[BrokenDreams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by weedle013ZiO

That is ironic

I think the lack of care that went into Saban's second run with the show boiled down to the MMPR nostalgia fest. Samurai brought back Bulk, MF/SMF are essentially worse modern versions of MMPR right down to the juice bar, etc. Everyone had high hopes for Chip when he came back, but it was obvious he was no longer interested in writing more interesting PR stories like back in the late 90s and early 2000s. In Space to Time Force were some of the best Ranger series we'd ever gotten.

However, by the time of 2011 the 90s nostalgia bug was starting to creep into pop culture. MMPR is the series most non-fans think of when they think of Power Rangers. And since toy sales had fallen during the Disney Era, in part due to Bandai producing lower quality toys (the RPM Zords, imo, are the biggest offenders) Saban wanted to recapture what had made PR popular in the first place. After all, PR lacks the same impact something like Kamen Rider has in Japan to push it forward. Nobody cares about Power Rangers in general, so it's just a continuous push for MMPR nostalgia baiting.

Power Rangers up through 2009 was aimed primarily at kids, but it was a general kids age range. I can sit down and enjoy something like SPD because there's story and character in it. Yes, Power Rangers exists to sell toys, however that doesn't mean the show can't not be good too. The issue I think is that Saban treated its viewers like idiots, the idea that kids don't need shows that tells stories all they need are episodic content with light story elements. Because that's what the creatives took as a lesson from what made MMPR popular. It was less about the fact that MMPR existed in a time where shows would gain massive popularity and then slowly even off, like TMNT or Transformers. Those shows have their dedicated fan bases for sure, but they aren't nearly on the level of pop culture that they were at the very beginning.

So Saban and the creative teams would attempt to emulate things from MMPR from the opening theme to the comedic relief duo to the hangout spot. The age range went from general children of all ages to Ages like 4 and below. I've seen Pretty Cure episodes with more teeth than modern PR. They wanna capture the "essence" of what made MMPR popular, but the issue is that MMPR wasn't popular because of any particular element specific to it, it just happened to become instantly popular like TMNT. There was nothing particularly special about TMNT outside of it's very concept, because it ended up just being an episodic comedic action show about ninja turtles.

MMPR is a show that could only exist in the 90s and attempting to translate that into a modern show for 10 years straight WILL NOT WORK. They keep trying to make it work by modifying little things, but it never does. The irony of them saying Toqger would aim too low stems from this very fact that they already range their ages at like 2-3 years old. And it's like they look only at the main five suits and ignore the whole fact that the villains are complex in both character and design. The Shadow Line has some of the coolest villain designs in modern Sentai, but they aren't the focus. The ability to make a show be more than just a 20 minute toy commercial is lost to modern PR. Saban failed horribly and Hasbro hasn't made a good jump with Beat Morphers. I know it's better than most Saban stuff, but it still 100% feels like there's a lot of Saban leftovers. If Dino Fury fails, then we'll know that there's really no hope for modern PR to ever feel like an actual show and not like a 20 minute commercial with moral lessons. There's a reason why the MMPR comics are so well respected. It's because it takes general ideas from the original show and modernizes it in both setting, character, and concept. The comics allows MMPR to be what it could be in modern day as opposed to what worked in the 90s. I think they keep forgetting that MMPR was nearly 30 years ago and that 1993 is nothing like 2020. Hell, 1993 was nothing like 2011 and they kept trying to force it.