Superhero Media: Power Rangers RPM

Last Power Rangers content for a while, I promise, but RPM is a doozy. I'd honestly say if you can make the commitment to thirty two 20-odd-minute episodes, then Power Rangers RPM is worth checking out, if only for a look at what can happen when a dedicated team does the absolute best they can with the material. Set in an alternate near-future, where humanity has been all but wiped out by an evil AI named Venjix, the last human city, Cornith is defended by the Ranger Operators, aka, Power Rangers RPM. Much like the last series I covered here, Lightspeed Rescue, YouTuber Linkara covers this all in a lot more depth than I will if you want to go give him a few more views. What differentiates RPM from other series in the Power Rangers franchise (aside from being set in an alternate universe) is that the crew behind it elected to write the best version of the programme they could, shoot their own scenes rather than just recycle Super Sentai footage, and have an overarching narrative with character development. Then they found out they had to adapt a comedy Sentai series about transforming cars. Somehow though, RPM works. 

Yes, this is a Power Rangers series, and even I got sick of the episodic monster fights and repeated transformation sequences, but everything else is about as good as children's television gets short of the Gravity Falls/Adventure Time watermark. A lot of it comes down to the cast which includes Eka Darville (Jessica Jones), Rose McIver (iZombie) and Olivia Tennet (The Lord of the Rings) before they really hit, along with talented people like Milo Cawthorne, who sadly never broke out himself. Cawthorne plays Ziggy, a repentant criminal who accidentally takes on the mantle of the Green Ranger, and as well as being a great character to watch, his interplay with "Dr K" (McIver), inventor of the Power Rangers in this setting, is brilliant, and it's no shock that the pair later married and collaborated on a series of independent films. Just watching some of the action-light episodes, one can see the effort that is being put in to the programme, an effort that is only held back by the framing of the Power Rangers narrative. 

I'm more forgiving of the goofier parts of Power Rangers than most non-fans, but in the latter half of RPM, I found myself playing Switch or getting a tea during the fight scenes and only coming back to see the character interaction. RPM may well be the best written and acted Power Rangers ever made, but it's still Power Rangers and the interesting stuff needs to put aside from time to time in order to sell more toys. Again, I feel that the programme is worth your time, if you can get to the good stuff through the chaff, Venjix gets one of the all-time great villain deaths, Dr K is a character for the books and the episode where the characters dissect the tropes of the series is masterful, if a little on the nose at times. Although the nice, round, ten year mark has passed for RPM, I'd be up for seeing where these characters ended up as they tried to put the world back together, there is a tease that the villain may not really be dead after all. Forget trying to adapt the original run, get all of these people back, most are still acting and slap together 90 minutes of reunion and action. I'd watch it.