosaurus.

It also appears that the topic of that show is the last post on a previous page, and I for one actually missed it because of that.
 

LBD "Nytetrayn"

Broke the Matrix
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen

"Wait, why are we teaming, again? Or are we fighting?"

"Nostalgia."

"Okay, great. But with like, over 25 Ranger teams, why do we look like knock-offs of you?"

"Nostalgia."

"Fine, but do we get weapons?"

"Nope. Sorry."

"But why?"

"Did you have weapons before?"

"No."

"So you don't get them now."

"But why--"

*both* "Nostalgia."

"Alright, got it. Let's just go."
 

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
Sick of being the least popular Mighty Morphin Power Ranger, Rocky finally snapped.
I did a MMPR through LG rewatch during COVID lockdown. I went into the season two cast change with an open mind. I was a Jason fan as a kid, and kind of hated Rocky on principal. So going into that rewatch I was really trying to give him a chance.

And it's just not there. The writing did him no favours. Once they cycled through the "search and replace 'Jason' with 'Rocky'" scripts, the stuff they gave him just made him The Worst™️
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
I did a MMPR through LG rewatch during COVID lockdown. I went into the season two cast change with an open mind. I was a Jason fan as a kid, and kind of hated Rocky on principal. So going into that rewatch I was really trying to give him a chance.

And it's just not there. The writing did him no favours. Once they cycled through the "search and replace 'Jason' with 'Rocky'" scripts, the stuff they gave him just made him The Worst™️
Tommy's popularity just overshadowed all else. The writers just didn't care about any of the guys besides Tommy. His popularity really was just so detrimental to the other cast members. The show went from being about a team of five or six heroes to being about one hero and his five sidekicks.

IIRC, Rocky only ever got two focus episodes in all of MMPR, but his Season 2 one was the infamous "Rocky Just Wants to Have Fun", while his Season 3 one just made him into a diet soda version of Billy instead of letting him be his own character.

Zeo gave him three focus episodes, the first of which finally gave him the unique character type of "lovable idiot" but really didn't do much with it, the second one was the one where he got turned into a tree, and the third had a premise that sounded good on paper ("Rocky is jealous of everyone paying so much attention to Jason that he feels left out") especially since he was the one who replaced Jason, but it was half-baked in execution because it also had to share screentime with the way more important subplot of King Mondo making his final stand against the rangers before being killed off by them for nearly the rest of the season (before returning back to life for the final four episodes). That should have been the A-plot of the episode, not Rocky's lousily written jealousy of Jason.

To say nothing of his unceremonious departure from the series in the Turbo movie, and his absence from "Forever Red" (I'd have put him in either the Ninja Ranger suit or the Metallic Armor suit and swapped out Eric since, while he wears red, the Quantum Ranger is not an uppercase R "Red Ranger" like the others).

They really did Rocky dirty.

I am forever grateful that Once & Always at least gave him the hardcore moment of destroying Minotaur by just impaling him right in the chest with a midair downward thrust. He never got to do something that cool beforehand.
 
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LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
Zeo gave him three focus episodes, the first of which finally gave him the unique character type of "lovable idiot" but really didn't do much with it, the second one was the one where he got turned into a tree, and the third had a premise that sounded good on paper ("Rocky is jealous of everyone paying so much attention to Jason that he feels left out") especially since he was the one who replaced Jason, but it was half-baked in execution because it also had to share screentime with the way more important subplot of King Mondo making his final stand against the rangers before being killed off by them for nearly the rest of the season (before returning back to life for the final four episodes). That should have been the A-plot of the episode, not Rocky's lousily written jealousy of Jason.
Having Rocky be jealous of Jason has so much potential for the reasons you said, and I remember kind of going "huh" after that episode was done on my re-watch. It's like someone had the idea to do it, but no one wanted to actually do it, it felt like an obligation they rushed through as quickly as possible.

I think that first one, the loveable idiot one, is the one where he's paired with a smart girl for a school project? The whole thing is very creepy. He spends most of the time hitting on her, she wants nothing to do with him, and then the Machine Empire steals their (read: her) computer project and turns it into a monster. And somehow, the big bow on the end of everything is that she admits Rocky was right and she needs to loosen up.

Rocky comes off not only like an idiot, but also a creep, and the episode trying to make the girl he was pestering seem like the one in the wrong only adds to the uncomfortable nature of it all.

Like... I went into Rocky's tenure telling myself "give the guy a chance to be likeable" and it was just a barren desert of potential. Even by Power Rangers' sometimes low, low standards 😛

They really did Rocky dirty.
Austin St. John had no great acting chops (the less said about him as a person the better), and Jason as a character wasn't all that complex or compelling, but he had the standard "stoic, strong leader" thing going for him. That he got to keep, even after Tommy started taking over the show. And I'd argue having them both share that space led to a cool dynamic.

But going back to what you said about Tommy's popularity being a detriment to the rest of the cast, it seems like once the decision was made to replace Austin St. John with Steve Cardenas the writers made a decision that Jason David Frank/Tommy wouldn't be sharing that staring role with anyone, and it was just his show now. Which meant that Rocky didn't even get the thin but tangible stuff Jason got. He wasn't Tommy's equal, or a leader in his own right. And a lot of the goofy stuff they saddled him with seemed to be designed to ensure he wouldn't be in a position to jostle with Tommy for the starring role.
 

Shadewing

Well-known member
Citizen
I kinda disagree, about them not caring for others. Adam seemed to get a fair amount of attention, since JYB like JDF had actual martial artist skill and could do a lot of action scenes. He never matched JDF's role, but it felt like he was the second favorite. Rocky and Aisha are kinda just there and Tanya is even worse, but Adam actually got some good episodes across MMPR-Turbo, becoming basically the Co-Leader during Zeo, and his return episodes are some of the best of their seasons.
 

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
I kinda disagree, about them not caring for others. Adam seemed to get a fair amount of attention, since JYB like JDF had actual martial artist skill and could do a lot of action scenes. He never matched JDF's role, but it felt like he was the second favorite.
He was, but a lot of that was the show trying to position him as someone to replace JDF should JDF wanna leave. There's a story about Hiam Saban telling him to grow his hair out because he assumed Tommy was popular because he had long hair.

Which, as an aside, how does someone build an empire through children's entertainment without actually understanding what kids find compelling? Power Rangers' early years feel like
Hiam Michael Scott'ing his way into a billion dollar enterprise.

Anyway... yeah. JYB was clearly someone the writers and producers had time for, but even he was given stuff with the hope that he could just be the new Tommy should JDF depart.

And then JDF did depart, but they ended up firing JYB anyway because like I said, this whole thing was a Michael Scott operation. How this show lasted as long as it did should be studied for years to come.
 


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