★★★☆☆
Legend of the White Dragon is a love letter to ’90s kids and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
The film accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: craft an R-rated Power Rangers movie without the legal ramifications, a big budget, or MCU-level modifications.
“The ultimate send-off for Jason David Frank.”
Co-created by Frank and Aaron Schoenke, with a script co-written by Schoenke and Alex Kellerman, the film embodies everything that one thinks of when they think Power Rangers.
The plotline is incredibly thin, offering nothing in the sense of character development, even at the most basic level—to the point that the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie had more substance and development.
The dialogue is campy, yet unintentionally. There wasn’t the intent to make a spoof of Power Rangers, but to make a movie that is bloody and has adult content without changing the core, which drains the film’s essence unintentionally.
“From a concept perspective, the film had a lot of potential, but the script holds it back with its action-figure dialogue and plot, of which there’s not a lot.”
Compared to its obvious inspiration, it falls short of recapturing the energy and charisma that made the Power Rangers series, partly due to the lack of groundwork and simplistic reality that the original work offered before becoming more detailed and integrated into the lore as it developed into comics and other mediums.
Schoenke and Alex Kellerman helm the reins, and it’s clear that they were inspired by and were fans of the original Power Rangers, crafting the entire style off the show’s baseline of execution.
However, they fall short in their understanding of transforming a twenty-minute episode into a feature film.
The pacing is incredibly unbalanced, leaving long stretches of the film that are uneventful and irrelevant to the core story.
Backstory and filler information feel forced and bloated instead of layered and meaningful.
The buildup to the showdown is more intense than the showdown itself, which adds to the off-kilter feel and awkward transition of trying to mimic the systematic structure of a twenty-minute episode of a kids’ TV show in a feature film.
“The buildup to the showdown is more intense than the showdown itself.”
In addition to the film’s push to make the content dark and gritty, aimed toward a core audience of adults and leaning into the R rating, the climax is delivered in a PG manner, taking tongue-in-cheek to the next level.
Aric Abraham’s cinematography is a spitting image of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show.
Every shot feels like it was made for TV, with no crispness or defining finish, which is a huge part of what makes the film work for what it is. It’s paired with a score that does the same.
Legend of the White Dragon works wonders within its own compound.
The film isn’t great or a game changer. To many, it will appear mediocre or bad, for its magic lingers in those nostalgic for the original Power Rangers.
It gives the one Ranger who appeared in more episodes and seasons than any other a chance to recapture that sentiment one last time.
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