Power Rangers and Crime: Bulk and Skull: Part 1: Bullies

There is no doubt the impact Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy had on the impact on the franchise, having roles in episodes for over half a decade with the franchise.
However, imagine if their roles remained the same in the beginning? A little bit darker, a little less campy?
In the Day of the Dumpster pilots and the first few episodes of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series, Bulk and Skull were portrayed as misogynist bullies, foils for the weakling athletically deficient Billy even though he knew a few flips or two to portray. They constantly got in fights with the Rangers, with a sort of homage to the 50s greaser 80s punk rock homage delivered in the 90s. (Guess we can't blame out of college writers who don't have kids or are in high school to actually know how being there actually was.) The homage was supposed to be inspired by Laurel and Hardy, Saved by the Bell bullies (capturing SBTB's tone even if the show was not known to have bullies outside of possibly Tori's brother). Sure, even the Rangers themselves were overconfident, flawed in culture, but Bulk and Skull were supposed to give kids the lessons that bullies are not supposed to be cool, (even if you can meet Bulk and Skull really is at Morphicon!)

Would the show not been revolutionary if they had shown that Bulk and Skull had dysfunctional parents, or some sort of social deficiency that made them into these terrible teenagers?) I guess the show did not want to get too Public Service Announcementy with their 90s Fox Kids friendly material. (lots of censors had already took away the fights from the pilots and the 80s punk gangster tone of Bulk, Skull and friends.)
It does however as mentioned before demonstrate the formation of bullying.
However, the rangers do counter bullying from Bulk and Skull with counter bullying of their own against them. They do not try to understand or empathize with them, but keep them as their enemies, defending themselves from gangs like people growing up in the urban 90s would experience.
Heck, the Power Rangers actually promote bullying through name calling against their monster enemies. It is not self defense in this case, but rather a circumstance of dealing with their own hierarchy of needs to build some sort of militaristic form of confidence. Oddly enough, does Skull's parents not where militaristicish garb inspiring Skull. This might have been possibly what inspired him to join the highest form of civil service that Rangers do not join, the police. 
Also, according to wikipedia, the silent treatment is also a form of bullying. So what do people do?
Oh well, one can only hope the future of the franchise as a Terrence Malick film.
Till then, we'll just have to enjoy this:

(Was Bulk an influence on Skull or the other way around?)

Power Rangers In Space Vs MegaForce Aliens In Space

It is probably unfair of me to compare the grand 4-part ending-intro of Power Rangers Turbo-In Space to MegaForce, but I'm going to do it anyway.

They both consist of teams of teenagers. They both have enemies from Space, so one would figure that there would eventually be an encounter up there. Both introductions are directed by Jonathan Trachzor.

Conflicts:
Turbo/In-Space
(Beware SPOILERS)

• Goldgoyle shows up
• Destroys both Megazords
• The Turbo RAM
• Zordon shoots a distress signal from Eltar.
• Dimitria and the Blue Senturion leave
• Divatox invades the Command Center.
• Divatox captures Lightning Cruiser and Storm Blaster
• Divatox infiltrates the Base
• Zordon/Dimitria can't go back to Earth
• Rangers lose powers
• Rangers lose Justin
• Although campy, Alliance of Evil gathers
• Zordon is revealed to be drained of powers
• Andros and the others mistake each other for enemies
• Astronema does not make a mistake
• Rangers are sent back home to Earth by Andros
• It is implied Andros does not want to lose another teammate
• Alpha goes missing
• Rangers are captured

MegaForce:
Monsters want to attack Earth. Defend it. Homework. Do not mess up hair.

Tensou Sentai Goseiger Vs PR Megaforce First Impressions

With the first couple of episodes introduced, I would like to compare Tensou Sentai Goseiger with Power Rangers MegaForce.

Here we go!

Production Values/Song:
Goseiger wins by a ton. It's original. It's very upbeat. It does not do a bad job at ripping off Go Go Power Rangers. Did I mention it did not do a bad job at ripping off Go Go Power Rangers?
Goseiger's original footage was great., albeit the kid footage was unadaptable which had some problems for MegaForce.

Premise: A bunch of protectors of a galaxy vs "teenagers with attitudes."
Sure it is not a promising comparison being put into a preschool pseudo teenage soap opera.
Then again, it happened with Mighty Morphin and it turned out just fine.

Unnecessary kid storyline vs unnecessary teenager storyline
Audiences lose both ways. MegaForce gets a slight lead for not forcing the issue too much to be like Goseiger, even though they basically just copied Mighty Morphin.

Rockstar weapons vs not an homage to the Rockstar monster:
Though it already was, MegaForce did make the show a little less camp, so the points go to MegaForce for good adaptation.

Overall, both had horribly flawed introductions that did not establish much of the show. MegaForce established who has the hots for who and that Noah's a nerd, but no reason for them to protect Earth.
Goseiger only established that Black and Yellow are siblings and that Gosei Red forgets things like Tommy! (Why are there so many Mighty Morphin references in Goseiger that MegaForce wisely does not use.) Watching Goseiger makes you realize that the choices MegaForce used could have been worse (or better..)

Power Rangers Megaforce Episode One Review: Unmega Mission

Nagisa Oshima, Kaneto Shindo, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Luc-Godard, etc., I've betrayed you! I caved! It was me all along! I did it! FORGIVE ME!

In case you did not know, (and you probably don't cause I only need one toe to count how many people read this site) I watched  on youtube, to make sure I would not give it a view. (

And I don't regret it.

It's not Samurai.
Unfortunately, it's still a lot friggin close than I would like it to be. And the two shows are essentially sharing the same bed at the moment!

They did not copy it shot-for-shot.
In fact, there's this awesome helicopter shot of a Red Ranger practicing on a rooftop that a Sentai director would have came up with himself.
It's not exactly indie, but then again Asylum can do those same shots as well.
Instead of copying the script from Shinkenger and adapting it poorly, they copied the script from Mighty Morphin and did it poorly.
I still have to wait for a few more episodes to see if there is character development in the show. However so far the show is still making the same mistake most (children's) shows make by creating characters, instead of people one can relate with. This stuff just does not hit right away like in Mighty Morphin where in High Five, you learn that Trini has a fear of heights and in A ZEO Beginning where we forget about that entire kid mess and have to have that awkward transition into learning about how Tanya's character worked in Shooting Star.
Or perhaps they are just directed to be annoying. I dunno.

Gosei's Olmec or Zordon now. And there's a robot that's supposed to be Alpha. Cute. Very cute...

They also fight the monsters once they leave their "command center" like in Mighty Morphin. The fight scene's actually a lot more dynamic than the original Mighty Morphin fight. They carried over the fact that the enemy is not given much depth or reason for us for us to care about them "attacking Earth," but then again Rita did not either (aside from an earthquake and a wonderful combination of performance by Machiko Soga and Barbara Goodson!)
They get flipped over.

They morph.

It's morphin' time.

In fact the whole episode is like that:

Nothing vs introduction of iconic character. "Don't leave! You'll miss my coming out party! That's when I destroy the nearest planet! Hahahaha!"

Introduce school.
(School that establishes they go to school and how smart they are and who they like)
VERSUS
(Establishes characters favorite hobbies after trying three different pilots including Bulk and Skull!

Billy demonstrates a fighting weakness, which gives his character a flaw, an arc to overcome. Sure, it is not established in this episode, but is fully utilized in later episodes. His character ends up growing the most in possibly all of Power Rangers history. You could debate the hardships of everyday school is their arc.)

Establishing they're friends, er... Classmates rather trying to survive a suburban school with no arcs.
Vs
Friends trying to survive school bullying, the stresses of every overachieving kid. Earthquake on Earth

One shot of the enemy base.
Vs.
Shots that establish the enemy base are constantly shown throughout the show.

You couldn't even make up a name for the new Ernie? Not Richard or Mr. Ginelle? How about just let him be a dessert guy without having a specific name?

Which brings me to...

Nitpicks:

I also don't like the idea of one of the Rangers having the hots for one of the original five. It's a Mighty Morphin homage and that did not happen in Mighty Morphin.
To quote Mr. Plinkett, "I don't like things that are different!"
(WHY KIM?! WHY?!)

Haha! Nature! Can't good guy friends just accept your other friends' beliefs?

To make things worse, it was directed directly by Trachzor himself! -_- So any nitpicks I have are directly influenced by the producer himself.

At least, they'll have guest stars to save this season...