You ready?
Ready.
Let's do it!
The history of Saban's long running Power Rangers franchise
is fraught with ups and downs.
However, few of the peaks have been quite as satisfying
as seeing all ten of the original Red Rangers team
up together in order to save the world, which is just
one of the multitude of reasons that "Forever Red" might just
be the perfect episode of Power Rangers.
But before we get too deep into today's episode,
please be sure to subscribe to Nerdstalgic
for more videos just like this.
Power Rangers is the American adaptation
of the long-running Japanese tokusatsu program Super Sentai.
Saban Entertainment licenses the original Sentai footage
from Toei and re-edits it into new adventures.
You made me step in a puddle, you nitwit.
It's a tradition in both versions of the franchise
to bring back previous seasons' Rangers
for significant anniversary celebrations.
The original six seasons took place in the same timeline.
However, after Power Rangers in Space,
the show pivoted to mirror the original Super Sentai
model of each season being a one and done season long adventure.
These teams rarely cross over or even acknowledge
the existence of other teams of Power Rangers.
However, the episode we're focused on today
fulfills a dream that most of the Ranger fandom
is consistently clamoring for--
interconnectivity.
Yeah?
This was something that the tenth season of the show
aimed to tackle.
The 34th episode of Wild Force, titled "Forever Red"
is something truly special.
Deemed the 10th anniversary special,
the episode in question is a full blown team
up featuring every Red Ranger up to that point.
It's basically the Avengers Endgame
in the Rangers universe.
And it comes with an added cherry
on top of being directed by arguably the greatest
Ranger director of them all, Koichi Sakamoto.
Sakamoto has directed decades worth of Rangers episodes, as
well as working on the Toku holy trinity of Kamen Rider, Super
Sentai, and Ultraman.
His trademark flair for a moving camera, beautiful action
choreography, and of course, explosions,
are all over this episode.
"Forever Red" opens with Andros, the In Space Red Ranger,
watching a group of Cogs from the Machine
Empire, the primary antagonist from Zeo,
as they unearth something mysterious
from the sands of the Moon.
We quickly learn that Tommy Oliver, a.k.a.
The Zeo Red Ranger, portrayed by the late Jason David Frank,
is putting together a team of Red Rangers to stop
the remnants of the Machine Empire from excavating Lord
Zedd's Zord, Serpentera, to act as a doomsday machine
and destroy the Earth. , Remember in 2002,
when this episode was released, there had only been 10
crossovers up to this point in the franchise overall,
one of which featured the retooled Kamen Rider Black RX
as the short lived Masked Rider.
And then, well-- the less said about the
In Space Rangers meeting the Ninja Turtles
from the Next Mutation, the better.
Well, we good guys gotta stick together, right?
Fightin' evil and all that kind of stuff.
However, the clumsiness and small scale
from the previous crossovers is nowhere to be found here.
All of the Rangers are presented as larger than life,
but despite how fun it is to see all the Red Rangers together
for the first time, it's Austin St. John's Jason,
the original Red Ranger, that gets the most epic
introduction.
After having left the show over salary issues
and then eventually rejoining the cast briefly
as the Gold Ranger, Austin St John's relationship with Saban
was complicated at the time of shooting this episode.
Yes, he returned for Beast Morphers' "Grid Connection,"
but he's noticeably absent from the Rangers 30th anniversary
special "Once & Always."
Mainly because of currently pending legal troubles.
However, in 2002, none of that was on the horizon.
It was just a heroic rejoining of Jason
into the Rangers family, like he's a full blown movie star,
driving up on a Harley Davidson and removing
his helmet to sheepishly quip--
You guys weren't going to do this without me, were you?
From here, Tommy gives a brief exposition
dump explaining a new villain named
General Venjix is unearthing Serpentera,
and we're off to the races.
The episode is full of Koichi Sakamoto's directing tropes
in the best way.
The choreography rapidly and brilliantly
breaks up the Rangers so they're each
taking on multiple Cogs at the same time,
allowing them to all have their moment
and still make it feel like the odds are stacked against them.
Cole Evans' Wild Force Red, played by Ricardo Medina Jr.
chases Venjix and his generals out of the base
and onto the surface of the moon, where he's rescued
from laser fire by Lost Galaxy Red and the Red Alien Ranger.
Hold on!
Are you OK?
Great.
And then we get the moment that every Rangers fan
has been waiting for--
a henshin sequence where all ten rangers transform
into their suits back to back.
The thematic underpinning of the scene
being that the only real element that bonds the various Rangers
seasons together is the morphing grid
and the transformational sequences that go
hand in hand with it.
From here, we careen into an all out brawl.
And due to Sakamoto's deft hand, it
doesn't feel like other Power Rangers episodes.
He directs the fights with the same reverence as the street
clothes fight, but he levels up the choreography
by pairing the Rangers together.
Sakamoto also plays with a sense of scale to the action.
Usually, the fights in Rangers are all
horizontally oriented because they are doing things as fast
and cheap as possible.
However, when Turbo Red and Lost Galaxy Red
take out one of the generals by knocking him into the air
and then slashing him with their swords,
it's quite possibly the first vertically oriented fight
in Rangers history.
The final fight is In Space Red and Lightspeed Rescue Red
in a laser battle with one of the generals, which
climaxes in an extended speed ramping shot.
Sakamoto uses four different filmmaking techniques
for the four clusters of Red Rangers.
Despite the impressive display of abilities,
Venjix manages to escape in Serpentera,
which leaves Wild Force Red no other option than to pilot
his Wild Force rider down the throat of Serpentera,
causing it to explode.
Which was apparently because they ran out of money,
and you can tell.
The CGI on Serpentera is pretty bad even by 2002 standards,
but it doesn't really matter.
We all know we are here to see dudes in suits
punch each other.
And guess what.
We got that in spades.
There have been a few crossovers since "Forever Red,"
but most of them have relied heavily
on previously existing Sentai suit footage, and none of them
have felt as special or well directed.
It just goes to show you, when you have the right people
and you give them the time and space
to make something truly unique, it can stand the test of time.
Sakamoto worked on close to a decade of Rangers material,
but "Forever Red" was one of a select few episodes
that he shot completely from scratch.
There's obviously a reason for why Saban went the extra mile
and gave him a little more money and time to make this all Red
Ranger special.
But to this day, almost 20 years later,
few pieces of Ranger media have come
close to rivaling this 10th anniversary effort.
You've done a great service to the entire universe.
Don't mention it, bro.
Maybe the powers that be should learn a thing or two.
Next time they're trying to reboot the Power
Rangers into a big budget live action feature film, just
hire Koichi Sakamoto.
And that's all we have for this episode.
What do you think?
What's your favorite Rangers crossover episode?
Comment down below, and as always,
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