8) Rita And The Green Power Coin
The movie takes huge liberties with the character of Rita Repulsa. One of the big changes is that she’s left at the bottom of the sea for millions of years until Angel Grove fishermen fish her out and awaken her. In the original series, Rita is accidentally released from her “space dumpster” prison after ten thousand years and makes her new home on the moon.
Rita’s usual base of operations is alluded to at the end of the movie, too. After Jason slaps the villainess into space (yes, really), the last image we see of Rita is her floating towards the moon. We don’t actually see her die, either, so it’s possible that she’ll recuperate on the moon and return in Power Rangers 2.
The biggest alteration made to Rita, however, is that she’s a former Green Ranger turned evil. It’s a completely fresh piece of backstory but is nonetheless drawn from a story arc from the original series. In Mighty Morphin‘s “Green With Evil” multi-episode arc, Rita reveals that she has possession of the sixth Power Coin. She brainwashes one of the team’s classmates, Tommy Oliver, and uses him as her champion: an evil Green Ranger.
