Amit Bhaumik's Blog-mik

The Hexagon: The Team-Up Season That Almost Was

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Empathy for the Devil: Understanding the Villains of Power Rangers, part 5 of 5

“See, hits never bothered Jimmy; it was business. But what Jimmy really loved to do, what he really loved to do was steal. I mean, he actually enjoyed it.  Jimmy was the kind of guy who rooted for the bad guys in movies.” – Henry Hill, Goodfellas (1990)

Ever notice in the Spider-man movies web-head keeps taking his mask off every five minutes?  In the mediums of comic books, cartoons, or video games, a masked cartoon face can be as expressive as an unmasked cartoon face, but in real life, or in real life transmitted via film, an enclosed mask buries much of the emotion of a performer.  Filmmakers realize that even though they are making a superhero movie there is a reason they cast well-known actors adept at the art of conveying emotion through performances captured on film.  A large part of the way audiences connect with the performance is by being subjected to the full range of the actor’s performance, unimpeded by a mask.

In Power Rangers, the villain scenes without actors that only involve rubber suited monsters talking to each other are always less engaging than ones involving actors free of masks.  Power Rangers Time Force was only the second season of the show to regularly involve more than one unmasked actor in its villain scenes.  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season one technically had three in Rita Repulsa, Baboo, and Scorpina but their interactions were very limited as most scenes with them were repurposed stock footage featuring dubbed over actors and Scorpina appeared infrequently.

In the final part of this examination of the villains of Power Rangers we once again turn to a fan favorite.  This time, an actor with a hefty resume was called upon to lend humanity to the role of a time traveling fugitive from the future on a mission to unleash a futuristic crime wave on the present.  In the end, a greater-than-average season was created, driven by a complex and dangerously effective villain.

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Empathy for the Devil: Understanding the Villains of Power Rangers, part 4 of 5

“Why do good girls like bad guys, knowing that bad guys tell mad lies?” – DMX

As Power Rangers developed over the course of seasons and began to refine its methods of storytelling it was only natural to attempt to shake the absolutist good and evil with nothing in between morality of infants and politicians.  Bad guys usually don’t know they are bad.  Even wrongdoers cognizant of their moral failings and unwilling or unable to change are often victims themselves to psychological problems.  In the real world, the type of person who regularly commits evil actions normally attempts to rationalize such behavior as acceptable somehow.

In fact, the worst wrongs are usually committed by people who believe in the rightness of what they are doing.  If the show’s villains were to ever become more than charming caricatures of phobias and moral failures – bogeymen, if you will – the show was going to need a villain who was not evil to the core or under a spell exonerating her from her misdeeds (See Tommy Oliver or Katherine Hillard).

In part four of this look at the villains of Power Rangers we take a look at one of the most interesting villains in the history of the show.  A complex character with positive and negative qualities, this villain turned anti-hero turned full-fledged hero would ultimately even become a Power Ranger.

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Empathy for the Devil: Understanding the Villains of Power Rangers, part 3 of 5

“Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters.  For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our apathy.” – J.K. Rowling, 2008 Harvard Commencement Address

Key to the DNA of the show has always been a sense of progression.  Power Rangers was telling an ongoing narrative years before The Sopranos - a show many claim as the beginning of the age of serialized TV of the last decade or so.  The vast majority of scripted TV programs made prior to Power Rangers were of the episodic format where the events in any episode have no lasting consequences beyond that episode, making the order one watches the episodes of the series unimportant – ideal for syndication purposes (e.g. The Simpsons, Star Trek, Two and a Half Men, etc.).

Each season and even each episode of Power Rangers is structured around a progression of conflict.  A typical episode may start with our heroes in their civilian lives; then they’re fighting Putties while unmorphed; then they morph to fight a Monster aided by Putties; then the monster grows giant size and fights the Rangers’ Zords.  After a few episodes like this, the Rangers find themselves outmatched by a superior monster requiring them to get new weapons or Zords to defeat it.  This is followed by several more episodes repeating the formula against this stronger strain of monster until they encounter yet another tougher foe necessitating the heroes to seek the help of an additional Ranger or even newer Zords to defeat.

The logical endpoint of this formula would be for the season to end with the mother of all battles between the Rangers and the season’s main villain.  May the best side win.  Yet with so many original US villains and (almost) all Megazord footage coming from the Japanese Sentai series, the two elements seldom have a chance to come together for a proper climactic battle.  It is by no means necessary to end all seasons with a main villain vs. Megazord battle.  I’m sure few would trade the endings of Power Rangers Lost Galaxy or Power Rangers in Space for anything.  But as the Sentai series understands and tends to use this formula, adapting the main villain from a Japanese season is tempting if for no other reason than the strong likelihood of a fitting final battle.

In part three of this series we take a look at the main villain of the current season of Power Rangers.  An otherworldly demon with his roots in Japanese mythology, he is the rare case of Power Rangers using the main villain from the Japanese Sentai series largely as is.  With his final run of episodes still yet to air, it may be premature to examine his ultimate contribution to the show.  But in the over thirty episodes we have spent with the character, has he been an effective and compelling villain or is something about him perhaps getting a little lost in translation?

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