Back in April, we got our first look at Elizabeth Banks as the villainous Rita Repulsa in the big-screen Power Rangers reboot. Described as “modern and edgy” by Banks, this new incarnation of the alien witch lady abandoned everything recognizable about the original character’s design in favor of green spike things and green hair, leaving longtime Power Rangers fans to wonder if this movie would be anything like the beloved TV show that babysat them after school so many times. Thankfully, the fans didn’t have to wonder for very long, because Lionsgate has now released the first official image of the Power Rangers themselves.
The pic comes from Entertainment Weekly, and—unlike Banks’ Rita Repulsa—the Rangers look exactly how you remember them, just with some visual flourishes that should make them more appealing to modern audiences. For one thing, nobody’s wearing skintight jumpsuits. Instead, they have brightly colored Iron Man-like armor, right down to a shiny thing on the front. Also, the Pink Ranger no longer has a skirt that identifies her as a girl, but both her and the Yellow Ranger have some totally necessary chest armor that gets the same point across. They also don’t have the classic diamond pattern of the originals or those sporty boots, so really the only things about these new suits that actually look anything like the old ones are the dinosaur-head helmets. But hey, at least they’ve got some sweet metal abs now.
Naturally, the internet isn’t too happy about this, and Complex has collected a bunch of tweets from disgruntled Power Rangers fans who don’t want to see their nostalgia weaponized into the next Transformers or Ninja Turtles—as if there was any chance of this turning out differently than those movies.
[via io9]