Fridge / Power Rangers (2017)

Fridge pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance:

• The film opens with a kamikaze attack by Zordon, and a reckless prank by Jason. Both are Red Rangers, and the prologue shows each of them doing reckless deeds that cost them a great deal. The rest of the film is about them moving beyond that to do better and greater deeds.
• The amount of fan anticipation may just be people excited about the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers getting a reboot, but it's hard to not consider this idea: part of the fan anticipation may also be that, for longtime Power Ranger fans, there's no Super Sentai series to give clues to what could be coming or even a sort of early preview for the Ranger and Zord fights (for example, using Shuriken Sentai Ninninger as a sort of preview for Power Rangers Ninja Steel).
• The apparently cheesy use of "Power" by Kanye West. Look at the lyrics. "No one man should have all that power." Why do you think it's been given to five?
  • That also make sense in context of the movie: the Rangers are keeping Rita from obtaining the Zeo Crystal, which sustains all life on Earth.
• In the 1970s, there was a Japanese live-action Spider-Man show which featured a giant robot and served as an influence on Super Sentai. Guess who Billy compares the Rangers to?
• Trini's Race Lift from Asian to Latina goes perfectly with her name since it can be short for "Trinidad" (Trinity), a common female name in the heavily Catholic-influenced Spanish and Latin-American cultures. (Likely an artifact of the TV show pilot, which had a Latina actress instead of Thuy Trang.)
• The Power Coins are shown to be a Clingy Macguffin, with Jason's Offscreen Teleporting from his room to the bathroom after him. This explains why Rita still has her Power Coin after 65 million years, even though it was mounted on her staff and the staff was thrown from her body by the meteor impact.
• Billy being the first one to accidentally morph roots to the facts that he's the first one to fully embrace that he's chosen as a Ranger while the other four are hesitant. Throughout the film, Billy is constantly the team's driving force to unite.
• Rita possesses some form of mind reading, as she is able to work out which ranger knew the location of the Zeo Crystal and that Billy was the heart and soul of the team. That adds some context to her targeting of Trini and her method of doing so, combining elements of 'I Have You Now, My Pretty' and attempts to convince her to abandon the others. Trini is both struggling with her bond with the team, making her the one most vulnerable to such things.
• The Megazord isn't a built-in feature of the Zords this time around, given that Zordon and Alpha don't mention it and Rita is completely dumbfounded when it happens. However, the Zords still merge, why? Alpha stated that their power was unlimited (and thus, it can't possibly be known everything they can do) and that they resembled the most dominant force on the planet they inhabited. When they first appeared, it was dinosaurs; now, they use some of their still unknown powers to combine into the current dominant species of Earth: Humans. The Zeo Crystal being so near must have helped them around too.
  • Many fans have complained that Goldar looks like an imitation Megazord. But starting from the premise that there's never been a Megazord before, it's actually the other way around: The Megazord is an anti-Goldar! Goldar was the most powerful creature on the planet at the moment, so the Zords merged into a form based on him specifically to take him down.
  • The novelization hints at another possibility. When freaking out at the Megazord, Rita notes that some Ranger teams spend years together without being able to form one. So, it's possible that Zordon and Alpha knew about the Megazord but didn't tell the Rangers because they didn't think they were ready to learn about it. Rita also knows they just recently morphed, so it is understandable that she is shocked since they managed to do in minutes something she considered beyond their capacities.
  • Plus to add into it, its established that the Rangers need unity with each other, and that Rita is still technically the green ranger, maybe she thought that without her Coin and another Ranger the Megazord couldn't be formed by the team.
• To access their armor, the Rangers now need to feel love and connectedness with one another. Rita lacks a team or anyone to connect to, yet still forces her armor to appear. What is she connecting and loving then? She loves the power coin itself (remember how she strokes it when she regains consciousness in the fishing boat) and the power it gives her. This likely is what causes its corrupted appearance.
  • Alternatively, she still loves Zordon in her own warped and twisted way; he is after all the only other remaining member of her team. She thought killing Billy would earn Zordon's respect.
• Some characters and equipment names sound very cheesy and ridiculous, like Goldar, Rita Repulsa, Zordon, Power Coin or Zords, but everyone uses them seriously. Why? Well, all of those names are of alien technology or characters. It's likely that the real names in their original languages, likely Eltarian since Zordon and Rita are from Eltar, have no equivalent yet in any human language, so Alpha 5 and Zordon come up with something that is roughly on the same level as Google Translate. Also, it's possible that "Rita Repulsa" or "Goldar" are just the best approximation of their names the Rangers can understand due to not being used to hearing alien languages.
  • Or the names are perfectly normal or less on-the-nose in their native language and coincidentally ridiculous in English, ala Sinestro. Or for a more literally down-to-Earth example, how fahkel is a Russian word for torch.
  • This applies to Rita's Cloud Cuckoo Lander behavior as well. She's an alien who's been frozen for sixty-five million years with nothing but the power coin and her own corrupt thoughts for company, so of course she's obsessed with reviving her army and her most powerful warrior, and it only makes sense that she treats the Zeo Crystal's location as a revered location, regardless of what actually happens to be there.
• It's mentioned that the Power Rangers are a "legion" of warriors, but including Rita, there were only ever six of them on Earth. This doesn't make sense at first, until you remember that the mission of the Rangers is to protect the Zeo Crystal and every planet with life on it contains a piece of the crystal. That means that every planet with life has a set of rangers. They ARE a legion; they're just spread out.
• The Mastodon and Triceratops Zords having more legs than their OG counterparts makes sense from a scientific point of view. The physics involved here are the same reason sideshow performers can lie down on beds of nails or swords and not get hurt. Multiple points of support spread out equally means less pressure on each leg joint. This also means less weight, relatively speaking, on the ground for each step taken.
  • It does raise the question on how the legs are able to move without colliding with one another, however.
  • Also, given any added benefits of multiple legs, why didn't the Tyrannosaurus and Sabertooth Zords have them too? The aliens who designed the Zords certainly didn't mind drastically deviating from the appearance of an actual mastodon, so the Tyrannosaurus Zord didn't have to exactly look like a T. Rex either, especially given the instability of only two legs.
    • Could be a case of purpose-based design. The Sabertooth Tiger and T-Rex Zords are meant to be quick, agile, aggressive frontliners, jumping in and dealing quick hit-and-away moves, while Mastodon and Triceratops are meant to be the more stalwart, tanky Zords, standing their ground or using their bulk to crash into the enemy, and so have a more stable, high-torque design.
• The movie has a darker, more serious tone for most of it, then it turns the point where it becomes what Power Rangers is known for. Why? Simple: these Rangers take awhile to get to the point where they're truly worthy of the title - not just strength-wise, but character-and-teamwork wise. The moment this happens, all the original show's elements start appearing; not before, since symbolically they weren't Power Rangers just yet.
• Jason is banned from playing football for his high school, whose school colors are apparently blue and white. Oh well, those colors didn't look right on him anyway...
  • Ditto for Kimberly, who was kicked out of the school's cheerleading squad.
• Right after meeting up with the others, Trini has the cliff she was standing on top of crumble under her feet and sending her crashing to the ground, gets chased by mine security, hit by a speeding train, and then wakes up at home perfectly fine. With all that happening in an extremely short amount of time, it's no wonder she tried to pull a Screw This, I'm Out of Here! when she ran into the others again.
• Zack wondering if the Power Coins are worth anything may seem like a quick joke until you find out what his situation is, he was most likely thinking of using any potential money to be gained for his mother's medical bills.
• All of the future Rangers are separately drawn to the mines, except for Jason, who is under curfew. Regardless of whether it has been years as in Billy's case, or just a few months in Trini's, they all spend as much of their free time there as they can, even if it's only subconsciously. The coins only become free once Jason is present at the mines, as well.
• The lode of gold that is being mined in the present day could very well be the remains of Goldar after his defeat in the Cenozoic. In which case, he is largely made of himself.
• The Power Coins seem to act like Green Lantern power rings; they select people who are worthy, whether they realize their worthiness or not. A great part of the film is spent in training the Rangers to unlock their potential so that they can become worthy and wield their powers.
  • This makes Rita Repulsa akin to Sinestro, someone who’s still worthy to wield the power granted to them but is warped and corrupted by its power that she’s wielding it for a different reason than originally intended. For Sinestro it’s because he thinks he has the right to wield this power; for Rita it’s probably a similar reason.
• Zack wearing all black, being extremely reckless, and not caring about school mostly fits with his loner status until he reveals his mother is terminally ill—and he knows her death may be very soon. He's already mourning her symbolically. Not to mention, recklessness and social withdrawal are also symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which very commonly develop in cancer patients and their family. Secondly, Zack is very emotionally sensitive and judging by how he admits hanging out with the other rangers is good for him, he may know he needs therapy but simply can't afford it.
• Why would the Power Coins Recruit Teenagers with Attitude over others more qualified, like soldiers? In this continuity, it is the Ranger's trust and love for each other that allows them to morph. People meet many of their best friends and form some of their oldest closest relationships in high school. Its not that they are the best or most qualified, but that they have the greatest potential to become True Companions.
  • This is supported by the novelization where it's said that Ranger Teams can go years without forming a megazord, something the Angel Grove team does not only on their first time piloting them, but within an hour of morphing for the first time. Showing just how much potential they really have as a team.
• In the original show the Rangers could use their morphers to teleport from one location to another. Offering a possible explanation for how the group got home after being struck by the train at the quarry. The coins sensed that their masters were in danger and activated, transporting them to the safest place the rangers could think of, which would of course be home.
• Billy riding his Zord backward is played for laughs, but driving a vehicle backward is a sign of great skill, and Billy had shown himself the most skilled Ranger in the group.
• When Trini the Yellow Ranger reveals herself to her family, her mother tells her to pee in a cup. Pee... is yellow.
• While Zack and Trini were Race Lifted to avoid the Unfortunate Implications of an African-American and Asian being the Black and Yellow Rangers respectively, this “tradition” has been continued in a different way, the autistic Billy is the Blue Ranger. The color blue is the symbol of Autism Speaks, the largest autism awareness group in the world, however, the organization has been repeatedly criticized for spreading misconceptions about autism.
• Sam only seems to realize that Jason is the one who saved him when he watches Jason run back to join the fight. Sam undoubtedly attended as many of Jason's games as he could so he knows how his son runs.
• Trini listening to death metal music and having it audible to the audience may seem extremely out of pocket for a superhero film, let alone a Power Rangers movie adaptation. However, it makes sense. Ron Wasserman's hard rock soundtrack for MMPR frequently displayed traditional and power metal elements and several other seasons have had similar types of music in the background, so it's only natural that a Darker and Edgier and more layered interpretation of the franchise would feature metal that is a step forward in complexity and extremity.

Fridge Horror:

• Despite the somewhat comedic nature of the school missing that Trini had been a student for a year, many people will admit to cringing at this because while it doesn't go that far in real life most of the time, real schools can and will ignore students who aren't top performers and/or popular because they're not worth the trouble unless they're "causing" trouble.
• Finding out you're basically indestructible, because what else do you call surviving a train hitting your mother's minivan head-on with you and your classmates inside, could go very dark if you want to push the limits. Think what Claire in Heroes did and how gruesome she looked afterward before she regenerated.
• Billy drowning to death becomes implicitly more terrifying when you remember that in the original series, he was afraid of fish.
• The Zeo Crystal was uncovered by Rita during the climax. If the Rangers don't have it buried again and leave it to be dug up by the clean up crew, if scientists or workers decide to tamper with it then they could end up destroying life on Earth. So let's hope the Rangers covered it up again, took possession of it, or explained it to the authorities how dangerous trying to dig the Crystal up again would be...
• One of the rules of being a Ranger is that you can't reveal your identity to anyone, not even loved ones. So, what if Zordon's team had loved ones? Loved ones who weren't aware that they were Rangers and may not even know that they're dead?
  • Considering how long ago that was, it's unlikely that any of Zordon's team's loved ones are still alive in the present day, unless they're immortal.
• Trini's mother gets upset and slams on the table just barely a minute into conversation and after her husband tries to get her to be reasonable. Everyone is visibly startled by this, and neither of these details speaks well of Trini's home life, especially in light of her campfire revelation. Unfortunately, shutting down emotionally like Trini does is all too common in households where one child, especially an only child, doesn't live up to the preconceptions a parent might have. It gets to where the child thinks, "Well, I'm gonna piss mom/dad off no matter what, I might as well earn it," hence Trini's deadpan delivery about finding a spaceship.
• What the Hell was Billy doing that would make his lunchbox explode? Twice?
  • Well, he clearly works with explosives for his mining excursions, he probably tried to take some to school for tinkering during lunch time, or something.
• What were the reactions of Trini's parents when they got home and saw the damage to her room? If they found it before Rita's attack would be bad enough, but imagine if they came home after seeing the destruction Rita caused in town and Trini hadn't come back yet.
  • Hell, how did any of the other Ranger's families react when Rita attacked and their children weren't there?
    • We see a glimpse of that with Jason's dad, who keeps trying to call him while the fighting is happening.
• Rita survived 65 million years underwater so it's more than possible she can survive the cold vacuum of space until Lord Zedd inevitably finds her.
• Rita, before she is defeated, says that she's not the only threat in the universe. While Lord Zedd is most likely to be the next threat the Power Rangers face, other threats implies that the Machine Empire, Divatox, and every other Power Ranger Big Bad may exist in this universe.
• So, how's the government going to react to the existence of the Rangers? They know the Rangers must live around Angel Grove, so it won't be hard for them to track their location. And what will they do if they find the Rangers?
  • This is touched on in the graphic novel that takes place immediately after the movie. A group called Apex works on behalf of the government, and they're not exactly thrilled about the Rangers operating without oversight. They threaten the Rangers that if they step out of line or screw up, they'll come back with some bigger guns to deal with them.
• Since Rita pulled all the gold from the mine to recreate Goldar, anybody who worked there is suddenly going to be without a job since there's nothing left to dig up.
  • Well gold is rarely ever found by itself, especially in ore form. There would still be plenty of precious metals, like silver and copper, available as well as various potentially useful minerals and rocks. So, they still have a fully usable quarry, they just won't be finding any more gold.
    • That means the gold was removed from all those ores, making it easier to smelt all the other precious metals and saving money by loosening them out and separating them.
  • If anything Goldar's destruction could result in a mini-gold rush with people trying to get as much as it as possible.
    • Which could be a disaster since the follow up graphic novel reveals that the gold is still imbued with Rita's magic and can infect people, creating half-human monsters driven by her desire to dig up the Zeo Crystal.
  • There was a line of dialogue early in the movie about how the quarry was to be closed soon anyway.
• That prank at the beginning of the movie? Yeah, those kids brought a bull into a high school.