If Cheap Nostalgia Is What You’re After, Then Netflix’s Power Rangers Trailer Is for You

Grab your lidocaine patch, it’s time for some 50-year-old martial arts! That’s right, Netflix is oh-so-generously gifting grown up kids of the 1990s with that most sought-after of pop cultural reunions, in the form of the upcoming “special,” Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. Described as a “30th anniversary special,” and clocking in at just under an hour, and thus somewhat short of being referred to as a feature film, the program will reunite various members of Power Rangers rosters new and old, while providing a tribute to those who are no longer with us. That, and you’ll also be provided with a dramatic visual illustration on the ravages of age, as the first trailer below demonstrates. Those teenage characters of the 1990s are looking just a little different these days.

Fittingly, for a chopped-together series that was originally cobbled together from copious amounts of action footage from the long-running Japanese series Super Sentai, the footage of Once & Always looks on the low-budget and evidently amateurish side. Netflix is making no effort to hide that their exhibition of the special is just a shameless nostalgia grab, so we might as well treat it accordingly. Power Rangers fandom should be pleased that the slapdash aesthetic of the 1990s has been more or less maintained, which will make this special very different indeed from the overproduced, Transformers-adjacent CGI mayhem of the poorly received 2017 theatrical reboot of Power Rangers. For better or worse, Once & Always at least looks like an updated version of the original series, bad acting and goofy costumes intact.

Returning for this special are performers David Yost, Walter Jones, Catherine Sutherland and Steve Cardenas. The passing of original Yellow Ranger Trini Kwan (Thuy Trang) is apparently being worked into the story, with the character’s daughter presumably primed to take her place. Trang passed away in 2001 following an auto accident. We also see a quick glimpse of a Green Ranger, although this is presumably in the form of a flashback–original Green Ranger actor Jason David Frank reportedly did not participate in the film before he also passed away in December. It seems safe to say the special will be sprinkled with all sorts of Easter eggs for sharp-eyed fans.

Check out the gaudy trailer for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always below. The special hits Netflix on April 19, 2023.