Line #79 Headscratchers/PowerRangers2017


1	'''Headscratchers pages are Administrivia/SpoilersOff. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
2	----
3	* Uh...what exactly is Rita? Zordon is humanoid, but clearly not human. And the only other Ranger we see besides him and Rita is the unnamed Yellow ranger is most definitely not human. Yet Rita looks incredibly humanoid, moreso than either of them, and most strikingly has hair as seen when she gets blown into the ocean at the start? Humans aren't supposed to have existed at that point. So what the hell is she, even?
4	** They're all aliens. The planets they hail from are obviously more technologically advanced than the Earth was at that time, considering that the command center is what's left of their spaceship and is still more advanced than most technology around currently.
5	* Jokes aside, how does one ''glow black''?
6	** Just like that.
7	** Serious answer, it appeared more like once the Rangers hit the water, it changed color around them. Jason was red, Trini yellow, Kimberly pink, Billy blue, and Zack black.
8	** I imagine it's the Power Coins lighting up the water around them so that it looks like the kids are the ones glowing.
9	** It's very faint, but it seems to both glow slightly and change the color of the water around them. Zack however, isn't glowing at all. The water around him just changes black. It's a little harder to miss because he's wearing a leather jacket and any discoloration would rationally be chopped up to that.
10	* How was Billy not expelled for blowing up his lunchbox/locker?! People have gotten kicked out for lesser offenses and he somehow got a slap on the wrist by being in detention for it.
11	** Possibly because they thought his autism had something to do with his behavior (which is not to say it was really the case) and decided to go easy on him.
12	** Maybe their school is actually run by level-headed people who understood it was an accident.
13	** Picture this newspaper headline - "School Expels Autistic Student Over Simple Mistake". Pretty sure the principal may have had that in mind, as well as the fact that Billy had lost his father. He does the Saturday detentions as a more reasonable punishment.
14	** Keep in mind that we don't know how large the explosion was. It could've been something like a small firecracker.
15	* A similar question relating to Billy is how he didn't get grounded for life after the incident with his mom's van. More importantly, how'd they all get back to their houses after said incident? They just wake up at home, but it's never explained how.
16	** To be fair they never figured it out either and explicitly state they don't remember. But it's likely that it's an off-screen display of their teleporting ability from the [[Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers original show]].
17	** Also, the five of them wake up the next morning completely fine with no apparent injuries. In the scene when they're going back to the quarry, the van's shown completely totaled. It's highly likely Billy's mom never suspected that he was the one who took the car in the first place (he notes that he didn't ask for permission when he was talking to himself earlier on); after all, would you suspect your own son in having taken the van, get it totaled (and by a train, no less) and wake up in the morning completely fine?
18	** Her most likely assumption is that the van was stolen.
19	*** Deleted scenes show that this is what she and the police believe.
20	*** Then the question becomes what happened to the people who "stole" it, after all the cops wouldn't find any bodies and it would be doubtful anyone could have survived without leaving some trace.
21	*** The likely scenario is that the cops took a look at the wreck, lack of bodies, and the fact that the mine had people sneaking into it that night and decided that someone had stolen the car to sneak onto the mine site. They probably figured that the car was parked on the tracks so it would get totaled and any evidence of who stole the car destroyed.
22	** If Billy is in bed the next morning seemingly no worse for wear, and the van is found totalled on a train track, what logical explanation is there beyond someone else stole it at some point?
23	* Does the Morphing Grid have resurrection powers? How did the Morphing Grid supposed to bring Billy back to life? It'd be one thing if Zordon was stuck in the matrix of his ship, and the Grid could free him, but did he send Billy's soul out? Is the grid some sort of power source realm like the Speed Force where if you are chosen by a coin, the Morphing Grid brings you back to life?
24	** Also, it might be an expansion to the idea in ''Film/MightyMorphinPowerRangersTheMovie'', where the group revives Zordon with their new powers.
25	** ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' has an explanation that could apply here: in that season, the Morphin Grid was known to the Rangers as a "bio-electric field" that connected all living things to each other, and in the finale, two of the Rangers were actually deleted and disappeared from existence before being restored back to life.
26	* Why does the Morphing Grid only have five slots when it's established from the beginning that there have always been six Rangers, even with Rita as a rogue element?
27	** Perhaps Rita wasn't a member of Zordon's team? Zordon calls the Rangers a legion, which could imply there were many more than five.
28	** Since it appears that Zordon has been fighting Rita for some time after her betrayal. They may have removed the sixth slot to signify that she was no longer one of them.
29	** Or she was recruited in an emergency, explaining why she felt like an outsider and eventually betrayed the team.
30	** Or she was the SixthRanger of her team and joined up later. They never got around to installing a sixth platform, kind of like how they didn't add display cases for Ranger Gold and Ranger Silver until the very end of RPM.
31	* Why is Kimberly getting nude photos from another girl? Typically, straight girls don't send other straight girls nude photos. Unless, of course, Kimberly isn't that straight.
32	** Some girls in high school have been known to bounce sexual things they wanted to do off their close friends as a way of affirming their choices. A "Hey, should I send this to my boyfriend?" situation isn't wholly unrealistic - and if Kim said "no" before sending the picture herself, that'd enhance the "mean person" aspect of the situation.
33	** Maybe Kim was actively going through her friend's phone to find something to incriminate her with. Teenagers do that all the time. Hell, so do twenty-somethings if you look at the amount of frapes that happen.
34	** If the LesYay between Kim and Trini actually means Kim could be bicurious at least, perhaps she asked to see it with a response that amounted to "omg are you serious I have to see this lol" and Amanda obliged.
35	** Kim says "she shared it with me privately", so Amanda was the one who showed her.
36	* Why didn't Kimberly perform CPR when Billy drowned? It's not that hard, and she didn't even try!
37	** Maybe she didn't know how to. Or didn't think about it. She ''is'' a teenager, and one who just witnessed something traumatizing after being threatened by someone who could easily kill her for no other reason than something passing through her mind.
38	** Also such an action is NOT like what you see on [[CPRCleanPrettyReliable TV and in movies]]. In reality, it is very physically exhausting and rarely ever helps someone on its own. Its real purpose is to try to extend the window of time in which a person CAN be helped, read: revived, generally by a professional with a portable defibrillator.
39	** A better question to ask might be, how did he die? Unless we are going by comic book time here, he was only under there for a short time, and even with the surprise aspect, he should have been able to hold his breath long enough as a human, let alone a superhuman power ranger. Rita survived underwater for 65 million years after all.
40	*** Rita's magic is pretty clearly still running through the chains while Billy's underwater. It's likely that was what killed him, and the drowning was just adding insult to injury.
41	*** Audio commentary by the director and writer confirms that Rita's magic is what kills Billy.
42	* Jason's sword, which he brings out after getting his Ranger armor but places it in the console like it was some sort of important artifact after the battle. How does that work since it wasn't explained?
43	** It's a holdover from a previous draft of the script where Jason removing the sword from its holder/summoning it was to show him becoming a leader and was to be a ShoutOut to Myth/KingArthur and Excalibur.
44	* How does Rita know who the rangers are and where they live? No moon base, no Repulsascope. And why does she just seek out Trini?
45	** Rita says it herself as to why Trini: She feels they are very similar (at least compared to Rita pre-FaceHeelTurn) and so feels as though Trini is the most likely to turn on the others. When that fails, she switches to [[TimeForPlanB Plan B]].
46	** Rita is implied to have a limited ability to read minds and sense things (i.e. she knows Billy knows where the crystal is but can't sense beyond that). Perhaps she used that ability to figure out where the new rangers lived and their basic personalities.
47	** Also, she might be able to find them by tracking their power coins, as the coins seem to have a connection to each other.
48	** Rita clearly has some kind of magic and presumably a kind that allows her to track the Rangers. Since she's a former Ranger herself, it's not outside the realm of possibility that there's a connection between the power coins. As for why she goes after Trini, simply enough she was the easiest target because her parents weren't at home. Trini also has two little brothers, so she may have been motivated to go along with Rita out of fear of what she might do to them as well.
49	** Perhaps she'd been spying on them too.
50	* How do the rangers know how to pilot their zords?
51	** An argument could be made for a psychic link, which is why Zack's zord didn't obey him the first time he piloted it but did later, or why Kimberly -- a former AlphaBitch cheerleader -- can fly a supersonic jet without any piloting skills whatsoever. The only problem with this is that Billy consistently shows that he really has no idea what he's doing. In the epic scene with the zords running into battle, Billy's Triceratops is going backwards. And later when Kimberly picks him up to divebomb Rita, he specifically says he doesn't know what button to push.
52	*** Arguably, this could be a side-effect of his autism. He said at the start of the film that his brain didn't work like other people's, which is why he is more LiteralMinded than the other rangers. Perhaps the Tricerazord was confused by Billy's autistic mind, which caused it to take longer to adapt to him than the others.
53	** It's clearly stated that their armour connects them to the Zords, which is what gives them their piloting skills. We even see a cord emerge from the seat and attach to the back of the Rangers' suits, so it's clearly not purely a joystick and pedal affair.
54	* In the prologue from the beginning of the movie, Rita's Dragon Coin powers manifest as a Green Ranger suit not unlike the others, but in the present day, all she gets is a green body suit with some crystals growing out of her face. Is this because Rita placed the Dragon Coin in her new gold staff? Is she so powerful that she can control the nature of her transformation? Does the fact that she's evil mean she now only has a partial connection to the Morphin Grid?
55	** When the meteor gets dropped on her and Zordon, we see parts of her suit break as she's flung into the ocean and in present day she seemed to be more concerned about remaking Goldar and digging up the Zeo Crystal instead of fixing her suit. It could also be because Zordon is now the only remaining member of her team left and they're not exactly on the best terms, and since connecting to your team is the key to morphing in this universe she probably uses her magic to force her suit into manifesting which leads to its half formed appearance.
56	** When she was manifesting her suit, not only did it seem like a struggle to get it all going, but she was interrupted by being attacked by Trini. While the suit having been damaged previously may have something to do with it, its highly unlikely the suit doesn't repair itself. It seems more like Rita only manifested some of it, got interrupted, and simply didn't care to do the rest because there really isn't any reason to. What purpose does she have of the helmet, for example, as a secret identity is rule of the Power Rangers. She only started the morphing process to taunt Trini anyway. She was walking around and killing for awhile without it.
57	** Another possibility is that she CAN'T fully manifest her suit, since she has no love or trust from or for the other Rangers. She can use vestiges of the Coin's power, but that's it. Since the only person she loves is herself, and the other person she seems to trust is Goldar.
58	* How can the Zords take the form of a creature that didn't exist? We have a mastodon zord and a saber tooth tiger zord, yet the first scene shows pterosaurs flying at a point in time when the zords would already be on Earth.
59	** Perhaps the black and yellow zords changed forms after a few million years went by.
60	*** We do see parts of the yellow Zord behind Zordon's yellow Ranger as she dies so it could be that it and the black Zord were heavily damaged in the fight against Rita and by the time they were repaired, saber toothed tigers and mastodons were around.
61	*** If HumanAliens can show up on Earth millions of years before humans evolved, maybe other planets evolved similar animals before we had them.
62	* How come Trini's family didn't figure out that she's one of the Rangers? When her mom asks her where she has been, she flat out admits (but in snarker mode) what she did with others last night. Even with that mocking tone in mind (and the fact her mother thought she was taking some drugs), if this troper was one of her parents, I'd easily put two and two together if my daughter told me she found a spaceship buried underground, some alien entity chose her to become a super hero, and then all of a sudden a couple of days later some people in giant robots fight a big golden monster, while my daughter is nowhere to be seen.
63	** Perhaps they're saving it for the sequel. They've already implied Jason's dad has figured it out, maybe they will too. Alternately, perhaps they forgot about it. The conversation was over a week before the zord battle, plus it's indicated Trini isn't very close to her parents. Maybe she's constantly running away and giving sarcastic explanations for where she's been, so there's nothing about this particular case to make it stand out.
64	** There's one thing that's been bugging me. Why did Trini's mother take her [[SarcasticConfession admission]] seriously and [[SarcasmBlind interpreted it as Trini being on drugs]] despite her obviously sarcastic tone?
65	** That's basically her character. The mother (June I believe her husband called her) is so overbearing and neurotic that her first assumption is "my daughter's on drugs, panic!" rather than assuming she's sarcastic.
66	* This may or may not have been answered in the movie, but why do they make Jason the leader outside of him being a quarterback? What makes him so qualified according to Zordon?
67	** It's never directly stated, though you can theorize that Jason's character is what makes him the leader. He puts the well being of others above himself (he didn't rat out his partner in crime from the mascot incident) and is quick to defend the helpless (putting the bully in his place to protect Billy.), admirable qualities in a leader.
68	** Also, while he may or may not be a ''great'' leader, he's probably the best choice compared to everyone else. Kim is an outcast, Trini is a loner, Zack is a troublemaker and Billy has no social skills. Jason was simply the best of a bad bunch. Being a quarterback at least meant he had ''some'' experience in teamwork.
69	** Zodon says that the coins always choose worthy people. Red is (apparently) the color of leadership, so the red coin always finds a capable leader to be its "host".
70	** And a guy who has been the star of a team sport is actually a pretty good choice to be a leader.
71	** A quarterback's role is also to be the leader of the offence, and is responsible for calling the play in the huddle. So with Kimberly being the only other Ranger to have been on an athletic team (and given her backstory, she's clearly not a good team player), Jason would be the best choice to lead them.
72	* Did none of the teens questions why each of them have a certain zord outside of them matching their color?
73	** I guess since they got a free robot they were alright with whatever robot they got.
74	* In the beginning, Zordon makes sure that the power coins would choose 5 worthy beings. What exactly makes the five teens worthy? What individual characteristics bond the five to each of the power coins?
75	** Basically their capacity for good? They may not be perfect, but the coins presumably recognize their potential.
76	** My interpretation was that they each brought something to the table that would be beneficial as Rangers: Jason's an athlete, so he's naturally strong. Billy is TheSmartGuy, able to see the world in different ways, which leads him to locate the Zeo Crystal. Kimberly is trained as a cheerleader, meaning she's agile and acrobatic. Trini and Zack don't have the same physical skills as the others, but both are shown to fearless-bordering-on-insane. Neither would hesitate to charge into a fight if need be. Perhaps the coins saw these as valuable qualities.
77	** Trini is introduced doing yoga on the mountain. The pose she's doing is 'tree pose' - where the person has to balance on one leg, while the other foot is pressed against their thigh. To be able to do that, you need extremely good balance and core strength, and Trini is doing the more advanced variant of holding her hands above her head rather than in front of her chest. So she's definitely quite fit if she's able to do that, and hold it for a while without her leg even shaking.
78	** Zack is the most daring of the Rangers, as while the others did minor things when they got their powers, he said he leapt over a house. So having a daredevil streak would be an added bonus to a superhero.
79	*** They're also good people in addition to their strength. Jason wouldn't rat his teammates out, even though the prank destroyed his athletic career, and he stands up to a bully for picking on Billy. Billy himself is TheHeart, and a very sweet person overall. Zack is also a teenager acting as a carer for his mother, and deleted scenes showed him attempting to become [=YouTube=] famous in the hopes of making money to support her. Trini is also very caring towards her little brothers, even in light of what she's going through. Kimberly obviously wasn't the nicest person beforehand, but she attempts to be better with how she reaches out to Trini and Zack.
80	* Why wasn't Trini's last name changed to accommodate her RaceLift? Her first name still works since "Trini" could be short for "Trinidad", but Kwan is an Asian surname, and neither of her parents seem to show any Asian heritage.
81	** The confusion stems from the actor playing her dad claiming that his character is called "Mr. Kwan" and other sources claiming that her last name is still the same because that's the case with the other characters, while both the director and Becky G claim otherwise, since nowhere in the movie or the credits is her last name mentioned most people default to "Kwan".
82	** How about her father was adopted by an Asian family? Kwan is the Hong Kong spelling, so maybe he was raised there, and his wife just took his name.
83	* I might be nitpicking, but how did Jason know where Billy lived (in the beginning of the film) when they had just met that day? Unless I missed something.
84	** Billy most likely gave his address after Jason accepted the invite to come over and get his ankle monitor disabled.
85	* What is the actual purpose of the platforms in the Command Center? The film makes it seem like they're somehow necessary for the morphing process, but if that's the case, how did Billy unintentionally morph while in The Pit?
86	** That's where Zordon needs the rangers to be so he can resurrect himself.
87	** It may be a sort of nexus point or ley line, something that initially lets the Rangers tap into the Grid to call forth their powers, and makes it easier otherwise.
88	* Rita had to harvest all the gold on Earth to produce her Goldar golem. I can get why she'd want it to be so massive, but why did it need wings? Surely a creature made of pure metal couldn't fly.
89	** Aesthetic? It wouldn't be too out of character for Rita to add the wings because they looked cool. Besides which, Goldar had wings in the original ''Power Rangers'' series and ''Zyuranger''.
90	** Most likely for an added intimidation factor, even though Goldar is huge the wings make him appear even bigger and making people think he ''could'' fly would instill more fear into them.
91	** It may also be that Goldar CAN fly. Not through traditional means, but because of Rita's magic.
92	* What is Jason's responsibility once the Megazord forms up, other than giving orders? Trini/Kim are both the arms & Zach/Billy are the legs, yet Billy asks Jason if he (Jason) slapped Rita? That conversation is likely a call-back to Jason slapping the bully from earlier, but I still don't get what Jason was supposed to do in the Zord.
93	** His responsibility is exactly what you just said: giving orders. He's the brain. Trini, Kim, Zach, and Billy are four people each moving a different limb. That's a lot easier when you have someone coordinating the effort.
94	* Why is Rita apparently immortal? And why did it take 65 million years for Rita to revive from being hit by that meteor? Was it because she was in an ocean all that time? What, is water her weakness and being submerged in it suppressed her regeneration?
95	** It looks like the meteor that Zordon dropped on Rita was the same one that killed the dinosaurs. An ''entire species'' was wiped out by that meteor, so it's safe to say she took a ''really'' hard hit (even that feels like an understatement) and weakened her to the point of being unable to immediately escape the ocean for a very long time. As for her apparent immortality, maybe Eltarians just have a ridiculously long lifespan? I mean she did look really withered out and old until she got her powers back.
96	** One of the rules is to never use the powers for personal gain, so possibly part of Rita's betrayal involved using her powers to make herself immortal and invincible.
97	* How can the Zeo Crystal, the source of all life on the planet, be buried only a few meter underneath the surface, and wasn't discovered when they built the city?
98	** Considering that it looked like Goldar had to reach its entire arm down into the pit containing it, the Zeo Crystal might be underground by a fair amount. It's unlikely that deep geological surveying equipment was around when the city was founded so they had no idea it was there until Rita and Goldar started digging it up.
99	** It's a small town whose main industry is fishing rather than mining or construction.
100	* How exactly ''did'' the rangers end up back at their homes after the van crashed? Did the coins teleport them or something?
101	** My guess is that the power crystals commanded the rangers' physical bodies to move while they were rendered unconscious. Basically "sleep walking" or "dragging" their bodies back home.
102	* Trini's family must be heavy sleepers. You mean to tell me none of them heard the screams and evil cackling in her room that night? Not to mention she is being thrown across the room by Rita a few times.
103	** We see a car leave Trini's house just before this all happens, most likely her parents going somewhere, but that leaves the question of if her brothers were still home at the time or had gone with their parents.
104	** Possibly they went on an overnight getaway that Trini declined the chance to come on. Maybe they were going to stay with family or visit friends? Trini seems to be close to her little brothers, so it's unlikely she'd leave them home alone while she did Ranger stuff.
105	** And maybe they were worried about Trini since she was out quite late. The campfire bit was just a spontaneous thing that Zack asked them to join him for after training, and a deleted scene shows Trini sneaking in through the window after this, so her parents might have actually gone out to look for her and taken the children so as not to leave them in the house alone.
106	* What did Zack mean when he said he'd only morphed in the shower before?

Context Headscratchers / PowerRangers2017