Bryan Cranston says the Power Rangers movie is "gonna be a big deal"

This year will see the big screen revival of ‘Power Rangers,’ with the camp and colourful TV series (which spawned two movies in the 1990s) getting a somewhat grittier reboot from Lionsgate and director Dean Israelite.

However, while all promo material to date has suggested this new movie will be pretty far removed from the TV show in many respects, it does boast one key connection with the earliest episodes of the original show ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers:’ actor Bryan Cranston, who will appear as Zordon, the all-knowing extra-terrestrial entity (or, basically, a holographic floating head in a glass cylinder) who mentors the five All-American teens chosen to become the Power Rangers.

While Cranston is now something of a cult icon thanks to his lead role on TV series ‘Breaking Bad,’ he was once a young, little-known actor looking for his break, and this led him to accept voiceover work from Haim Saban, the producer who would go on to mastermind the ‘Power Rangers’ franchise.

As Cranston explains to IGN, “I know Haim and 35 years ago I was doing voice overs when I was first starting out and I would do it when they were dubbing [cartoons] into English and they had to change everything.

“I went in and did a bunch of different voices. I was 23 or 24. I wasn’t doing younger voices obviously. I did a lot of villains and ‘You shall pay for that!’ It was fun. And I was glad to have the job. I was learning a lot.”

This led to Cranston being hired to do voiceover work on some early episodes of ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,’ which again involved a lot of dubbing as the bulk of the action scenes were recycled from earlier Japanese TV show ‘Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger.’ Such was the strength of their working relationship, Saban even named the Blue Ranger Billy Cranston in honour of the actor.

Still, Cranston admits being hesitant when Saban asked him to play Zordon in the new ‘Power Rangers’ movie:

“At first I thought, ‘ah, I don’t think I want to’… I thought, ‘Power Rangers? It’s kind of the [1960s] Batman television show – Pow! Zing! Whap!’

“And I had a phone call with the director and he said, ‘Think of it this way… Like Batman came from TV and became a completely different animal in the movies, so too is it here. We’re going to take this and revamp it and it’s going to be grounded and real.’ And I thought ‘Okay, with that, let me read it.’

“I read it and went ‘You’re right.’ The kids sound like real kids and not everyone is this great athlete and everything is working out. I thought, ‘This might be a nice bookend to what I was doing before,’ since I started out doing voices.”

IGN are not the only ones Cranston has recently discussed ‘Power Rangers’ with, as the actor also sang the film’s praises this weekend on panel for the Television Critic’s Association (quotes via The AV Club), to whom Cranston declared, “this movie is actually gonna be a big deal. I’ve seen a lot of it, because I’m doing ADR on it. And it’s impressive.

“Dean Israelite really has a nice touch. As big and as powerful as ‘Power Rangers’ could be, he has a nice touch to keep it grounded, and real. I think it’s gonna turn some heads, I really do.”

It remains to be seen whether a more ‘grounded and real’ take on such a traditionally light-hearted property is something that will work creatively, or go down well with audiences (didn’t work for ‘Fantastic Four,’ after all) – but if someone as esteemed as Cranston has confidence in it, that should go some way to inspiring confidence in cinemagoers.

‘Power Rangers’ also stars Elizabeth Banks as the villainous Rita Repulsa, Bill Hader as Zordon’s robot assistant Alpha-5, and newcomers Naomi Scott, Becky G, Dacre Montgomery, Ludi Lin and RJ Cyler as the Rangers themselves. It’s in UK cinemas on 24 March.

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