'POWER/RANGERS' Drop-Kicks Your Childhood Right In The Face

What if the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were ostensibly "child soldiers", recruited to fight in an intergalactic war of which they really had no stake in? And, on top of that, what would happen if the bad guys won? This is Joseph Khan's 'Power/Rangers', the latest in Adi Shankar's "Bootleg Universe" shorts that follow in the proud tradition of taking classic saturday-morning cartoons, comic books and action shows of the early-to-mid-nineties and dousing them in a gritty, gun-metal coat of hyper-seriousness.

The Machine Empire has won, the Power Rangers have been disbanded or integrated into the hyper-advanced totalitarian regime, and hope by all appearances is lost. However, perhaps there is one last soldier of Zordon left willing to fight the "good" fight. But who?

Am I watching Power Rangers or Endless Waltz?!

The production quality on this short is off-the-wall. We've got a brief but spectacular glimpse of Megazords going at it, Futuristic cityscapes, retractable metal morphing-suits, and those Ranger katanas are especially sick. Every thing about this film feels so straight-faced it pushes past the brink into self-parody. The upcoming Lionsgate remake has a high bar to live up to.