power rangers

After several weeks of limited movement, a handful of new releases prompted a pretty thorough shakeup of the Box Office Top 10. While Beauty and the Beast continued its unstoppable assault on the domestic box office, we also said hello this weekend to three new movies and goodbye to a handful of old favorites from the first few months of the year. Let’s start with the estimated numbers as of Sunday afternoon.

This week’s most high-profile release is the big Power Rangers reboot (I’m sorry, that’s Haim Saban‘s Power Rangers, please nobody sue me) and the earliest round of reviews has begun to surface over the past few day or so. They are, to put it somewhat charitably, mixed. The early consensus is that the film squanders what could have been remake-ready material — a multiethnic group of telegenic teens working together to form a gigantic robot that battles evil aliens sounds like a pretty hard concept to foul up — with a generic and often painfully unfunny take.

With a new Power Rangers movie opening in theaters in mere days, interest in the the ’90s children television show is reaching a fever pitch. You can relive the entire series in an eyeball-obliterating marathon, or eat Power Rangers donuts until your colon morphs into a giant fire-spewing monster. Or, if you want to get really crazy you can buy the original film, 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, on VHS because Amazon still has it for sale for some reason.

Just in case you forgot, that Power Rangers movie is still coming out in March, and Lionsgate has rolled out a brand-new poster that gives us a closer look at those Zords. Until now, all we’ve seen of the beasties are little bits and pieces, but now we know for sure what at least two of them look like. And, yes, they’re very big.

Superheroes don’t have to come from the brightly-colored pages of American comic books; the Power Rangers series that captivated youngsters during the ‘90s and early 2000s had roots in Japan, stemming from their tradition of kaiju films. It’s a powerful bridge between cultures, the universal desire to watch a team of teenagers with extraordinary abilities team up to beat the stuffing out of gigantic monsters, And now it’ll connect generations, too, as the official trailer arrives today with the promise of the same spirit of teamwork and towering-menace-fighting that made them an unlikely cross-Pacific sensation two decades ago.

After starring in arguably the greatest television series of all time, Bryan Cranston has certainly earned the right to pick any movie or television projects that he darn well pleases. That didn’t prevent a few people from raising their eyebrows when it was announced that Cranston would be joining the cast of the new Power Rangers reboot as their leader and mentor Zordon. Sure, we all know that Cranston got his start as a Power Rangers voice actor back in the day, but is he really so loyal as to work on a new live-action movie when he could be out there, winning Oscars or lighting up Broadway

In case you forgot that the Power Rangers movie is happening, Warner Bros. has rolled out an international trailer to drum up interest here and overseas. There’s a good chance this movie will be way bigger on the other side of the Pacific than here — after all, the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers TV show came from Japan. This is the first big blockbuster live-action movie adaptation of the characters, so it makes sense that it’ll trace back to the original TV show’s roots a little, but not without some changes. The new trailer features angsty teens, mysterious alien rocks, and symbolic hair-cutting.

Elizabeth Banks’ Rita Repulsa is back in a new image from the upcoming Power Rangers movie, and she looks pretty darn pleased with herself. The Power Rangers official Twitter account debuted a new still of the villain, with the caption “Thought you saw the last of me!? Ignoramus, you thought wrong. I have glorious catastrophic plans for the holiday season.”

With those shiny new Schumacher-esque suits and Rita Repulsa’s swampy Lady Gaga-as-a-Mortal Kombat-character aesthetic, you’d think that little else about the new Power Rangers movie could surprise us. You would think wrong. Today in “What the heck is going on with this Power Rangers reboot?” a new image from the upcoming film has given us our first look at their take on Alpha-5, and it is WACKY.

We’ve seen them in all their gear, but we haven’t seen the new Power Rangers with their cool visors down — until now. Yesterday, the official Power Rangers movie Twitter account unveiled a new motion poster that shows off the Power Rangers’ cool helmets and what they look like when they’re in full Ranger mode.