This Dark And Gritty Power Rangers Short-Film Instills Hope For New Movie

Famed music video director Joseph Kahn is pretty fed up with the self-proclaimed “new and edgy” remakes in Hollywood, and decided to do his own take on the 90s TV show, the Power Rangers.

The unofficial fan film premiered on Vimeo in the early morning hours. It was an instant hit, even being designated as a staff pick by Vimeo.

However, the NSFW video disappeared from Vimeo during the day, and Kahn has suggested that it was due to pressure from Saban Entertainment, which owns the Powers Rangers copyright.

Kahn tweeted, “Saban is trying to shut POWER/RANGERS down. If you’d like to keep watching, tell them to stop harassing me.

Even though the NSFW version of Power/Rangers video was removed by Vimeo, a SFW version of the video is still on YouTube.com.

Here’s Kahn’s rationale in his own words:

All of Hollywood, they all keep toying around with this ‘dark and gritty’ concept, and they’re all PG-13. I mean, look at the gunshots. You have a guy going in there shooting a bunch of people and it’s just like puffs of smoke. There’s no repercussions to these gunshots, which to me is even more dangerous than when you actually show some blood. You’re teaching kids that you can shoot a gun and there’s no repercussions to it. It just looks like you fall down.

So when I did the dark and gritty version of this, I mean, we go full out. There’s blood, there’s brains, there’s gunshots, there’s sex, there’s violence. I mean, basically we made the version that Hollywood could never ever make. If I had to watch the ‘dark and gritty’ reboot, then this is the way I would want it. This is the version I would personally want to see, but I also know this is the version that could never, ever be made in Hollywood. They would be crazy, it would be financially irresponsible, but this is what I personally would like to see out of a Power Rangers film.