Shout! Factory is proud to bring back Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995) as a standalone release on June 4, 2019, Bonus features include new interviews, original featurette, and the theatrical trailer. Before, it was packaged with Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie as a double-feature and it was part of the 25th anniversary DVD steel book box set of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV series. With both out of print, to see this team re-emerge was just a matter of time.
Power up with six incredible teens who out-manoeuvre and defeat evil everywhere as the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers! But this time, the Power Rangers may have met their match when they face off with the most sinister monster the galaxy has ever seen – Ivan Ooze.
By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)
* Minor spoiler alert
The Power Rangers movie has the potential to be better than its “original” product — a hodge-podge of American shot storyline mixed in with fighting footage from Toei’s Super Sentai series. Thankfully, as a product from a single producer with a think tank of creative minds, it’s not as much of a mixed product, but a well to do update of series still beloved by those who love tokusatsu (entertainment emphasizing special effects more than character drama).
This film offers all the right tones in the opening act which no doubt showed the producers are aware of Power/Rangers, the fan film. Praised for its darker story and lamented because it was not for kids (it is gory violent), I wondered how deep the back story would get. I enjoyed the opening moments since it hinted towards this bloodier direction. As a PG-13 rated film (there’s some bad words said and a LBGT character), I was a little dismayed but did wonder how long this movie will take to get past all the origins and team-building exercises to get to the big fight which marks the last act of every television episode.
But is this movie better than the dubbed parody Dynamen which premiered on Night Flight? While this other show introduced me to this world with its hilarious send-up and mix of 80’s music, hopefully the series I truly adored does not jade what I have to say. While I care little for this decade’s modern music, this movie released by Lionsgate is wildly entertaining. It is set to look at problems some youths face today. Mind you, I will not be drowning my sorrows at a Krispy Kreme, since none exists in my hometown and I ignored this laughingly blatant product placement.
When you get used to seeing a lot of Michael Bay style films over the years to which this film obviously draws its style from, there comes a time where switching the brain off during these type of movies is a must. You watch it for the eye candy and I must admit, those Zords (the mechs the Rangers pilot) look cool! The look of the bad guys is another story, which I’ll get into later.
Kenji Ohba has thrilled millions of Japanese children in Space Sheriff Gavan, and he has now demonstrated on YouTube the prop replica his character wielded in the series. This stuntman and iconic actor (whose early credit as a suit actor in Android Kikkaider) would eventually co-star in sentai series Battle Fever J (Shiro Akebono/Battle Kenya) and Denshi Sentai Denziman (Daigoro Oume/Denzi Blue).
In this video from Bandai, Ohba demonstrates the 1:1 scale Laser Sword, Gavan’s signature weapon. The replica from Tamashii Labs has a die-cast handle. The blade contains 20 LEDs which light up bright blue when activated by running a hand over it. [Editors’ note: sounds like a modified lightsaber to me.] Buyers can recreate the iconic scene in which Gavan powers up his blade using birdnium energy.
Someone has leaked the opening and ending song for the upcoming sentai series Ressha Sentai Tokkyūger. The series will premiere on TV Asahi on February 16, 2014.
The 38th installment in the Super Sentai series will involve trains where as the previous series involved everything from construction vehicles to dinosaurs to emergency vehicles.
The series’ main characters made a cameo in the film Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger vs. Go-Busters: The Great Dinosaur Battle! Farewell Our Eternal Friends, released on January 18, 2014.
If you can understand japanese then you are one jump ahead of this writer. Trying to keep up with what’s being said or written is still one of my struggles. But lacking subtitles I can still piece together that this is the toy review for the Voltasaur Tobaspino from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger. My first taste of sentai was Kagaku Sentai Dynaman in the 1980’s but I’ve been a steady fan of such series since Gosei Sentai Dairanger (1993-94).
Our goal is to follow the pop culture scene of the Pacific Northwest (Victoria, B.C. especially). This can range from the arts to books to cinema to television. Our content also includes peeks into what's coming out of Asia–but even more importantly, in what we love to populate our book and video shelves with!
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By James Robert Shaw (The Wind up Geek)
Someone has leaked the opening and ending song for the upcoming sentai series Ressha Sentai Tokkyūger. The series will premiere on TV Asahi on February 16, 2014.
