Poor Writing Makes Poor Seasons
Beast Morphers had the same flaws with its two side characters, Ben and Betty, who were somewhat given the same childish humor that fans and audiences were annoyed with. However the difference was that Ben and Betty were developed from being nuisance characters into respectable ones. Mainly because the writing for Beast Morphers developed the duo and they actually learned from their mistakes throughout the season. Finally we saw in Beast Morphers great finale, Ben and Betty became Grid Battle Officers due to perseverance, hard work, and learning from their mistakes. That was all possible due to great writing.
Fans and audiences often use the phrase, “It’s a kids show,” as an excuse for a Neo-Saban season being poorly written. In the case of Samurai, the example is especially egregious when that season aired on Saturday mornings in the timeslot just before the first season of Legend of Korra, where a character blew himself up on-screen in a boat.
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Having that in mind, I think the child audience of Power Rangers can handle Jayden (Red Samurai Ranger) not being constantly friendly while also dealing with the lone-wolf backstory of Takeru Shiba from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger (2009). They either had to focus more on that story by having Jayden actively try to push the team away in order to make it easier for them to favor Lauren the true Red Samurai Ranger over him. Or they should just drop the backstory altogether.
Samurai was known for making their characters express little to no personality. Over-simplified characters make them unrelatable, just as much as being overly edgy. Having basic low-stakes plots, with little to no character growth, and lessons-of-the-day that are hand-fisted to the audience like they can’t put two and two together makes the child audience feel not only bored, but also insulted. While kids don’t always know the nuances of the world, and haven’t fully developed the ability to see all of the proverbial 254 shades of gray. Children don’t like being condescended.
There seems to be a cultural misconception between writers conception of children and adults. There is a dichotomy of extremes separating the two, with loaded key-terms attached to the two. To kids, the keywords of assumption are “fun”, “silly”, “simple”. For adults, the words are “violent”, and “edgy”. The problem with the conflation of these words is that on one extreme, we get a season like Samurai, where the characters have little in terms of personality and there is little weight in the internal conflicts that they have to overcome. On the other extreme we get something like Adi Shankar’s Power/Rangers, where the characters are almost-randomly killed off with little to no attachment from the audience for them to be moved by the scene.
The truth of the matter is that there is a whole spectrum in the middle with keywords that both audiences have a hunger for content, context, and nuance.
Lessons That Can Be Taken From The 2017 Power Rangers Movie
Lets get the adult extreme out of the way. “For mature audiences” is not the same as “mature content”. As certain shows on Adults Swim demonstrate, certain jokes are “for adults” in that they are not appropriate for kids, but the jokes themselves are juvenile.
Power Rangers (2017) was for a more mature audience, granted the movie was very entertaining and brought nostalgic homages and Easter eggs, but it wasn’t very re-watchable. Mainly because the tone was out of the place. Granted the movie did take a riskier and edgier tone, but the heart and charm of the story was absent.
Take the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies for example. That franchise is a great example of making movies or content that is intended for a young audience, but has mature tones that is appropriately balanced with fun and lightheartedness. Power Rangers had mature tones, but the fun and lightheartedness wasn’t there. Now if a new or upcoming Power Rangers TV season wants to take a page from the 2017 movie, they can check on the character traits of it’s five Rangers. Which is mainly what not to do, and I can explain why.
The Power Rangers cast did a really good job of portraying their characters. The film propelled Dacre Montgomery, Ludi Lin, Noemi Scott, and Becky Gomez into successful careers. The film gave the five individual Rangers backstories that the original versions never did. While one can respect or even relate to Zack being irresponsible because he is coping with taking care of his sick mother, and Trini is angsty because of her overbearing parents, none of the characters are relatable beyond the backstory except for Billy.
Billy worked because he was the only one who showed actual character growth during the run of the film. He was an awkward kid with difficulty in social interactions. He showed the most empathy, which made him the one to unite the team, the first to morph, and on the merit of his own skills. He found the Zeo Crystal and had the stoicism and loyalty to sacrifice himself for the rest of humanity and his friends.
Meanwhile, Jason and Kimberly don’t really show growth in the film. Jason broke his leg and that’s it. Beyond being under house arrest at the beginning and learning to become a leader, he doesn’t show anything resembling a character flaw for him to overcome. Kimberly is written in a way that ultimately makes her an underwhelming character.
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At first the audience is made to be sympathetic towards her because she was let go by the other cheerleaders, but then the only other thing that is learned about her is she had a raunchy photo of the cheerleader and sent it to her boyfriend Tai, who later publicized it to the school. Yes, cyber-bullying is a bad thing, no one should do it, and victims often face permanent repercussions. But again, what is Kimberly’s role in that dynamic?
In the end sadly fans and even audiences could even say could be the bully. The next time we see the cheerleader, her car gets wrecked, and Kim says “That’s what you get.” If there was a scene between Kim’s confession and the car getting destroyed where she found out that the Tai and the cheerleader both set her up, then the line would work as a karmic phenomenon, as Kim had the burden of guilt for a crime she was wrongly convicted of. However, without the existence of such a scene in the film, the context makes Kim look like an even bigger bully, guilty of sending that inappropriate photo and now letting the car get destroyed.
In the end the characters (sans Billy) come off as unrelatable because they are edgy for the sake of being edgy. This is a shallow “maturity” that is closer to paraphernalia than an impactful experience. Overall even though the film became a cult hit with fans, we can not ignore the big flaws that the film had with its characters, even though they were enjoyable to watch onscreen. Hopefully if Hasbro does make a future Power Rangers season based on the tone of these film characters, they can put more development and better creative writing.
