DVD Review: Power Rangers Megaforce: The Complete Season

Power Rangers Megaforce: The Complete Season hits stores on August 16.

Before we get to the review, here is Lionsgate’s press release with details on what the DVD set contains.

Relive every action-packed adventure when Power Rangers Megaforce: The Complete Season and Power Rangers Super Megaforce: The Complete Season arrive on DVD (plus Digital HD) on August 16 from Lionsgate. Five teenagers with attitude use their unique skills to battle evil and ultimately save the world in these top-rated seasons. With an ever-growing fan base, Power Rangers Megaforce: The Complete Season and Power Rangers Super Megaforce: The Complete Season are 5-disc DVD sets that will be available for the suggested retail price of $14.98 each.

When the evil Warstar aliens plot a massive invasion of our planet, Earth’s supernatural guardian, Gosei, mobilizes a team of five extraordinary teens with the talent and attitude to oppose them: the Power Rangers Megaforce!

PROGRAM INFORMATION
Year of Production: 2014
Title Copyright: TM & © 2014 SCG Power Rangers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Type: TV on DVD
Rating: TV-Y7
Genre: Action/Adventure, Children’s/Series, Fantasy, TV Series
Closed Captioned: English
Subtitles: N/A
Feature Run Time: 460 minutes each
DVD Format: 16×9 Widescreen (1.78:1)
DVD Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Digital; French and Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital Audio

On to the review…

The Episodes: As noted in our initial Megaforce Season Review, this is a very pretty season of Power Rangers, but one without much substance. The problem is that Megaforce suffers from essentially being a placeholder until the real anniversary stuff happens in Super Megaforce. What we get in these 20 episodes is a full-on throwback of the earliest episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers — which sounds great on paper, especially considering the first episode “Mega Mission” packs in numerous creative references to the franchise’s first episode, “Day of the Dumpster.” But after the premiere, the season only embraces the simplicity of the original Power Rangers episodes, and without any sense of nostalgia or 90s kitsch, Megaforce instead descends into mediocrity. There are beautiful visuals, landscapes, and effects, but little by way of a story or character development.

Even when the show has a shot at being character-centric, it isn’t used to explore anything about the characters beyond the most superficial. For example, “The Dream Snatcher,” which has the usual Power Rangers premise of a monster feeding on people’s most vibrant dreams, doesn’t explore any of the characters’ desires, goals, and ambitions — all we see is that Emma wants to take a photo of a rare flower. No one learns or changes, we don’t learn anything about the characters, and there isn’t even a lesson for kids to really latch onto. That’s a real shame, considering the cast this season is fairly strong, showing immediate chemistry and obviously having fun. They don’t fully grow into their roles until the following season, though, and it’s clear here in Andrew Gray’s constant stiffness and monotonous line readings, which he thankfully overcomes during Super Megaforce.

The highlights of the season are generally any Robo Knight-centric episode, including his debut episode “Robo Knight,” “The Human Condition,” and the finale “End Game.” Megaforce has an interesting, but subdued theme of humans triumphing because of the human spirit, and episodes that exemplify it through Robo Knight’s perspective show some insight that the season should have spent more time on. But for the most part, this is easily the blandest season of Power Rangers ever made. It’s more consistent than its extremely messy follow-up season, Super Megaforce, but has so little going on that it’s not all that fun, either.

Curiously, this set isn’t actually the “complete” season of Megaforce — the Halloween and Christmas episodes, “Raising Spirits” and “The Robot Knight Before Christmas” are not present, even as special features.

The Packaging: The Megaforce aesthetic within the show is very pretty, with lots of triumphant white and gold themes against bright skies. While the cover art certainly reflects the gorgeous, elaborate costumes in a fitting team pose, the constant use of harsh red “exploding city” backdrops isn’t as easy on the eyes. It amps up that this season is action-heavy, which is true, but isn’t a terribly attractive cover. The disc art does a better job with the Megaforce aesthetic.

The discs themselves are packaged in a slimpack, and are the exact same as the individual four-episode collection releases, listing each disc under the the collection names (“Ultimate Team Power, “Ultra Defenders,” etc.) While collectors who love style and flow may not like this, it does showcase some gorgeous disc art and lets each disc menu be dynamic. A downside is that in copies like mine, the discs were packaged out of order, which can be confusing without numbered discs.

The Extras: Any previous extras compiled on the individual releases are on their respective discs here. This set contains “Power Rangers Morph Through 20 Years,” a brief but cool video spotlighting all Red Rangers through Megaforce (plus a White and Quantum Ranger.) It also has a Character Gallery and a Zord Gallery, which provides some slideshow style images and information. The Zord Gallery shows off just how many different Zord formations there were in this short season, which could be especially fun for the toy collectors. The Character Gallery is the most interesting part of the set, though, in that it contains impressively thorough examinations of the Rangers, with more depth than the scripts themselves imbued. Gia, for example, is listed as “the prom queen with Hilary Clinton’s smarts and a bit of Lara Croft’s fight skills mixed in for good measure,” which is fitting but hilariously bizarre.

Is It Worth It? Megaforce isn’t the best addition to the Power Rangers franchise, and you really need to have Super Megaforce: The Complete Season to get the full story. But what it sorely lacks in plot and character, it does have enough vibrant visuals and special effects to keep the attention of kids and the kid at heart. If you have yet to pick up any Megaforce compilation, this is a decent set to add to the Power Rangers collection. You’ll just need to also find the Halloween and Christmas specials to truly get the “complete” experience.

Final Thoughts: We aren’t mega-forcing you to pick it up, but if you’re a Power Rangers completionist, you don’t really have a choice, do you?

Power Rangers Megaforce: The Complete Season hits stores August 16, but you can pre-order it on Amazon now — and support KSiteTV!