Episode 010 - Mighty Morphin Gojira Reboot
 

http://news.tokunation.com/2014/05/2...a-reboot-17970

(NOTE: iTunes will take a little bit of time before it updates, so hang tight!)

Before the epic crossover with our friends at RangerCommand comes out, we have some movie stuff to talk about! *Join Chris (@rankal), Jordan (@DenO_TokuNation), and Tom (@SoulInkChu) as they discuss the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie reboot that was announced a couple weeks back, and then stick around as they discuss everything about the blockbuster hit Godzilla.

NOTE! *If you haven't seen the new Godzilla movie, this podcast episode contains INCREDIBLY DETAILED SPOILERS! *If you do not wish to be spoiled, do not listen to this episode. *Or at least turn the Godzilla portion on mute!

Episode details - the boys talk Mighty Morphin Power Rangers reboot, and two of the three podcasters think the movie will be a blockbuster flop. *Hear their reasons as to why and as the lone podcaster who is hopeful tries his best to defend the franchise and the possible success of the movie. *The boys then talk Godzilla - including the overall story of the movie, what worked and didn't work, their favorite parts, and what monsters they'd like to see Godzilla take on in a sequel. *There's also a moment where Tom gets a little too excited about his trip to Japan and ... well ... you just have to hear it for yourself.

Once you've listened to the episode, feel free to discuss it here on the TokuNation.com forums. *And stay till the end of the episode to hear a special promo for the upcoming crossover with Ranger Command Power Hour. *Part 1 will focus discussion on the pro's and con's of American tokusatsu, namely Power Rangers, while part 2 (the next episode of Talkin Toku) will feature the pro's and con's of Japanese tokusatsu, namely Super Sentai and Kamen Rider. *See you then, and take a listen to the episode below!

DIRECT DOWNLOAD INFO
Click here to download the podcast directly!
(Roughly 54 minutes in length, 51MB in size, .MP3 format)

TALKIN TOKU HOME PAGE
http://tokunation.libsyn.com/

TALKIN TOKU ON iTUNES
Click here to check us out on iTunes!

TALKIN TOKU ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Chris/Kickback (host) - @rankal
Jordan/Den-O (host) - @DenO_Tokunation
Tom/Sentai Tamashii (host) - @SoulInkChu
Talkin Toku on Twitter - @TalkinToku
Talkin Toku on Facebook - Facebook.com/TalkinToku - "Like" us for special updates!

Kickback, I love you and I love the show but at the beginning of the episode, I wanted to slap the shit out of you.

You guys were being such negative nellies about the Mighty Morphin' movie reboot. "Its either going to be super kiddy or grim dark." What? Just because Saban has SMF being super kiddy? Saban's involvement is going to be signing off papers for the project and nothing else. Lionsgate is going to do what the want, allowing for more of a free range.

I understand you guys have concerns for the movie, but you're just hating because Super Megaforce is bad.

Great episode, the Godzilla commentary was great :lol

Opinions are opinions. But no we weren't "hating". We have valid concerns over a childrens franchise attempting for a 3rd time to make the leap to big screen cinema. There's already a track record of failures here to base that opinion on. And no it can't be handicapped with well it was the 90's standards were different. Both films were critical failures.

Super Megaforce is a terribly written, shot, and edited show in nearly every aspect possible. And no that doesn't entirely mean the movie will be. There will be more than just Saban's people involved. But this is a joint project with Saban Brands and Lions Gate meaning Saban Brands will have a wealth of input. The last 4 years should have proven to anyone by now that their input is not a good thing. Clearly they have no clue how to handle their franchise on the small screen. Why should they do any better on the big one?

Being positive is one thing. But being blind to the history of the franchise in this area is another.

Godzilla Awakening spoilers but Shinomura is a particular example of a different kaiju that could be classified as a Muto and is unrelated to the insectoid species of Muto from the movie.

Aha! Thank you! That's never quite made clear, or at least I didn't feel it to be, in the context of the book. In the entirety of my review I was struggling to reconcile that creature properly with the MUTO's.

It's a minor problem in the movie that the book would definitely exacerbate, yeah, because MUTO isn't supposed to be a name but a broad (not even scientific) classification for the kinds of creatures Monarch has encountered over the years. Godzilla himself is simply a MUTO with an existing name, while neither Muto gets its own distinct name in the final movie.

They did in the leaked movie script, Hokmuto and Femuto, but the male's name makes zero sense now since he never attacked Hokkaido and Femuto is dumb.

Well, Super Megaforce is bad. Megaforce was bad. Super Samurai was bad. Samurai was really bad.

I didn't get a chance to talk about it during the podcast but one of the things that plagued the first Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie was the back and forth with the producers, directors, and Fox. The movie went WELL over budget because they kept changing things - first they were supposed to fight giant rants, they were going to have no visors (just helmets with their faces visible), and they ended up having to reshoot nearly most the movie towards the end of the production schedule.

That is what truly killed the first movie - horrible planning and production that caused it to go over-budget.

The second movie could never get anyone to truly sign off on it because of the failure of the first one.

While there is a ton of optimism surrounding the new movie and I personally am optimistic (I even say so in the podcast), as Jordan says you can't forget or forgive the failures of the past.

Comparing it to Transformers (because they are so similar it's scary) - the first movie (1986) was seen as a critical disaster and failure - but yet it is still a cult classic and cult favorite among all Transformers fans. If you're a fan of Transformers, you most likely LOVE the animated movie from 1986.

While I see Power Rangers fans who really do enjoy and like the original movie, I don't see it being as unifying as the same situation is/was with the animated Transformers movie. Because I thought the first Power Rangers movie was pretty bad to be honest...

Also - I think you confused me for Den-O/Jordan on the podcast, Powerman :) I was the only one being optimistic about the damn thing!

Had to stop listening about halfway in due to me not being able to watch Godzilla. :(

Gah! Balt dude you gotta see it! Great great movie.

Let's see what develops with the reboot and then make up our minds

I KNOW! But my son was born on May 8th. 'Free time' kinda no longer exists.

Wooo!

Getting a lot of hate for the MMPR Reboot discussion.

I think people need to stop and think for a second - just because YOU love the franchise, YOU think the show is good, YOU think it's awesome beyond awesome, doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to translate well to the big screen and bring in MILLIONS of people and result in HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars.

Blockbuster movies are movies that transcend their source material and manage to bring in not just the fans or the casual fans, but also the people who think it looks cool and want to see it. Transformers was a success because, honestly, Michael Bay put a special effects team together that knocked it out of the park. The Transformers looked real and some scenes were simply jaw-dropping.

A group of red, black, blue, yellow, and pink dinosaurs doesn't (from the outside looking in) seem to have that same jaw-dropping ability (at least, not in the good way). A group of five people that turn in to lycra-wearing heroes that nod their head while talking in suit and doing over-gestures to make it look like they're having conversations isn't going to cut it with the mainstream audience or movie critics.

For this movie to truly succeed (because, as Jordan says in the podcast, the first two failed horribly) they have to reinvent the entire idea, to the point that it may not even look or feel like Power Rangers, which is going to then upset the hardcore fans.

Power Rangers has made it a point to reinvent itself during the Neo-Saban era as a show and franchise geared towards children, specifically young children (ages 3 to 7) after Disney tried to make it more of a 7 to 11 demographic (which failed, by the way, hence their desire to abandon the property).

This movie, to be a blockbuster hit, has to reinvent itself from the ground up, redo the image that the property holder (Saban Brands) has given it, and allow itself to "grow up" enough to appeal to the casual movie audience, else it will be the third movie to fail and might doom the franchise to remain targeted at it's current demographic until Saban Brands gives up on the property again.

I was going to say something long winded and well thought out but I'll keep it short:

I believe that most of the negative reactions from the podcast are coming from the stand point of folks just happy to see that a thing they love is going to get a new movie. They are looking at this as the second coming of sorts for the brand (like the 1st TF movie) and anything they see that doesn't agree with their already made up minds is going to get a very terse response.

Unfortunately there seems to be a flagrant desire on the "hardcore" fans part to think this is going to do for Power Rangers what something like Iron Man did for comic book movies. Which is on its own an entirely silly stance to take. All we have to go on, to critique the announcement of this project currently, are it's two failed predecessors. And based on that, the outlook is not positive.

If people feel they need to be positive then that's great, if realistic. If anyone thinks I want this film to fail they'd be wrong. I'd love to see the franchise reinvented for modern audiences in a way that isn't entirely disrespectful to the source and can be enjoyable to casual fans. But to blindly and thoughtlessly assume it will be "ZOMG awesome" simply because it's Power Rangers? People are just wearing nostalgia goggles without even bothering to look at this thing realistically.

I wonder if this Lionsgate trying to jump on the success of Pacific Rim and Godzilla. Of course that's just the pessimist in me being cranky.

Jordan-O has a made some very good points and many hardcore fans need to realize that PR is not the same as comic books. Hell, there have been several attempts at PR comic books and most of failed. Hard.

Instead of flailing around like crazy how about we wait until there are more announcements? Then we might have something tangible to talk about.

I have faith in the Lionsgate big budget PR movie. I think they get a good crew and director behind the project then we should be good hands. If they market the movie well enough then we should have a good blockbuster in our hands.

The movie won't be out until 2017 at the earliest. We still have time. Not to mention the new TMNT movie has hype despite the movie based on a franchise made for kids.

Oh Kickback, did you make that long post just for little old me? Because that wasn't my issue. I wasn't intentionally trying to defend Saban. I get that the movie is going to be a different animal entirely and I'm okay with that. The problem is that you guys are focused only on the extremes just because Saban owns the PR franchise now. You guys make it seem like Saban is making the movie with thier abomination of a production staff. When in reality, its going to be all of Lionsgate's resources and Saban will have minimal involvment.

I can understand your fear of the movie failing but your arguments for it being shitty and kiddy are dumb.

I think the reason why Lionsgate is doing this movie because they are running out of franchises. Their Saw and Hostel franchise are dead, The Hunger Game franchise is almost done with one more movie. Twilight is not own by Summit Entertainment, not Lionsgate.

You can say they're dumb but the fact of the matter is I'm right - production of Power Rangers Samurai, Super Samurai, Megaforce, and Super Megaforce has been to create a non-linear story line (unlike RPM or some previous Disney seasons) because the idea is that the target demographic (3 to 7 year olds) simply don't have the attention span to care about a long, lengthy story. You can literally jump in to any episode (as long as it's not titled PART 2) and hardly have no exposition to a previous episode at all.

With the exception of the Legacy collection which is aimed at the older fan and collector, the toy line has continued to dwindle to cater to the standard "I want to take this figure and hit this other figure to symbolize fighting". Look at the 4" figures - they are the most affordable and offer what, 3 points of articulation (shoulder, leg, head)? The Zord Builder gimmick exists to allow kids to use the new zords with their old zords and totally elminate whatever the main gimmick of the zord might have actually been (in the case of Super Megaforce's Sentai counterpart, Gokaiger, the idea was to plug stuff in to GokaiOh and turn the key on the back to activate the gimmick ... turning the key in Legendary Megazord opens a hatch with nothing inside of it...because the key isn't supposed to be the gimmick, the Zord Builder is).

You can label me a hater, you can label me a Sentai purist (trust me though, for the most part I find the Sentai versions to be only marginally more watchable than the Power Rangers counterpart), but the truth of the matter is I'm a realist.

I want this movie to be good and I want it to succeed. But like Den-O said, if my expectation is to have this massively successful and profitable movie where the world is like "YEAH POWER RANGERS!" then I'm going to be disappointed, because the first movie came out during the height of the original Power Rangers popularity and it bombed. From production to actual theatrical release, it failed every step of the way. Not saying it wasn't enjoyable to watch as a fan, but to the movie audience it was seen as, reviewed as, critiqued as, and ultimately dubbed by the production company as a failure.

Knowing how Saban has handled the license out to other companies (PapercutZ for example) and their anal retentive nature about what they can and cannot include (and then the fact they can't even get the facts about their own franchise right) it leaves me worried. Optimistic, but worried.

I'm not the demographic for Power Rangers and that's why I don't take offense to a lot of things that a lot of fans take offense to. I watch it, enjoy it for what it is, and move on. But I do take issue when people call it a "good show" and start to rip on people who disagree.

The original MMPR movie was not a box office bomb. The movie made $66,433,194 worldwide on a 16 million budget. To adjust a movie's gross for inflation, MMPR made $103,421,439.07 worldwide. Not a blockbuster, but not a box office bomb. The MMPR movie came out when the show popularity was starting to drop down and the movie was over shadow by other major summer films.

Your numbers are skewed. Those are the worldwide totals. Domestically? That thing made 38 million and change. It was 4th at the box office opening weekend. However it was a huge critical failure.

I was going by worldwide total. It was #4 because the movie came out during a pack summer. Batman Forever, Apollo 13 and Pocahontas over shadow the movie. I don't think anyone expect good reviews for a movie based on a popular kids show. The movie was made for kids who watch the show. The Pokemon movies and 80's Transformers movie got bad reviews from critics too.

With Lionsgate movie, they are marketing the movie to a bigger audience. I hope the movie have a similar tone to JJ Star Trek movies and won't be dark & gritty similar to Men of Steel or Batman Begins - The Dark Knight Rises.

Sorry. I need to clarify. I meant that your reasoning for thinking the movie is going to be shitty/crap are dumb. The show is shit, we can all agree on that. Unclear wording. Sorry.

But seriously, though. I'll take Zordbuilder over Gokai-oh's gimmick anyday.

Wait, so overseas doesn't matter? LOL, tell that to Godzilla 2014 (ironically), which doubled the money it made here with overseas releases.

Let's say that MMPR Movie was, overall, a financial success but it did NOT endear the band to non-fans the way that Transformers has to the same people.

Now Turbo on the other hand barley made its money back with an 8 million budget and a 9.1 million gross at the box office.

Be aware that none of these numbers are the ACTUAL cost of the movies since they don't count for marketing and licensing.


This being said can we all just agree that we are excited to hear more about the movie and move on with our lives. :)

They do a great job on marketing the Hunger Games movies and those movies make a ton of cash. I would love to see a PR movie made 700 million worldwide. This could lead into a bright future for the franchise. Star Trek '09 and Transformers '07 help create a lot of fans. Shout! also give us a lot of good Transformers dvd's too.

Just think what treatment PR can get if the movie turns out good.