It’s Morphin’ Time! The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Breakdown
The Power Rangers are turning thirty this year. It’s been a few decades since our last morphin’ time, so let’s refresh ourselves on the MMPR.
This year the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers are celebrating their 30th anniversary. It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years, but these color-coded super teens have been fighting the forces of evil for three entire decades now. And frankly, we may need a bit of a refresher before the anniversary special premiers on Netflix. That’s right, it’s morphing time again.
The Basics
Mighty Morphing Power Rangers ran from 1993 to 1995. The basics of the show are that Rita Repulsa, an evil intergalactic sorceress, was freed from 10,000 years of confinement. She and her army of evil aliens decided to take over the nearest planet – Earth. But Zordon and his robotic assistant Alpha 5 sought out five “teenagers with attitude” to take on the mantel of the Power Rangers and defend the Earth from Rita’s evil attacks.
Each of the teens is given the ability to transform into a Power Ranger with a dinosaur theme, weapons, and of course, giant dinosaur-shaped vehicles that could join forces to form the Megazord in order to defeat Rita’s monster of the week.
The show was simple, formulaic, borderline nonsense, and if you were the right age in 1993, it was positively addicting.
The show also focused some time on the school and social lives of the Power Rangers, and periodically one would retire or move away and another would join the team.
Powers and Abilities
All of the characters had powers that were fairly similar, but each ranger had a somewhat unique twist. In the original lineup Jason Scott (Austin St. John), the Red Ranger, was the team’s leader. He piloted the Tyrannosaurus Dinozord and wielded the Dragon Dagger. Zack Taylor (Walter Emanuel Jones), the Black Ranger, had a Power Axe and the Mastodon Minozord.
The Blue Ranger was Billy Cranston (David Yost); he had the Triceratops Dinozord and a Power Lance. Trini Kwan (Thuy Trang) was the Yellow Ranger who used the Power Daggers and piloted the Sabertooth Tiger Dinozord. Finally, the Pink Ranger was Kimberly Hart (Amy Jo Johnson) and she wielded the Power Bow and piloted the Pterodactyl Dinozord.
Every member of the team became proficient in hand-to-hand combat when they were transformed into the Power Rangers. And when the battle got tough their Dinozords would join forces to become the classic giant-robot-style Megazord.
Power Rangers vs. Super Sentai
Mighty Morphing Power Rangers was based very heavily on Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, the sixteenth installment of the popular Japanese franchise, Super Sentai. Much of the Power Ranger‘s actual footage was adapted and reused footage from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger and Rita Repulsa’s scenes in both were the same. She was played by Machiko Soga and her voice was dubbed in English by Barbara Goodson.
What was your favorite iteration of Power Rangers? Did you watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers when it first aired? Will you be tuning in for the 30th anniversary special? Let us know in the comments!
Happy morphin’!
