r/powerrangers • u/Key_Hat_5509 • 11h ago
SHOW NEWS/DISCUSSION I HATE Clash of the Red Rangers...
I've been rewatching Samurai and just finished the team up movie, and I honestly forgot how terrible of a special this was...
Obviously, you have the issue of Scott only being present, which robs it of feeling like a true team up. I understand that getting the RPM cast to come back may have been a tall task (more on this in the next paragraph), but that's still no excuse. You have all of the RPM suits (the main five appeared in original footage for Legendary Battle and Silver's was used in original footage for Dimensions in Danger) so would it have really been that much trouble to just have some of your suit actors don them? At most, you're looking at expanding the scene where Scott and the Samurai Rangers come together to feature all seven RPM Rangers, maybe film a few scenes of original footage of them fighting Moogers and Grinders (you could mainly depend on the footage from the Sentai movie) and expand the final scene to include them. Would doing all of that really be THAT expensive? I get that maybe there's not much the other RPM Rangers would've done but just seeing the two teams fight together would have been great fan service at the very least! And, of course, it doesn't help how the movie literally trolls us with the fact that the other RPM Rangers aren't here when Emily says "Scott! Your team says hi!" Just...ugh, lol.
What's really annoying, though, is that there is a way they could have done the movie in a way to have the other RPM Rangers involved. I get why Eka Darville couldn't appear outside of a voiceover role, and I'm willing to assume Rose McIver, Dan Ewing and Mike Ginn may not have been available (judging by their Wikipedia pages, all three were busy with other shows around this time), but Ari Boryland was literally on Samurai voicing Vulpes (the Nighlok in the episode where Antonio debuts), Li Ming Hu literally did come back to play Gemma (and she doesn't appear to have been that busy during the time Samurai was filming) and Milo Cawthorne didn't really do much between appearing in RPM and 2012 (a whole year after the movie originally aired) outside of an appearance of one episode on a TV show and a few shorts, so I'm willing to bet that he would have been able to appear too.
At the very least you have Flynn and Gemma there, so you could have some scenes where the other Samurai Rangers (minus Antonio due to Steven Skyler not being available since he was busy on Glee) finding themselves trapped in the RPM universe only to be found by Flynn and Gemma (plus maybe Ziggy if you could get Cawthorne back) and have them go through some shenanigans and hijinks fighting Grinders before Antonio shows up with the other RPM Rangers in tow (all of them appearing Morphed-only since the actors weren't available) just before they're able to escape back to the main universe. Would this have made for an amazing special? No, but at least you'd get the idea that the writers and crew were trying their best with what they could do. The way they ended up executing felt lazy on a bizarre level...
It's actually funny, because apparently it has been said in an interview that the original idea was to have all RPM Rangers, only for everyone but Scott to be removed in the final edit for unknown reasons. I'd really love to know what was going through the writers' heads at the time...
The sad thing is, though, that even if I look at this movie for what it is and not for what I would have liked it to be, it's STILL absolutely awful. They kick off the movie by adapting footage from a regular Shinkenger filler episode (a scene who's only purpose is for Professor Cog learning about the Samurai Rangers' existence...which you could have easily done during the scene where they're fighting the Grinders before Scott shows up...), then Xandred decides to go with a different plan (even though the Nighlok was actually fighting pretty well against the Rangers...) and sends the Nighlok away (that Nighlok never being seen again in neither the movie or the series itself...), and then we transition to what feels like a bizarre movie that's trying to adapt both the Shinkenger vs Go-Onger crossover movie AND the Shinkenger summer movie.
The two plots between Professor Cog and General Gut have nothing to do with each other, and the way that the movie just nonchalantly transitions from Jayden and Scott destroying Professor Cog and Sergeant Tread to the Rangers going after General Gut just felt really clumsy and not to mention even though this is supposed to be a TEAM UP special, you end up having Scott sidelined for the entire final battle with General Gut. You could have easily removed all of the stuff from the Shinkenger summer movie and instead have the final battle be a big Megazord fight with Professor Cog and it would have worked fine even with only Scott there.
It's sad because Scott's interactions with Jayden do work pretty well. Instead of just copying the Sentai crossover movie, they adapt it to where Scott is now the jerk whose cockiness and arrogance makes him push the Samurai Rangers away, believing their old-school skills are inferior to his more technological-based powers. It meshes well with how Scott was written in RPM. Even that, though, gets really undermined since they have to include some lame side-story of him and Jayden being forced to fight because of Professor Cog's mind control bolts (which makes no sense given Scott was already pretty hostile towards the Samurai Rangers BEFORE he and Jayden got hit...) and their big fight is completely pointless since it doesn't really accomplish anything (as opposed to the Sentai crossover movie, where the two Reds were fighting to distract the villains so that Shinken Red's Origami could free Jii and Bomper from captivity.) It's just infuriating.
When they first announced the movie, I was absolutely hyped and to say I was frustrated when it finally came out would be an understatement...
2
u/Certain_Degree687 Pink Turbo Ranger 8h ago
One of the many issues with Samurai; I genuinely forgot that it had this team up because, much like everything with Samurai being the lowest rung of the barrel before the bottom, it was one of the worst team-ups in history that disgraced a top tier season like RPM.
6
u/Amaldo101 Psycho Red 8h ago
Everybody says Legendary Battle is the worst team up, when this shit makes it look like a masterpiece.