#169. Mighty Morphin' Reboot
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A short bonus episode built entirely around a trailer Mike's friend sent him for the Netflix Mighty Morphin Power Rangers revival (apparently titled something like Once & Always), which reunites most of the original cast — Zach the Black Ranger, Jason the Red Ranger, and Billy the Blue Ranger — but not Amy Jo Johnson's Pink Ranger, who according to Sonny's IMDb-trivia digging simply never said yes to whatever money Netflix offered; the actress who played the Yellow Ranger, Trini, died in a car accident years ago and is honored via a daughter character told to "avenge mom." Mike, who was five or six and squarely in the target demographic when the original show aired, gives the full nostalgia rundown of belt-buckle morphers and gauntlet toys, while JVL, fourteen at the time and already aging out, mostly remembers it as background noise from having a younger brother; Sonny, in between the two in age, needles them both about it. Sonny also delivers a long tangent on the franchise's origin story, insisting (per an old book he pulls off his shelf) that it was Stan Lee — of all people — who spent years pitching Hollywood on reshooting a Japanese tokusatsu show with American actors over the same fight footage before everyone passed and Haim Saban later turned it into a multibillion-dollar empire; JVL notes the "reuse the footage, slap new words on it" approach is basically the Marvel method. The group agrees the trailer itself looks like "hot garbage," cheap enough that Max Landis could have shot it with friends over a weekend, though everyone but Zach looks visibly older. JVL frames the whole project as peak Netflix nostalgia-bait alongside Arrested Development, Stranger Things, and Cobra Kai, and Sonny wonders aloud whether Netflix will dub the international versions or reshoot them locally the way the original series did. The episode drifts into an extended riff on Amy Jo Johnson as an era-appropriate first crush (with jokes about how lucrative OnlyFans would have been for her) and a rambling comparison to Saved by the Bell's syndication oddities, including the infamous mid-season Tori-replaces-half-the-cast plot, before Mike admits he still won't actually watch the reboot.
From the show notes
Has Netflix nostalgia finally gone too far?
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome back to the sub beacon bonus episode and uh guys we are talking about the power rangers netflix movie it's a movie yes netflix movie netflix show uh bringing back Netflix movie i don't know yeah you sent us the trailer i did send you the trailer and it looks like a movie it didn't say it didn't
Sonny00:00:29say which it is once it was like mighty morphin power rangers once in future kings yeah once and
Mike00:00:36for all or something like that uh but it is a friend of mine sent it to me and uh this friend of mine we used to um i in fact we were texting about it i spent the night at his house you know several you know for sleepovers and we would wake up in the morning and go watch mighty morphin power rangers in the morning it was you know so this was like total nostalgia trip for me because they're back all okay well maybe not all of the actors uh but some of the original actors from the original power rangers movie uh zach the the black ranger that's the color of his of his outfit by the way the black ranger uh they're bringing back jason the red ranger uh and billy the blue ranger uh trini the actress uh sadly like i think like 20 years ago the actress died in a car wreck to play the yellow ranger and they and they mentioned this in the trailer that you know they have like somebody playing her daughter who says you know you you've got to avenge mom or something like that uh and then uh the pink ranger is not the
Sonny00:01:41original pink ranger i will have to say amy joe johnson not coming back not coming back i wondered
JVL00:01:46so when i saw the actress in the trailer i thought to myself is that what amy joe johnson looks like now so why did she not come back i don't know but what does she do with herself i assume all she does is go to comic cons
Sonny00:01:59i don't know i guess i don't know i mean she according according to imdb trivia she says i did not reject the offer they gave me i just did not say yes to the offer they gave me she wanted more money is what it comes down to i see well i think she's like she's isn't she a director now
Mike00:02:14she does like some small sure stuff sure yeah sure so you know she's a producer so she's a director
Sonny00:02:21well that was disappointing um can we can we just set can we can we set the stage here because i went you're you're i'm about i'm about 10 years younger than jbl and you're about four years younger than me yeah yeah i'm 35. yeah so five years younger than me so like you were you were like right in the the midst of power rangers mania it was i you were like six
Mike00:02:44when you when yeah i was like i was like five and six so like when when the power rangers came out yes i was square in the target demographic it it was ubiquitous in a way that i don't know like maybe it was like the ninja turtles a few years earlier in terms of just like it was everywhere the theme song was everywhere the toys were everywhere um i mean i had let's see i had the the sort of like belt buckle thing that you could like you put the little gold disc in and you like shoved it together and it said you know it did the the theme um i remember bringing out it's morphin time it's morphin time go go power rangers um we had the i believe it's the red ranger like they're like gauntlets that go over they go over your your your hands and and and your forearm and and you were what 14 exactly i was 14. um i kept these for a long time and and you could like press your thumb and it would make like a like a like a hitting sound so you could like pretend like you were yeah it was like a friday chop yeah exactly um and it was just it was it was all over the place it was crazy it was it was it was sort of this insane you know power rangers were showing up at birthday parties and all the toys and it it wasn't until obviously years later when i like sort of i was like what was the power why was that such a thing and it went on apparently for for years and years after multiple series multiple series what it was was so it was it was repurposing half of the show was repurposed uh uh footage from a japanese show that was already produced in japan right like all of the the the bad guy stuff um all of the um uh the the the zords that would come together into like from like the individual ships would come into the into the big sort of thing to fight the big bad guys
JVL00:04:43like all the battles all the fighting right that was all all the actual power rangers was just re it's like reclaimed driftwood exactly right and then they filmed the the stuff with the american film like right so it would film like 11 so the the the the the genius of this is you only have to pay to film 11 minutes to get a 22-minute show that you can sell ads around oh yeah genie eureka oh there is art
Mike00:05:11not just ads toys uh all of the paraphernalia the and then the movie they made a movie out of it anyway it was great um it looks directed by elizabeth banks i think really the most recent oh the most recent i'm thinking i'm thinking back back with like with the original cast or some of the original cast they did uh make a movie out of it but um anyway it looks like hot garbage uh but you know a fun little nostalgia trip um everybody looks old and fat uh except for
Sonny00:05:41zach uh the black ranger who looks great so yeah he looks he looks like ex he looks exactly as i remember yes um which i i mean like because he was you know he was an older kid i was you know 11 or 12 or whatever and he was an older kid like he was like an adult essentially he might as well have been a you know he might as well have been 40. and now he is i would assume you know he's like 50. he's like he's like 50 i think yeah
Mike00:06:05because i think yeah i think the guy who played the red ranger who was jason who was like actually like the martial arts guy he was the youngest in the in the whole in the whole crew and um uh and he was like the only one who's actual teenager and the rest of them were like you know in the early
Sonny00:06:2020s yeah so um uh so fun fun fact about the the power rangers i don't know if you guys know this in the in the i want to say it was in the 1980s i i just pulled down a book because i i want to i i wanted to confirm but yeah so in the in the 1980s um uh the an american uh who wanted to get into the world of uh film and tv and stuff he he was in japan and he saw this he he was like this is a great idea we can take the action sequences right we can reshoot them with americans we can do that uh over over here in the states and we we can sell it here and it'll be it'll be an american version of you know these these japanese action programs it'll be wonderful it'll be great we'll dub everything over it'll be fine um and he pitched this to he pitched this to everyone in hollywood and totally everyone rejected him at the time and then like 10 years later it became a huge hit do you know who this person was who this this individual this this guy who wanted to get into hollywood really was it was it quentin tarantino no i give up jbl i think we've discussed the treasury no not mnuchin not mnuchin not mnuchin uh not stephen mnuchin executive producer was it bannon not bannon who i don't know stanley what stanley wow marvel impresario stanley who failed over and over again to get things to take off in hollywood like just could not could not make anything work uh from the marvel universe or anything else he tried in hollywood was going around pitching this movie or pitching this show to hollywood studios nobody nobody wanted any part of it and of course it became uh a multi-billion dollar empire for saban yeah i was just saying it was the time saban
JVL00:08:08involved in saban i don't think so i think he just i think he got it later yeah got it well you know it makes total sense that it would be stanley to think that because it sort of fits with the marvel method right totally you just well we got the pictures and we'll just uh we'll just put new
Sonny00:08:24words on it new words on it new word bubbles right right it i mean it really really is it is it is like the perfect uh synthesis of stanley and filmmaking just uh
Mike00:08:34anyway i'm sorry i'm sorry i didn't mean no no that's great jv what is your what is your relationship with the power rangers or were you aware of them at the time oh yeah i was aware of
JVL00:08:45him because i had a younger brother right okay so and my little brother was wasn't into them but you know it was background noise in our life uh this this strikes me as almost the perfect netflix totally product because netflix is quantity over quality huge into nostalgia plays everything from like the arrest development which is how they launched their original content to stranger things to cobra kai right it's just like buying seinfeld you know i mean it's like right yeah so they they you know they're throwing themselves into the nostalgia pit again this thing looks like it cost maybe five thousand dollars to make from the trailer i mean it it does look like something that max landis could have done on the weekend with a bunch of his friends yeah pretty much in in everything from costumes to locations to camera work uh and i don't know i guess i'm insulted by it you're insulting that way i mean i'm insulted by everything netflix does
Mike00:09:50i hate the service yeah well i will say it got it got the 35 year old guy eyes that i text with every day talking like in a way in the way that nobody's
Sonny00:10:02talked on this thread in in weeks can't wait for this tv y7 reboot of uh no mostly just talking
Mike00:10:08about how hilarious it was that the black ranger was played by a black guy the yellow ranger was played by an asian girl and the pink ranger was played by the super why the blonde racist yeah
Sonny00:10:19no it's like it's like insane i can't believe it uh no the uh no the um uh what what is interesting to me about this from netflix's point of view is i'm very curious to see if they take this so like netflix's model right is based on you make a thing in germany and then you slap subtitles on it goes all over the world 99 of those things flop one percent turns into money heist or uh you know the hunger games show game squid game um and and like that that's how they make their nut right that's like the the one percent of foreign product that hits in america is an is an enormous hit um uh i'm very curious to see what they actually do with the with with the product itself because right so like think back to the original idea of the show right you have the japanese version of the show that has japanese teenagers doing their japanese teen thing and then you have the guys in the suits fighting and the big monsters and like the godzilla knockoff stuff right and you just have to shoot the reshoot the japanese teens as american teens in america and you use all the same footage and have them double over it i'm very curious to see if netflix just dubs everything or if they reshoot the sequences uh with actors from the original territories because this was i mean this was a huge hit in many countries this was not just a hit in america um it was a hit in japan it was
JVL00:11:43i'm i'm sure it was a hit did they do it back then with different actors or did they just
Sonny00:11:47export the american version i think they did it with different actors i i don't know for sure i mean this is i this is kind of what i'm curious about i would i would actually like read a real in-depth making of the original power rangers and the new netflix power rangers and like what they're doing similarly or differently because like if they're again like netflix is pretty big in japan netflix has a a not small presence in japan japan was one of the places where the show was a big hit are they getting the original japanese actors back to shoot their scenes and do it that way or are they just gonna send the american version over there dubbed in japanese i feel like the japanese audiences would be insulted by that right i don't know i take those sorts of seriously they take those sites very seriously i just want to know if there was a french canadian
Mike00:12:30version of the power rangers you know like you know you know you know so i'll tell you this
JVL00:12:41if they had had only fans back in the early 90s amy joe johnson would be a billionaire because she could have come off of the power rangers and as soon as you your cohort hit age 18 she could have
Mike00:12:55built you guys for every penny he's easily i mean that is the other that is the other place the text thread went to by the way which was oh no amy joe johnson let's talk about amy joe johnson our our first you know sexual way your first crush right careful careful everybody we got to be real
Sonny00:13:13careful still she was like 25 at the time yeah she she was an adult trust me she was she was an adult
Mike00:13:20but uh she was a whole woman we noticed it in kindergarten we noticed
Sonny00:13:25all right uh no but i mean i that's that's interesting i wonder i wonder what the equivalent would be for me and then i don't i don't even know i said by the bell i guess because you're you're probably too young for say by the bell but i i watched the original
Mike00:13:41say but yeah i watched saved by the bell though because they because it was in syndication because it was on tbs it was on tbs all the time i i i remember watching in a middle school just like
JVL00:13:48before middle school were you an elizabeth berkeley guy or tiffany amber thesen guy uh
Mike00:13:52i was tiffany tiffany yeah there's no question
Sonny00:13:55no there's no nobody nobody was nobody was a jesse spano nobody was so excited over a kelly
Mike00:14:01kapowski fan come on that's ridiculous i liked i liked lisa turtle too i i i thought i thought she
Sonny00:14:07was cool oh totally oh it was for me it was kelly kelly lisa easily lisa was just like she had this
Mike00:14:15unattainable quality like she was like so kind of like fashionable and wealthy you know but like but
Sonny00:14:20kelly kapowski was girl next door yeah she wasn't wasn't hillary swank on the show for a season
Mike00:14:25season two at the end she was okay so so that was what she was like the she was she was like the tough girl with the with the yeah yeah but here's the thing no it wasn't hillary swank it was like a hillary swank look-alike but she was they like they like they've they've taped some of the episodes out of sequence and it was like they lost they lost uh lisa turtle and uh tiffany amber thesen um and they had to like but they had like 13 more episodes to to make and so they brought in maybe maybe it was her um but they brought in this what was her name her name was like nikki or something like that she had like a leather jacket tori tori
Sonny00:15:06tori that's what it was now it's it's a woman named liana creel i don't know who that is yes
Mike00:15:10okay but they brought her in and so it's like it's like half of the cast is gone but they act like they act like it's all normal and they're like she's like the new kid and they like then they like intersperse the episodes so when they aired them it was like every other week you would get one where like half of the women and the cast are gone but tori is there it was so it was
JVL00:15:30so weird but it which was very strange the days of syndicated tv it's a fascinating show to watch
Sonny00:15:37from like again like as a even as a kid i realized that this was such a this is such a weird product because like the first season you know the the the framing device of the show is the teacher is like the narrator yes um and good morning miss bliss haley mills it was a haley mills you know product vehicle so she she's like she's like the teacher and she's teaching these kids how to like live their life and she's you know kind of providing guidance and structure and then all of a sudden they realize that no kids actually want zach they want zach to be cool and and you know like uh that's what they want to watch so it like shifts to the zach show um very very like on a dime well
Mike00:16:17and they moved they moved it from indiana to uh to la to california yeah bayside bayside baby but like the whole school mr belding and everybody moved now it's yeah it was not it was not clear to me well uh i will uh i'm gonna admit i will probably not be tuning in to the power rangers reboot movie whatever it is liar liar liar i just don't check my you're gonna be watching you and your friends are gonna watch it live and text each other if amy joe johnson were there i would i would be on it i would be on it waiting to waiting to turn it on at midnight whenever it whenever it loaded up
Sonny00:16:54all right all right i'm sure it's fun
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