The Power Rangers Movie Might Not be a Reboot

Since the Power Rangers film was announced in May speculation has been running rampant through Hollywood. Some sites claim to know the cast (they’re wrong) and other rumors have been confirmed, that being Max Landis did write a script for the film but he’s no longer on the project. He had pitched the film as, “The Breakfast Club meets Independence Day” but didn’t elaborate much more on it. What this proved was that Saban and Lionsgate are not dawdling in getting the film done.

In the past week the team has stepped up their game by signing on Roberto Orci as executive producer, better known for his work on the Transformersand Star Trek film series  along with Ashley Miller & Zack Stentz, the writing team behind X-Men: First Classand Thor. All three of them are no strangers to franchises, which can only help in tackling Power Rangers. They’ve also had their fair share of working on more cheesy series, such as Orci’s work on Jack of All Trades and Miller/Stentz’s work on Agent Cody Banks. That last film actually gives me the most hope since it was a wacky film for kids that is remembered to this day (even if I can’t exactly recall the plot.)

Orci recently gave an interview in which he stated, in relation to the films continuity with the TV series, “It's got a continuity within the world. I can't tell you what, but it does have a continuity.” A lot of people took this to me that the film would be in continuity with the show, but I’m not quite sure. “Continuity” can mean a lot of things; it could mean that it’s being consistent with some of the characters and designs. Or it could be part of the bigger Power Rangers multiverse in some strange way. Power Rangers has toyed with alternate universes on occasions but never in any meaningful way and certainly nothing like Star Trek ever did. PR fans have all ready begun to speculate that the film will use a similar device that the first reboot Star Trek film did, in that it will take place in an alternate universe but a character or two will show up.

I still question that and again, the continuity remark could mean any number of things so I wouldn’t quite rush to say the film takes place in the universe of the show before we see more information. The one precedent that might work for this within the universe of the show? A mostly forgotten game called Power Rangers Super Legends that utilized “The Hall of Legends” and a future Omega Ranger from SPDbouncing around the timeline. I highly doubt that’s the grand plan, but if they somehow brought that game into continuity? I’d forgive a lot.

Does the movie even need to take place in the main Power Rangers continuity? I’ll let Meat, a character from the PR parody series, Super Freakin Parody Rangers sum it up, “Do you know how many continuity errors this show has already?!” Any attempt to make this film and the TV show work in the same universe is going to be near impossible to pull off, especially with them almost certainly reusing elements from the Mighty Morphin series as the basis for the powers and characters. Which lends some credence to the “alternate dimension” theory, which could lead to a fun little cameo from the “main universe.”

Although hey, maybe this movie takes place in the RPMtimeline and the movie team will travel to the main PRU on Scotts dimension hopping train. As Orci described, “ They have 600 pages of research that they have on their stuff. We read through the synopsis of everything they did and we are actually taking into account quite a bit of the canon in a real way.”

So maybe they’ll reference the Morphin Masters or something? Power eggs? Whatever the case may be, stay tuned to Den of Geek for all the latest news on the Power Rangers reboot. And hope for the Rangers to get baked into a giant pizza.

IGN.

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that's your thing!