Let me start by saying if you grew up loving Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, you will love Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. On the flip side of this, if you never had any interest in the Power Rangers or thought that it was dumb or cheesy, you will not find anything here that will interest you. This is made for fans of Power Rangers and it is so much fun!
How to Download Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always
You can stream the film from Netflix. Click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The Movie Review
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always was made to be part of the 30-year celebrations of the franchise. Say what you want about it, but it must be something special if 30 years later people still love the Power Rangers. I grew up with the original series and my son grew up with the Power Rangers Samurai series as his Power Rangers. We watched this together and really enjoyed it.
This is set in the modern day so our original Rangers are now much older. While fighting Robo Rita Repulsa, Billy is injured and Trini sacrifices herself to save him, she dies and leaves her teenage daughter Minh without a parent in the process. Zack takes up the role of Minh’s guardian and trainer and a year passes.
While paying their respects at Trini’s grave, Rita launches an ambush with two monsters, Snizzard and Minotaur, and Jason, Tommy, and Kimberly are captured. This is such a fun scene and a clever way to get Jason, Tommy, and Kimberly out of the special for the duration of it.
Rita has a dangerous plan and she needs the power of the Power Rangers to pull it off so she sends her monsters out to hunt them down. While we have the Power Rangers trying to figure out how to stop her. We also have Minh wanting to embrace her mother’s legacy and take up the mantle of the Yellow Ranger herself.
The acting is kind of bad, the story is super cheesy, and the special effects are ropey, but I say all of this with a huge smile on my face as it just adds to the charm of this special. It feels and looks like an episode of Power Rangers from 30 years ago and that is exactly what I wanted from this. If you are a Power Rangers fan, this is 100 percent going to tug on those nostalgia strings.
This does only last around 50 minutes and when I first heard this I was a bit disappointed. However, I feel the runtime and having this as a “special” rather than being a movie was the right call. I think if they had whacked on an extra 30 minutes here, it would have perhaps not been as much fun as it was.
Now, we have to talk about the casting here. I loved how Billy and Zack (along with Minh) were the main focus here. I have to give Walter Emanuel Jones (Zack) a ton of credit, he is in great shape and can still go when it comes to the martial arts stuff. David Yost (Billy) as well had some fun fight scenes too, but it was Zack that really blew me away.
We also get other characters from the original series, most notably Steve Cardenas as Rocky and Catherine Sutherland as Kat. This was clever as it managed to get us a red and pink Ranger on the screen. There are also smaller roles for Johnny Yong Bosch and Karan Ashley as Adam and Aisha respectively.
We do have to address the elephant in the room and that is the lack of Jason David Frank, Amy Jo Johnson, and Austin St. John as Tommy, Kimberly, and Jason. It would have been awesome if these three were involved, even more so as Jason David Frank is no longer with us and this would have been one the last things that he ever did.
While I wish that we had Tommy, Jason, and Kimberly in the special, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always more than delivered what I wanted from a Power Rangers special! This was such a fun throwback and to be honest with you, it got me so pumped up, I ended up ordering a couple of the Power Rangers Lighting Collection action figures from Amazon once it ended!
