Questions and Answers!

You beloved kids actually asked me questions?! You mean I actually get to post something this week?

Fuck.

Ah whatever, let's answer some q's and a's!

SSJ5Gogetenks: Do you express sorrow when you reflect on the plight of the Native Americans who had their land and buffalo violently taken from them by westward expansion?

I mostly feel bad for the land, but the buffalo can suck my dick. Get your shag carpet-lookin ass outta here. I don't express sorrow though, because feeling shame or regret for things is antithetical to being an American. If we don't act like blustering assholes about our past genocides, then how are we going to slap other countries with our big red, white, and blue dicks?

Sorry what was this blog about? Native Americans? Oh man! One of the Power Rangers was one of those!

SonicBlueRanger: Have you ever considered doing anything like your Ranger Retrospective for any other show? Tokusatsu or not?

I would actually enjoy doing that quite a bit. Certain tokusatsu programs would be a lot of fun to go over with a fine-toothed comb. Power Rangers can be really goofy and wacky, but it pales in comparison to the absolute bugnuts bullshit in a series like Kamen Rider Blade.

The only problem is time constraints. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy writing these things quite a bit. The only problem is that I can't really make money on this. If I somehow got a million more readers on the site then maybe, but I'm not silly enough to expect that to happen. That means that whenever work gets busy (i.e. for the past two months) I end up falling behind on writing. Hence why you're reading me justifying my laziness right now!

Basically what I'm saying is this is about all I can do until someone rich starts writing me checks to make the same six jokes over and over again. Hey guys, who's Trini hahaha! Get it? That'll be 6000 dollars. I'll need it soon too, because these women I pay to tolerate me are getting real antsy.

Anonymous: Are you going to continue these posts throughout Zeo, Turbo, and possibly my favorite season, In Space? I'm having a great time reading!

I'm going to stop after Turbo, just because I don't want to talk about your favorite season. In Space? More like Get Out of My Face.

Nah, I'm planning on going at least to Space. Will I go further than that? God I hope not. Can you imagine having to watch Operation Overdrive with me? Can you imagine me owning that pile of pigshit and having to keep it in my house? And think of how long it would take me to get there! I'd be like 45 doing reviews of a show nobody even knows about anymore. Unless Robo-Saban is still cranking out Power Rangers Intergalactic Defense Force in 2094. In which case I guess I'll still have to be making pithy comments about this godforsaken franchise.

"Sorry I can't play with you dear child I somehow spewed from my grotesque loins. I have to inform 6 people that Moltor having Tyzonne's girlfriend as his captive makes no gosh durn sense!"

Matt Fischer Have you considered doing small reviews on any of the games for the show? I'm talking about the snes and Sega games :)

Dear Matt Fischer: Why the fuck didn't you tell me to do that when I realized I didn't have any content for this week?! I could have talked about how fighting Ivan Ooze in "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition" is total bullshit. He can fly and throw lightning that kills you in like three hits. And why can I only play as the Thunder Megazord or the Tigerzord in the scenario mode? What a bunch of bunk! I want to play as the new toys, not the old toys.

Actually I've done a Let's Play of the SNES Power Rangers game on my essentially defunct Youtube channel. I was considering on doing another one of those sometime in the future just for old times' sake, but I don't know anything about the Sega Power Rangers games. Are they any good? Are they alright? Can you play them for me and form opinions so I'm not obligated to? Thanks!

Anonymous: So how do you think VR Troopers, Beetleborgs, and Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad stack up against MMPR? (We know about Masked Rider!)

Oof. I'm probably not the right guy to ask about this. I've seen Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad about as many times as I've seen my dad's dick. Wait, no, I've definitely seen his dick more.

Beetleborgs rubs me the wrong way for a lot of little reasons. I'd love to go in-depth to try and explain exactly why, but I can't stand the majority of it. It feels like some executive wanted a "safe" version of Power Rangers, and took the absolutely minuscule amount of edge from Rangers to create Big Bad Beetleborgs.

The heroes aren't hyper-talented teenagers, they're a bunch of obnoxious sass-talking 7 year olds. The villains aren't devious space warlocks without skin, they're a group of dumbass losers who won't shut up about eating doughnuts every week. The monsters aren't "destroyed", they're sent back to the pages of a comic book. Instead of the Power Rangers who occasionally experience legitimate fear in the face of the enemy, the Beetleborgs refuse to stop making incessantly grating quips in every single scene. These structural components ultimately make Beetleborgs feel like an even blander and more milquetoast version of Power Rangers. And that's one hell of an achievement.

Beetleborgs has some good elements. Even though Flabber is obnoxious, I like most of the monsters that live at Hilhurst. Except Frankenbeans, he's the absolute worst. Count Fangula is a stone cold fox though. If you don't think he's the best character in that show then get the hell off my site and out of my sight.

I also really love the designs for the monsters as well as the heroes. Villains like Nukus and Noxic have some of my favorite Tokusatsu designs out there. The Mantrons from Beetleborgs Metallix also have excellent costumes as well. So there are some good things about this show as long as you completely ignore the titular characters.

And here's a really whiny nitpick that I doubt anyone else gives a shit about at all. But I thought it was lame how many of the monsters the Beetleborgs finished off using their sidearm blasters. That'd be like if the Power Rangers finished off villains with their Blade Blasters.

Oh.

Actually there is something else I find neat about Beetleborgs. I love how they use decapitated monsters from Power Rangers as set dressing. I was going through some episodes one week and to my surprise, Gnarly Gnome was there!

Oh sorry, you also asked about VR Troopers. I like it! It feels like a much more intelligently made Masked Rider or Beetleborgs. I don't have much to say about it though. It's enjoyable, but it's nothing I'd go out of my way to watch. Someone give me a good episode of it and maybe I'll watch it. I unno. It seems like it's better than I give it credit for.

Anonymous: What do you think of the slightly edgier, more 'mature' takes out there? Like that grimdark fan film a while back, the newer movie (understandable if you're waiting on that), and the Boom! Comics?

I'm flattered that you had so many questions to ask me Mr. or Ms. Anonymous. But you should have saved some of these questions for the other 2 people who read this blog. Shame on you!

I think the whole edgy and grimdark trend is a byproduct of executives completely misinterpreting popular culture. Stuff like Batman Begins shows them that audiences like a characters with edge to them, so the people making movies start to play follow the leader. Then a group of morons in business suits cycle through a Rolodex of things that were popular with millennials, slap a big coat of gray paint on a pre-existing property, and hope they trick enough people to see it in order to turn a profit. Then eventually they come to that show with the multi-colored dinosaurs and feel like this would be the best choice to turn into Zack Snyder's newest opus.

But don't get this all twisted. The idea of something being grimdark and Shadow the Edgehog is often conflated with any attempt to give a shallow story some level of depth. You can absolutely add more dynamic storytelling to an existing property. You can even go darker with it if you so choose, but you need to do that competently. I don't really give a fuck if you "respect the original" or whatever. Because every time I hear someone use that phrase, it's code for "Why didn't they do what the original did and then I could be mad they didn't do anything new?" All I want you to do is use the original source material as a jumping off point in order to craft something interesting and fun. Take an original concept and tweak it a little bit to adapt it for a different audience, is that so hard? Why as a matter of fact it's not. How do I know?  Because Power Rangers has been doing it for 23 fucking years.

Sorry, I know that's not the exact same thing. Remakes are quite a bit more complex than hot-gluing Japanese footage to scenes of obese men falling into cakes. I just find it interesting that a series literally built out of repurposing an original property has a movie coming out that doesn't seem like it knows how to do that. The trailers for the 2017 Power Rangers movie remind me of that abysmal Fantastic Four from 2015. You know what Power Rangers invoked? Fun. This movie doesn't give that vibe off in the slightest.

Though I'll speak quite highly of the comic books. A friend of mine got me one of those and I've got to say it's far better than I expect it would be. That's the kind of adaptation we should encourage. You can take the original concept, dust off the things that don't work, and make it into something worth enjoying. Fix what was wrong with the original property and show the world that even the most perfect piece of media had its flaws. You can do it everyone, just put a little dab of color into it for god's sake.

Elhombredejota: ....I could swear last weekend I saw a recap here of the original VR Troopers pilot with Jason Frank. Did it self-destruct?

Not at all! It's right here as a matter of fact. W-was that all you needed? Oh. I'm sorry. Well have a good one! And a happy new year to all you knuckleheads!