4) So It’s Like Chronicle?
After being introduced to the Angel Grove kids in their civilian life, we then get to the exciting bit – when they get their powers. As previously explained, the origin story of the show could be easily squeezed into the opening titles, so the movie has free reign in that area. As it is, Power Rangers looks to heavily borrow from Josh Trank’s Chronicle.
A group of disparate teens come across some other-wordly technology buried in the earth. Though the sensible thing to do would be to leave it, they decide to have a closer look. Soon they all begin to develop superhuman abilities that change their lives. This description could be of either the Power Rangers trailer or the aforementioned 2012 found-footage superhero movie.
The movie’s inspiration is incredibly obvious, then, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Something that Chronicle did very well was to ground the fantastical nature of superpowered teens in the real world with believable characters. For Power Rangers’ serious tone to really work, it definitely needs to do the same. Let’s just hope it doesn’t miss that and end up mirroring Trank’s other superhero movie – 2015’s Fantastic Four, which likewise adapted a bright, all-ages property into an unusually moody film.