Every child has probably heard of the Power Rangers. Whether they watched it or not, the costumed heroes catch the eye while channel surfing. But did you know that many scenes from the series already existed before?
The first series of Power Rangers originally premiered in 1993. After that, the series produced by BVS Entertainment turned into a whole franchise with new series, movies, comics, and video games. The story always focuses on a group of teenagers who must fend off evil.
For this, the teenagers received the ability to transform into the costumed Power Rangers. What cannot be missed are overly choreographed martial arts fights, which often rely on exaggerated explosions. But above all, these scenes actually come from another series.
The franchise also attempted to make a serious film:
Adapted from Japan
Where do the scenes come from? Many of the series about Power Rangers, especially the first one, consist of 2 segments: The fighting scenes with and without the giant robots and the everyday life of the teenagers. The everyday life was filmed normally for the US series, with actors, but the fighting scenes were taken from the Japanese series Super Sentai. Since the same costumes were worn, they only had to add a voice-over to the Japanese scenes.
Regarding the development of the series, Haim Saban, the media entrepreneur behind the series, told a story about a visit to Tokyo, where he turned on the television:
Suddenly these five kids in spandex appeared and beat up monsters that came to Earth to eat all the food on Earth. I cannot explain why, but I fell in love with it.
Haim Saban on his reasons for producing Power Rangers (Source: YouTube)
A deal was made with the company Tōei and the Sentai formula was adapted into an American version. As Den of Geek reports, the series then took various scenes and plot points from Super Sentai and used them for their own Power Rangers.
So, to put it simply: It was not always the heroes you saw in the everyday scenes who were fighting, but completely different actors you probably never saw. According to the channel The Fan Club (YouTube), these are up to 57% of an episode in the first series.
Some scenes were played back faster or edited differently. If you look closely at the episodes, you can even spot differences in picture quality. The user rangersentaiguy2 has compared some scenes in a YouTube video:
Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, Tokusatsu?
What is Super Sentai about? The franchise started in Japan in 1975 and is still a huge franchise there, not only airing weekly but also producing a lot of merchandise. The series belongs to the Tokusatsu genre, which can simply be translated as Special Effects
.
Small and large kaiju (a term that Godzilla established) must be defeated by heroes in colorful suits. Important franchises in the genre include Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai itself. New series continue to appear for the brands, and even though the genre mainly targets children, there are also titles aimed more at adults, including:
- The series Kamen Rider Black Sun
- The movie Shin Kamen Rider
- The movie Shin Ultraman
The Power Rangers are still a well-known brand. The latest series in the franchise was Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, which premiered on Netflix in 2023.
To this day, the name Power Rangers is well-known, although the brand is probably not as relevant as it was in the 1990s. A 2017 sci-fi film was supposed to make the franchise popular on the big screen, but it came to nothing: A sci-fi film was supposed to turn a franchise into a film series, removed the beloved elements, and became a flop
