Power Rangers: First Look at Bryan Cranston as Zordon

The Power Rangers are headed back to the big screen this year, but many of the most famous characters from the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV show of the 1990s will look very different in the film reboot of the franchise, compared to the versions that Power Rangers fans know best. Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks), for example, has more of a sleek alien huntress look now that has fueled speculation that the new rendition of the sorceress will, in fact, have been a former Power Ranger herself. Similarly, the rebooted designs of Rita’s minions Goldar and the Putty Patrollers are a far cry from the low-budget actors-in-costumes aesthetic of their Mighty Morphin counterparts.

On the hero side of things, the Rangers’ supersuits have similarly been given a post-Iron Man makeover and their robo-pal Alpha 5 (Bill Hader) is similar enough to his previous iteration, but is also more noticeably alien-looking by comparison (see his much longer arms, for example). We can also now partially address the question that been has been hanging over Power Rangers fans’ heads for a while – namely, what Bryan Cranston looks like as the Rangers’ mentor and the one responsible for giving them their morphing abilities, Zordon.

In a change of pace, the reveal of Breaking Bad‘s Cranston as Zordon comes not from a tie-in toy version of the character (as has happened for several other elements of the Power Rangers movie reboot), but from a photo of Zordon from the Power Rangers movie VR experience in Las Vegas. You can check out that photo (originally posted to the official Power Rangers Now! website), below.

Zordon, in the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers mythology, is a galactic sage who defeated and imprisoned Rita thousands of years before the Rangers’ time, but not before he was trapped in a time warp by the alien sorceress. The character became known for his Wizard of Oz-esque appearance as a giant floating head in an energy tube located in his Command Center (his only means of communicating with the outside world) and it appears that the same general design is being carried over into the Power Rangers movie reboot too, based on the image of a blue-faced Cranston above. Sharp-eyed fans may also note the appearance of Alpha 5 (Zordon’s loyal robo-assistant) in the lower left-hand corner of the photo.

The Power Rangers film, which is directed by Dean Israelite (Project Almanac) and based on a script credited to John Gatins (Real Steel), reportedly changes up Zordon’s backstory, making him the original Red Ranger millions of years before the movie’s present-day. If accurate, that detail supports the theory that Rita was the original Green Ranger who turned to evil and possibly killed the other original Power Rangers, leading to her showdown with Zordon in the first place. Cranston, for his part, has simply teased that the Power Rangers movie reboot is a dramatic re-imagining of the Mighty Morphin lore from top to bottom, making it all the more interesting to speculate about how well the film will play with longtime Rangers fans and/or newcomers to the franchise, as a result.

Source: Power Rangers Now!