UPDATE: Saban Entertainment, producers of the original MIGHTY MORPHIN’ POWER RANGERS series and the upcoming feature-film project, issued a DMCA claim against the short film, and Vimeo was forced to remove it from their service. Producer Adi Shankar has said “until I get a cease-and-desist letter on my desk, we’ll keep the video published” on his YouTube channel. That version is now embedded below.

When HITFIX author Drew McWeeny teased last night that there was a new career-defining role for Katee Sackhoff (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, LONGMIRE) on the horizon, he wasn’t kidding.

What he rolled out in the wee hours of the morning was a detailed look at director Joseph Kahn’s independently-produced short film, POWER/RANGERS. Sackhoff and James Van Der Beek star in the 14-minute flick, which takes certain elements of what you remember about the MIGHTY MORPHIN’ POWER RANGERS and wraps it up in a hyper-violent, ultra-realistic film.

I’m going to start by saying this is NOT for kids, and definitely not how you remember the MIGHTY MORPHIN’ POWER RANGERS from the old days. That said, this may be one of the coolest fan films ever made, or at least the most impressive. Joseph Kahn has only directed two feature films, TORQUE (2004) and DETENTION (2011), but has helmed countless music videos for major recording artists, including Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Eminem and Taylor Swift. If you’ve never seen his work, give DETENTION a watch, as it’s pretty crazy and visually stunning.  But his latest work is something he did for fun, and may just be the most impressive thing he’s done to date. It’s no secret Lionsgate is in the process of making a new POWER RANGERS movie for the big screen, as the franchise has seem a bit of a renaissance in recent years. What Kahn has done is make a fan film, something that a major movie studio would likely never approve, at least not when connected with a beloved children franchise. In fact he’s even said he wouldn’t want to make the big screen version, as it would likely be PG-13, and what you’re about to see is more of hard “R” in content… we’re not kidding, think Quentin Tarantino mixed with Ridley Scott, and a touch of Edgar Wright. For even more info check out this awesome interview Drew McWeeny at HitFix did with Kahn.

I will not pretend to be an expert of the RANGERS in any of its forms through the last 20 years, but the longevity of the franchise and efforts of people like Jason David Frank to keep rapping the property to legions of fans is more than admirable. Kahn, on the other hand, is not remotely beholden to the past with his work:

I mean, these guys turn into dinosaurs. How do you take that seriously? But there’s enough of like a groundwork of the original source material that they based off this repurposed Japanese show that has like norms of anime and kung fu and all that stuff that appeals to me because I’m an anime and kung fu guy anyways. I just took pieces that I liked and then streamlined it and made a bare bones version and really expressed the versions that seemed like they naturally fit within the down-the-middle dark and gritty reboot. And by the way, the dark and gritty reboot thing is such a cliché that the intention was not only to make it dark and gritty but make it even darker and grittier than you could possibly imagine, hence the brains, the blood and the violence and the sex.

CAST:
Katee Sackhoff – Kimberly/Pink
James Van Der Beek – Rocky
Russ Bain – Tommy/Green
Will Yun Lee – General Klank
Gichi Gamba – Zack/Black

CREW
Director: Joseph Kahn
Writers: Joseph Kahn, James Van Der Beek, Dutch Southern
Producers: Adi Shankar, Jil Hardin
Executive Producers: Justin Smith, David Kang, Raymond Watt, Michael S. Kim
Co-producers: Renn Brown, Kathy Palmer
Cinematographer: Christopher Probst
Production Designer: Brett Hess
Costume Designer: Edda Gudmunsdottir
Stunt/Fight Coordinator: Don Theerathada/87 Eleven
Sound Designer: Fletcher Alliston
Music by: Brain and Melissa
Visual Effects: Ingenuity Engine
Visual Effects Supervisors: David Lebensfeld, Grant Miller, Chris Watts
Facebook page: facebook.com/PowerRangersBootleg

Deboot of the Power Rangers. My take on the FAN FILM. Not a pilot, not a series, not for profit, strictly for exhibition. This is a bootleg experiment not affiliated or endorsed by Saban Entertainment or Lionsgate nor is it selling any product. I claim no rights to any of the characters (don’t send me any money, not kickstarted, this film is free). This is the NSFW version. An alternate safe version is on youtube.

Take some time, and watch this on the biggest screen you have available. It’s damned good stuff.

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