Though a full-length Power Rangers movie isn’t coming out until 2016, a short film from Adi Shankar has already gone ahead and created a much darker imagining of the universe.
Shankar’s new film “Power/Rangers” went live Monday, and tells the story of a group of teenagers dragged into a war against the menacing Machine Empire. The film stars Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) as Kimberley Hart, the pink Power Ranger, and James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek) as Rocky DeSantos, the red Power Ranger.
Set in the distant future, the Machine Empire has taken over the world, and focuses on DeSantos, who has betrayed his former group and is interrogating Hart. The film shows where each member of the team has gone since the Machine Empire took over, with plenty of violence in between. Especially exciting is a sequence with the black Ranger, Zack Taylor, as he takes on a group of hit men in North Korea.
As DeSantos tells more of the story, there is plenty of blood spilled, right up to the twist ending.
The Verge reports “Power/Rangers” is part of an ever-expanding collection of unofficial short films by Shankar. He has previously created short films based on the 2012 movie Dredd as well as the Marvel character The Punisher.
The film was directed by Joseph Khan who, among other things, directed the music video for Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.”
