‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always’ is a Fitting Tribute to the Franchise

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always, out tomorrow on Netflix, is a fitting tribute to the storied 30-year old action franchise. Original cast members Walter Emanuel Jones and David Yost return in a new adventure that sees the team reunite to face a foe long thought defeated. As Rangers across the world are captured in order for their powers to be used as an energy source for the villain’s plan, the original Power Rangers team must once again save the world.

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30 Years Later, It’s Back to Action with the OG ‘Power Rangers’

This week, Netflix released the hotly anticipated trailer for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always anniversary special. Thirty years may have passed since their debut, but when it comes to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the more things change the more they stay the same.

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‘Occupation: Rainfall’ is a Fun Sci-Fi Opera Hindered By its Own Weight

Occupation: Rainfall is a confusing enigma. At moments, it feels at home in B-movie schlock delivering campy actor performances that chew on scenery and heavy action sequences drenched in CGI screen filters and explosions. Other moments, there’s a sincerity in its attention to detail in the story it weaves. Crafting interesting cinematography to amplify its thoughts on trauma, war, and moving forward.

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Power Rangers Brings Asian American Poverty Front and Center

By the time the Power Rangers craze first swept through in the early ’90s, I was just starting college, paying $290 a month in rent for a studio apartment in the Whittier neighborhood of South Minneapolis with a bed that pulled down from a wall, going to see Hong Kong flicks like Swordsman II and The Bride with White Hair Fridays at midnight, organized by Asia Media Access. I was still into nerd shit, but honestly the Power Rangers seemed, to me, corny and commercial. I thought it was funny that the Black Ranger was Black, the Yellow was a Vietnamese woman, and the Pink Ranger was a white woman.

My love of all things nerd grew in Phillips: Minnesota’s largest, poorest, and most racially diverse neighborhood, not all that far from my college apartment. As refugees from war with not a lot of money to spare, I learned to walk to the Franklin Avenue library where reading and checking out books was free. Comic books were less than a dollar, and watching television shows like Robotech and Dungeons and Dragons just meant having the discipline to wake up in time. I had friends of all colors and genders and backgrounds, and bullies of all colors and backgrounds. Things were difficult for us since my family were among that first wave of refugees that became the first large visible concentration of Asian American people in Minnesota. But there was also joy, and love, and friendship to go along with all the pain and conflict.

Flash forward to 2017.

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Power Rangers Shows Superhero Genre How Representation is Done

Originally posted at Just Add Color

If you told anyone that the movie that was going to shake up the superhero genre in the best way would be the film adaptation of Power Rangers, they would be shocked and probably, in some strange, elitist, I’m-too-old-for-Power Rangers way, appalled. But Power Rangers has come out of the blue as the film when it comes to portraying a diverse group of people in a way that is both organic and makes sense for today’s world and today’s multicultural and diverse audience.

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