The Chaos & Failure of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie - Better Luck Next Time? 

They weren't even technically fired; they just walked off the set one day, either realizing their demands weren't going to be met or hoping they'd gain leverage. Saban didn't care and just hired replacements, using old recycled footage, stand-ins shot from behind, and unconvincing voice actor dubbing to keep the characters on the show until replacements could be cast and introduced. After the Turbo movie bombed, what finally got ratings for the show back on the upswing was the near-total replacement of the cast and lead writers midway through the Turbo TV season. Jason David Frank, who played Tommy, had been wanting to leave for a while - but the others didn't, and Saban wasn't planning to tell them he was getting rid of them. They only found out they were going to be kicked off the show when they saw an ad for auditions to be the new Power Rangers in a trade publication.

@@Xyzillentz Whoah. That’s really f#*ked up.

Yup, I remember this, the show making lots of money and Saban just had to be greedy. Shame the others decided to stay on and basically cosign Saban greediness but maybe they had mouths to feed too.

That is how Saban works. They sign these actors for little pay and when the contract is up they just get a new batch of actors so they don't have to pay high rates to the older actors.

@@Xyzillentz This is what happened. The show made 1 billion in its first year, the actors already having signed their likeness rights away got nothing from those sales. Then a movie deal was done, and the actors were given new contracts, that would give them a small signing bonus for starring in the film, but signing off on royalties and box office takings in the process. They (and this is important) signed the contracts, which is where the mess started. Originally, and this was confirmed by the surviving actors, all 6 intended to press Saban about the contracts but when it came time to actually step up, only three did so, with the remaining 3 backing down for various reasons. They demanded the show go union, have health insurance (Thuy had injured her leg in a stunt, and no insurance meant huge bill) and a share of the wealth made off their faces. Saban said no, and they walked off. They began missing deadlines on voice work and one episode had to be re written entirely around Jason's absence because Austin refused to shoot his scenes. Saban was having none of it and took them to court for breach of contract. Since they signed the contracts, they were legally obligated to complete the work. The court docs are still sealed and everyone involved signed NDAs. We have no official knowledge or source for how that went down, but it was described as brutal. The end result was the actors were released from their contracts and they were subsequently recast with new actors portraying new characters.

Hell yeah man, me too.

same tbh

Hell Yeah

I laugh knowing that you saw them sky diving at the beginning every time you felt down.

Haha I always watch Batman the animated series whenever I’m sick till this day. We lived in the best era

Ivan Ooze Was Hilarious. 😄🤣🤣🤣

I loved that also. Made sense since they were battling 2 of Ivan Ooze's ecto machines in separate areas, and also it gave them an opportunity to demonstrate their newly acquired ninja zord powers. For me it was seeing Kim and Tommy pilot their crane and falcon zords over the night sky of angel grove. Awesome theater experience despite the lackluster CGI. Then again it was 1995 and as kids it was a dream come true seeing the power rangers on the big screen.

I love the music that would play when the Zords combined in the first season of the show.

Welcome to my Nightmare.

Considering how colorful and strong the rest of the production looked, the CGI Zords / mecha really is the thorn to the film's side especially when they're surrounded by far stronger model sets that make one wished they went with high-end robot puppets or stop-motion animation instead.

The Power Ranger movie suits is one of the few things the movie improved on from the tv show.

The robots where rancid.

The technology just wasn’t there yet.

13 year old me disagrees this was the shit when it came out.

Not to mention Red Hot Chili Peppers Higher Ground was a good song to use for that skydiving scene

@@wwe682 Hearing RHCP in a power rangers movie just blew my 6 year old mind

Also hearing dreams by van halen at the end, with the fireworks of happy birthday power rangers going on as a send-off to the movie was perfect.

The stealth eagle is about to fly!

@@wwe682 I WAS GOING TO SAY THE SAME THING AT LEAST THEY TURNED US ONTO SOME GOOD MUSIC.

Well, as long as they regained their composure respectfully, then it's all good! 😁

Awakened!

I still remember the local paper review stating she was only in the movie for the Dads lol

While it was for Turbo, RU-vid channel Pomelo Retro joked the creation of Divatox was for the dads. It can be found in the video speaking of the differences between Turbo and Carranger (who curiously also features a scantily clad villainess.)

oh wow lol at least you got a good story out of it XD

Because she was basically every guys crush from the jump.

idk. seems better to say you liked colors and fun movies instead of saying you're 19 and saw a movie on the strength of just some female...like...there are so many females out here in the world that either look equal or better than ANY celebrity.

@@agonleed3841 yeah you're right..but that guys jazz was Amy Jo. Let him have it.

@@restricttheopennotes no. as a man, I have to help our side be a bit better than that lol. not hating on who.he fell over for.

@@agonleed3841 I mean, he's not the first guy to say it and won't be the last. She was definitely the first crush of many a guy from that era.

Yeah... Turbo was just basically a pilot for Power Rangers Turbo put on theaters.

@@patrickangelobalasa Which is why it was way better than whatever this was. Ivan Ooze and the battle with the skeleton monsters were the only parts I enjoyed remotely as much as the tv show, and the movie should be more enjoyable than an average episode, not less.

@@patrickangelobalasa Honestly, I preferred that method as a kid. They didn't need to put all that money in to get me. I was in from the go!

I heard the original version of Turbo was like three hours long.

The Turbo movie was pretty good though. Jason and Kim coming back was cool

Here in Australia turbo did

Turbo was awesome bro lol u trippin

Nah, Power Rangers had to walk so Pacific Rim could run.

@@Alex_Logan22 Right down to the cringy acting and annoying characters getting in the way of the action.

There's no shame in the geek game! 🤓

You're never too old to watch something you love and enjoy!

no shame i was too old to be watching Kim Possible when it was around lol, i think i was 11 when this power rangers movie came out though, man that was so long ago lol

I was 14 and I had a MAJOR thing for Trini. I went to the movie with the express purpose of seeing her.....and was greatly disappointed when she didn't appear.

Lmfao the movie is horrible cheesy as hell terrible acting bad Props one of the worst CGI jobs ever done. What the hell movie did you watch?

Once they left, I left. Saw some of the In Space episodes but this was dark day for me as a PR fan. It was so unnecessary by Saban

I often wonder had they stayed on, would Tommy had still become the leader upon his white ranger return. It would’ve been weird to have Jason playing 2nd fiddle the whole time, it already was for the few episodes he had left. They were great equals when he was green ranger, but they played up his power as the white ranger.

They left because they went on a Mission of Peace.

Yes, this is my favorite song.

Oh man I would’ve flipped, I was still young enough to be fooled by mascot costumes, I would’ve lost my mind. But yea, I remember the marketing hype from both the Fox channel and McDonalds driving me crazy for it too.

What City/Fox Station hosted this event?

who?

​@@mattalan6618 Tommy Green white ranger

The Star Whackers Got Him. Just like Robin Williams and David Carradine.

@@bhodili-3396 is a massive Conspiracy Theorist nut case

I took my kids to see it in theaters, and we made a point of collecting all the McDonald's toys. And tbh, I liked the movie even as an adult.

it's still a fun movie to watch even now

yeah same, i liked the movie, my sister even cried when Zordon "died" but looking back it wasn't very good lol

Turbo A Power rangers movie had a better megazord than this one as it was a guy in a suit

Nah without it we wouldn’t have Pacific Rim.

@@professorbaxtercarelessdre1075 he didn't technically die though as they saved him

"You Ooze, You Lose !"

was Amy the original pink ranger? i think she hosted SNL once, and i'm not sure, its strange none of them ever really became anything big, from any season of the show

While she never became an a-lister, she has a very respectable tv career (still probably the best out of any of the ex-Ranger actors). She was a lead on the 2008 canadian cop show Flashpoint (which lasted 5 seasons).

@@martianmanhunter37 Yeah I remember that that was pretty interesting. I have a lot of respect for Johnny Young Bosch even though his part of the show was not particularly great I have a lot of respect for him as a very good voice actor.

@@martianmanhunter37 Amy was one of the leads on Flashpoint, which for its time was an excellent show. They really dug into character motivation and the impact of trauma on first responders in a way other shows about cops just didn't. It's not an overly memorable show but certainly worth watching if you haven't seen it.

Amy Jo Johnson has done many independent films since leaving Power Rangers behind. She also has done many tv shows including Felicity, Flashpoint and Wildfire to name just a few. Recently she branched out into writing and directing as well.

CGI did not age well. Rest of the movie totally

DC's Blue Beetle is a Complete Ripoff of this Character.

@GundamBarbtos9 Veterans: Me Too! Once Jason, Zach and Trini left a part of me left with them. I did try to connect with Rocky, Adam and Aishia, but I never quite did. Plus, some of the other changes made in seasons 2 and 3 like retiring the Power Blaster and destroying the Thunder Zords felt like the writers and producers were taking away all of the things I enjoyed in the show originally. The last straw for me was when Kimberly left, I stopped watching. I did enjoy the movie for what it was, especially since I got to see it with a close friend of mine. Until about 2017, I honestly had no idea just how poorly the cast was treated behind the scenes. I feel especially sad learning that both Austin St. John and Thuy Trang had a lot of difficulty finding acting jobs once they left MMPR. At one point, Austin St. John had to live out of his car because he was having difficulty making ends meet. He started teaching martial arts and also became a Firefighter/Paramedic before Haim Saban asked him to comeback for Power Rangers: Zeo and Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie.

@@JB0071051982 I really miss Kimberly too . I even got her autograph back in 2020 via zobie productions

oh really? i almost met the yellow ranger and the black ranger at a thing back then, but i was upset they weren't actually power rangers anymore so i left pretty quick, but i did did them on stage and hear them talk for a moment

@@professorbaxtercarelessdre1075 the original yellow ranger died in a car accident in 2001 so maybe some people did meet her before but I didn't started going to conventions I think around starting of 2007-2019.

@@professorbaxtercarelessdre1075 the original actors are still the best to me since I grew up watching the show since 1993 I watched to others ones for a bit but to me the original ones are the real OGs

@@snoopanoop7705 oh right, yeah it was sometime between 1995 and 1997 that i went to that meet and greet thing, didn't even remember she'd died until you brought it up

@@snoopanoop7705 yeah same, i mean i stopped watching after power rangers in time or the season after, but came back for dino thunder cause Tommy was back and then stopped watching again lol, but i'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the show and original cast

Shame the NSW liberal government tore down the monorail though

My parents ended up forgiving me about this movie (eventually), but there is another, darker movie that they still bring up from time to time. Digimon The Movie. I was not allowed to suggest movies for several years after talking my dad into seeing that with me and my younger brother.

lol. You should tell them that you spread their tears on your toast every morning. Just mess with them a little.

lol that must've made you so sad but i get it. my mom once took me to see the power rangers live at her college but it was just Trang and Jones (yellow and black rangers) after leaving the show and i was upset cause in my head they weren't actually power rangers anymore so my mom just took me home, i still feel bad about it lol

I'm trying to think if there's ever been a movie that I dragged my parent/s to that they still bust my chops over. I don't think there is but then again I went to a lot of movies either by myself or with friends this is the kind of movie you really wouldn't enjoy with parents. Still to be harping on it decades later damn they must have absolutely hated hated hated this movie. I mean holy crap.

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu It was Mars Attacks in my case. Can't really blame them although I still find the language translator joke to be funny.

Yeah I saw something about a bunch of the power rangers games recently that really took me by surprise.

Sega definitely had awesome Power Rangers games back in the day. I was a Nintendo owner then but my cousin had the game gear version and then I ended up playing the Sega games on emulation. The Nintendo games were good (albeit the SNES "Fighting Edition" being one of the best SNES games out there) but Sega definitely had Nintendo beat on that front.

I do think it's funny that with all the crazy shenanigans within the power rangers universe or multi-universe whatever the events of the movie were too much and had to be removed from any and all cannon. I mean it sounds like it was always going to be just a movie thing and never have any effect on the franchise beyond that in any way. Essentially a self-contained one-off movie.

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu I'd guess that they were afraid that kids who didn't see the movie would be lost in the next TV season, and might stop watching the series.

Just say it is, no big deal. It can’t be proven sure, but it can’t be disproven either. Like, I don’t need Multiverse of Madness to have a Wesley Snipes cameo to say his movies happened in the MCU’s multiverse.

​@@BainesMkII And that's why I didn't bother watching Power Rangers Turbo, because my parents wouldn't take me to the movie that set everything up! Well, that movie wasn't very good anyway...

Yes

"Is this bone guy the TV version of Ivan Ooze?" (No, clearly the inspiration for spitting purple goo to make monsters came from the Master Vile footage used later on.)

Same here

It's funny I remember falling out with the series around then as well and what's funny is I definitely don't remember them retelling the whole origin part or I forgot about that part. While watching this it hit me oh they basically just non-canonized the entirety of the movie when they started season 3 and that's why the movie is basically completely forgotten. That just blows my mind the idea of making a movie that served no real purpose besides making money and bringing attention to the franchise and or selling toys/merch. Finding out what what went on behind the scenes is always pretty brutal. And unfortunately I have a feeling that happened quite a bit.

It must have happened to me, too, because I don't even remember the series retelling the movie's events.

@@Mitsuraga Apparently the retailing in the show was incredibly mundane and boring. They just sort of get their new powers, that's it. Say what you will about the movie but at least it was a way more interesting/dramatic/interesting way of getting rid of the old stuff and introducing the new. The show meanwhile was just so boring and lame the way they introduced it. It's just like whatever new zords, new powers, new ranger suits yada yada yada. And unfortunately that was pretty much what they did for the entire current run up to now.

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu I would say the Zeo transition was pretty well done, the rangers actually lost for a change, all their powers were destroyed, the command center blew up and Zordon/Alpha were presumed dead on the season finale, which was super dark at the time. But that Turbo movie went right back to abrupt transitions without much reasoning, which was why it stayed canon (alongside having a similarly low budget production as the show).

Just a few years later, the '99 Sentai GoGoV had helmets with transparent visors they'd switch to between cuts whenever they wanted to show the characters' faces while suited up, but the Power Rangers take on that, Lightspeed Rescue, had them actually slide the visors open from time to time. (Not sure if this was a practical effect; they seemed to be pressing an imaginary button?) Then just a few years after that, Hurricaneger had its own visors open the same way... and there was a time in between on Timeranger where TimeRed's visor got broken through, and those things also carried over to Power Rangers. Of course there were Sentais before and after that had putting on the visors as the last step of the transformation, like Flashman's "Shut goggle!" and Go-Busters' "Let's morphin'!" ...And Go-Busters was the one borrowing a few terms from Power Rangers just for kicks!

The costumes were perfect. They should have made more hard lined realistic costumes but using old footage didn’t help with that.

One of the absolute best parts of the film is the opening skydive sequence that was set to RHCPs version of higher ground. Witnessing that in theater on the big screen was a real thrill for any child who loved the show.

In a way it did turbo

@@adambrock3932 turbo was ok but it felt like a off brand spin off lol the feeling wasnt the same.

@@thebest12700 and turbo actually served as the start of the turbo series

@@adambrock3932 not really a direct sequel. This movie isn't in the canon of the show, whereas turbo is

Not as a power ranger but I have a lot of respect for Johnny Young Bosch. He is far far better as a voice actor than he ever was on power rangers.

The three new characters were so bland...

Power rangers after season 3 was pure crap

@@jameshill3403 Which is weird because I swear I've heard people say Time Force I think and one other one was really great. But then again who watches power rangers for the plot.

I don't remember it either to be honest. I was never a Power Rangers fan, but thought the reboot did about as good of a job as possible making a respectable movie about a franchise as silly as the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.

I went to see it as a scientist looks at samples in a microscope: somewhat detached.

It’s overplayed, easy to overlook.

Dude. Power rangers the movie. TMNT the movie Who framed Roger rabbit. Top 3 Saturday watches.

Yea without the Internet thriving like it is today, it was easy to completely move away from things.