Watch: Joseph Kahn’s Power Rangers Short Film ‘Power/Rangers’
This morningAdi Shankarreleased Power/Rangers, a “bootleg short film” directed byJoseph Kahn(Torque, Detention), co-written byDutch Southern(Bad Turn Worse) and starringJames Van Der Beek(Dawson’s Creek) andKatee Sackhoff(Battlestar Galactica). Described as “a twist on the Power Rangers mythos”, the short film is a a well crafted brilliant fx-heavy send-up of dark and gritty fan films while also somehow being a fun addition to the genre. Watch the R-rated Power Rangers short film after the jump.
Joseph Kahn’s Power Rangers Short Film
Kahn, not even a fan of the Power Rangers, toldHitfixthat the the concept of making a dark and gritty reboot of a silly property is what drew him to the idea:
“I think the trick that I really wanted to do with this was to make that dark and gritty version that everybody keeps talking about, but really do it. Really see if I could totally accomplish it with essentially a really incredible incredibly silly property.”
But don’t expect Lionsgate to hire Kahn for the big screen film adaptation they are currently developing, he’s not interested:
“The irony here is that I wouldn’t even want to make “Power Rangers: The Movie' for real. Like if I had to make a ‘Power Rangers’ movie, this is it. It’s 14 minutes long and it’s violent and this is what I have in me. If they offered me the 200 million version, the PG-13 version, I literally wouldn’t do it. It’s just not interesting to me.”
And I agree with Kahn, I’m not sure we need a feature length version of this. Here is a self-indulgent parody introduction video by Adi Shankar explaining “Why Bootleg The Power Rangers?":
ProducerAdi Shankar’s (The Grey, Dredd, Lone Survivor, The Voices) first Bootleg featuredThomas Janereprising his role asThe Punisheralong sideRon PearlmaninThe Punisher: Dirty Laundry. The second bootleg film featuredRyan Kwantenas the iconic Spiderman villian Venom inVenom: Truth In Journalism.And the third installment featured Shankar reinterpretingDredd(a film he executive produced) as a hyperviolent animated webseries inJudge Dredd: Superfiend.
