The term “gritty reboot” has been bandied about so many times since Batman Begins that it has become a catchall dig at any attempt to revive a familiar pop-culture property. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers reboot currently slated for summer 2016 is no different, but this fan film shows what could happen if the film went full throttle on the Grit Factor.
Created by veteran music video director Joseph Kahn (Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name,” Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space”), whose feature directing credits include the amazingly terrible Torque and slightly underrated Detention, Power/Rangers is everything the 2016 movie will probably never be. That’s because Kahn thinks the gritty reboot trend is crap, and when he made his entirely unauthorized fan film, he went overboard.
“I think the trick that I really wanted to do with this was to make that dark and gritty version that everybody keeps talking about, but really do it,” Kahn told HitFix. “Really see if I could accomplish it with essentially a really incredible incredibly silly property.”
Described by Kahn as a “deboot,” it’s a star-studded affair, with Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff as Pink Ranger Kimberly Hart, James Van Der Beek, as the second Red Ranger Rocky DeSantos, and Russ Bain (the voice of Rodrik Forrester in Telltale’s Game Of Thrones games) as Blue Ranger Billy Cranston.
People who grew up with the series will recognize the use of the original character lineup from the early seasons, but that’s where the similarities end. It’s vulgar, bloody, and NSFW (the more safe version is above). If you’ve ever wanted to see the Power Rangers snorting drugs, firing guns, and taking on highly choreographed knife fights, this fan film is for you. It’s even more extreme than Kevin Tancharoen’s Mortal Kombat web series, since it takes a cartoonish kung-fu fantasy and turns it into a blood-soaked vengeful conflict.
That’s entirely intentional, Kahn told HitFix, because the box office dominance of adapting established properties into PG-13 movies prevents this kind of boundary-pushing content when constrained by a franchise overprotected for financial viability.
It’s somewhat astounding that the guy behind Torque and the video for Sisqó’s “Thong Song” embodies the voice of reason on the proliferation of the “gritty reboot” business model—one that craves dark realism but also content sanitized enough to reach the widest possible audience. But because he called in a bunch of favors and worked outside the system, Power/Rangers is a glimpse at what kind of crazy ideas would be possible if branding wasn’t so tightly controlled.
UPDATE: Welp, that didn’t last long. Vimeo originally publicized Kahn’s short film as a Staff Pick on its site, but has now removed the video, presumably as the result of a copyright claim. As you can see from his Twitter, Kahn is extremely displeased.
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