Joseph Kahn’s ‘POWER/RANGERS’ is a Punk Rock Satire on Hollywood Nostalgia
Joseph Kahn is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time. The mastermind behind 2011’s Detention and pop culture staples like Backstreet Boys music videos, I always believed him to be a kind of Edgar Wright if Edgar Wright gave even less fucks. And you know how much I love Power Rangers.
So imagine my surprise to see that Joseph Kahn created a short film, POWER/RANGERS, and it stars James Van Der Beek (“Holy shit, you’re the Dawson!”) and Katee Sackhoff. Yeah, STARBUCK motherfuckers.
Note: That’s the safe-for-work version. A NSFW cut is available on Joseph Kahn’s Vimeo.
For the past year, the filmmaker has been tweeting about working on a tampon commercial. He made Twitter jokes about how epic it would be. Turns out, it wasn’t a Tampax ad.
I have been a fan of the Power Rangers for over two decades. I have been watching since I was one. I didn’t even know speech or how my dick worked, but I understood people becoming karate dinosaurs to pilot giant robots. I can name every actor, describe Alpha 5’s Edenoi origins and how Masked Rider fits into this universe, and I could pick apart Kahn’s use of the Machine Empire.
So understand that when I say fuck the Power Rangers. This is about the current state Hollywood nostalgia and reboot fever, and it’s the most punk rock thing I’ve ever seen.
It’s incredibly violent. It’s gratuitous. It’s ridiculous.
That’s exactly the point.
From Joseph Kahn’s interview on HitFix:
One, as opposed to like taking something like Barney and doing your dark version of Barney, there’s at least a mythology there. The original mythology is really expansive and kind of silly in how many different…” Kahn collapsed into laughter. “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.”
It’s not just Lionsgate but all of Hollywood, they all keep toying around with this ‘dark and gritty’ concept, and they’re all PG-13. I mean…. look at the gunshots. You have a guy going in there shooting a bunch of people and it’s just like puffs of smoke. There’s no repercussions to these gunshots, which to me is even more dangerous than when you actually show some blood. You’re teaching kids that you can shoot a gun and there’s no repercussions to it.
I highlighted the most startling, noteworthy quote sentences in bold. It sums up so much about what we as public perceive violence in art.
Joseph Kahn doesn’t give a fuck about Power Rangers and that’s the best thing about this 14-minute short. This isn’t some fan jerking off to twenty years of mythology. This is a guy who saw it, took it, and ran as fast as he can with it. Kahn sees Power Rangers as the perfect tool to make a statement about Hollywood’s reboot fever, the sickness that has allowed a fifth Transformers movie and a loud Ninja Turtles film without actually leaving a significant footprint. He’s taking something so perceived to be ridiculous and cheesy and is stopping short of dropping buckets of blood right on it like Carrie, all because you know that’s the version we all secretly want to see.
From Joseph Kahn:
There’s nothing playful except for maybe the Hip-Hop-Kido thing. Maybe a few little like motivational character [things], interactions and stuff. Overall, it’s a very serious thing. The joke isn’t that you’re laughing at each particular scene; the joke is that we did this ‘fuck you’ thing in the first place. You’re going to look at it and you go wow I can’t believe they fucking did that.”
Fans of Kahn are familiar with his sensibilities, as both a filmmaker and commentator on the current state of pop culture. His 2011 indie hit, Detention, sums up his view in a kinetic ninety-minute movie. In fact, it was Detention that once made me believe Kahn would be the perfect visionary behind a 21st-century imagining of the Power Rangers, but his feelings on it have confirmed otherwise (in a quote further down).
Side note: Have you seen Detention? It’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on a sugar rampage. Go watch it right now.
This is why Kahn remains one of my favorite filmmakers. Behind his excellent visual eye and artistic direction, he’s a pop culture-obsessed freak but remains disenfranchised by the system. He’s a music video director. Never mind he’s directed Eminem and Shakira. If filmmaking was war and Hollywood directors are dictators, music video directors are the Somali pirates.
Seriously, go see some of his work. His music video for Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen, and there is not one ounce of sarcasm in that statement.
That’s why he’s the perfect son of a bitch to thumb his nose at Hollywood right now. He’s been there, he’s been shat on, and this is him telling the world not only is he the best at what he does but also you can go fuck yourself if you don’t like it.
He sent this short film out into the world with just one tweet. That’s how much he’s laughing.
Hello, internet. Here is my short film POWER/RANGERS starring @kateesackhoff and @vanderjames. https://t.co/rXffk8wJyM
— Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) February 24, 2015
My only regret is that Kahn actually chose Power Rangers. He could have done My Little Pony, but MLP doesn’t have the absurdity of kung-fu dinosaurs. It’s cognitive dissonance for me. I’m one of the most passionate fans of the property you’ll meet; last night, I sacrificed sleep on a work night to watch the premiere episode of Ninninger. And this morning, I’m feverishly typing this up as quickly as I can.
One of the most hurtful things I heard this morning wasn’t from Kahn, it was from longtime Power Rangers director Isaac Florentine.
From Drew’s interview at HitFix:
I spent some time with Isaac Florentine at ActionFest one year, and we talked about “Power Rangers.” He was there at the start of things, and listening to him talk about it, art was not on anyone’s mind. I get that there are people who genuinely loved the show when they were kids, and that they would love to see something new. Their fondness for this thing is not the point of Kahn’s film. Instead, it’s more a matter of talking about how these things get squeezed and bent and molded into something new.
Isaac Florentine is also a balls-crazy filmmaker who directed the amazing Ninja: Shadow of a Tear last year. I’ve always wanted to ask him if Power Rangers taught him anything that made his movies like Shadow of a Tear so awesome, because Power Rangers can be awesome if you’re in the right headspace and he himself has done some of the best, most memorable episodes (the “King For a Day” two-parter, in Power Rangers Zeo). But reading that broke me.
Don’t get your hopes up if you think Joseph Kahn is trying out for the upcoming Power Rangers reboot film. He’s not.
“The irony here is that I wouldn’t even want to make “Power Rangers: The Movie’ for real. Like if I had to make a ‘Power Rangers’ movie, this is it. It’s 14 minutes long and it’s violent and this is what I have in me. If they offered me the 200 million version, the PG-13 version, I literally wouldn’t do it. It’s just not interesting to me.”
It’s currently 9:30 AM. I’ve been reading Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing on the train to work, so between that and all my feelings about my favorite filmmaker using my favorite thing in the world as a sock puppet to mock Hollywood has left me exhausted.
Check out more of Joseph Kahn’s work here.
UPDATE: Completely overlooked this. Producer Adi Shankar (The Grey, Dredd) details why he chose Power Rangers. #orlando4pink
