Go! Go! Power Rangers! A new team of high school kids will morph into the mighty Power Rangers in the big screen movie that reboots the popular live-action children's television series. In a first look photo, the "Power Rangers" cast members wore their everyday attire before they morph into action in their colorful suits.
The movie stars on-the-rise talents including Becky G, RJ Cyler, Naomi Scott, Ludi Lin and Dacre Montgomery as Trini (The Yellow Ranger), Billy (The Blue Ranger), Kimberly (The Pink Ranger), Zack (The Black Ranger) and Jason (The Red Ranger). The characters are the same as the ones featured in the original series "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," which aired from 1993 to 1996.
The names may be the same, but the new "Power Rangers" will take place in a modern setting that reflects the lives of teenagers today. The director Dean Israelite described the film to Entertainment Weekly as a coming of age story for these five "disenfranchised and disparate" high schoolers, who are not friends at the outset of the movie.
The new version also didn't assign the characters' suit colors based on the actors' skin color or ethnicity. Early versions of the TV show were criticized for such correspondence although they did boast diverse casts.
"From the very beginning, diversity was a very important part of the whole process," Israelite said. "We switched all the races around, but we made sure that the essence of each of those characters are who they were in the original show, and this really will be an origin story of those characters."
Elizabeth Banks will bring her star power to the film as the villain Rita Repulsa, who terrorized the Rangers in the first season of the original TV show. The iconic foe is an evil humanoid alien witch determined for galactic domination. The powerful sorceress has conquered many worlds throughout the universe but failed to capture Earth thousands of years ago, stopped by Zordon of Eltar.
"It's very exciting that we got [Banks], and I think what she loves is the opportunity to really embrace the insanity and deliciousness of Rita Repulsa in terms of how weird and wonderful that character was, and really dive into and consume that character," the director said. "You should always be off-balance when you're watching her. Is she insane? Is she totally calculated? Does she know what she's doing? Elizabeth can toe that line really well."
Filming has begun in Vancouver on the "Power Rangers" movie and will hit theaters on March 24, 2017.
