This dark short film shows that Power Rangers is all about child soldiery

A fresh yet dark take on the classic Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers saga features North Korea-punching, cussing, child soldiery and some other super controversial issues never really touched on in the original series. Heck, the opening scene involves a guy punching a woman chained to a chair.

“We were children, asked to fight an inter-galactic war against an enemy we’ve never met. Let’s stop pretending that our side stood on some moral high ground,” says Dawson’s Creek actor James Van Der Beek who plays Red Ranger Rocky. He’s got the actress, Katee Sackhoff, from Battlestar Galactica tied up to a chair, explaining why he turned against the Power Ranger code.

American film producer Adi Shankar is known for violent titles such as Machine Gun Preacher, Killing Them Softly and Lone Survivor. But these blockbuster action films doesn’t compare to his so-called Bootleg Universe series. Shankar’s Bootleg Universe is a compilation of short YouTube films that revives classic comic book series with a violent twists. His first Bootleg film, The Punisher: Dirty Laundry, shows a guy beat the living crap our of a gang of thugs with a Jack Daniel’s bottle.

The original family-friendly show is about the mysterious wizard, named Zordon, who recruits teenagers who then dress up in brightly-coloured suits and helmet gear. The young squad is then given special “morphin” powers which they can only use in a fight to defeat their enemies. Apparently the show’s not as innocent as we grew up to believe.

In the video below, Shankar explains why he Bootlegged The Power Rangers:

“When I was a child I had two favourite TV shows: the X-Men animated series and Power Rangers,” writes producer Adi Shankar, who together with director Joseph Kahn describes it as a deboot. “I eventually came to the realisation that high school kids weaponised to fight an intergalactic threat would turn those kids into some seriously disturbed adults.” This, for Shankar, is incredibly immoral and should be taken note of.