On March 24, 2017, Power Rangers will premiere. The reboot of the 1993 TV show will bring the franchise into the 21st and give new life to same named characters that a lot people grew up watching on television but portrayed by new, younger actors. The villain is Rita Repulsa, who will be portrayed actress Elizabeth Banks. She’s the sixth higher-grossing female actor. Bank’s played characters like Effie Trinket in the Hunger Games trilogy and Betty Brant in Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man trilogy. She’s been a bunch of movies, and played in many television show roles—and she had won a ton of awards. Everyone is pretty happy that she’s played the character of Rita Repulsa.
65-million-year-old Rita Repulsa, a former Green Ranger (she went rogue, apparently) in this version, was sealed away by Zordon many, many millennia ago. Her goal is to steal the Zeo Crystal, which is a part of the Morphing Grid, to return it to her master, Lord Zedd. This lady is not afraid of anything. She’s definitely not afraid of five pesky teenagers who stumbled upon the morphing stones and whom Zordon recruited to be new Rangers. She had killed Rangers before and she will do it again if she had to and she probably would enjoy it.
I expect that in this movie we will see Rita in a more action-orientated capacity (instead of sitting back and sending in monsters that ultimately fail every time like in the original show), using her magic/alien technology against the Rangers to her advantage. She confronted Trini, from what I had seen in the trailer, with a big bad speech about how she killed Power Rangers before, which in context will probably be terrifying. Honestly, she looks wickedly cool. She’s unafraid and wholly focused on her goal—even though that focus might be her downfall. Her underestimation of the Rangers will probably be her one true weakness.
She’s a powerful alien witch, that much is a given. She will do anything to gain the Zeo Crystal, from creating a monster (Goldar) to distract the Rangers. Out of all the rebooted characters, she’s the one that I’m looking forward to watching on the big screen. The fact that she’s a former Green Ranger means that she probably knew Zordon many years ago, since Zordon was the original Red Ranger. I can’t wait to learn why she betrayed the Rangers, why did she forsake her duty to protect, in order to conquer and destroy in the name of Lord Zedd? Did she kill her own teammates/friends?
There’s a lot that we don’t know yet, but I look forward to the movie, if only to learn what they plan to do with Rita Repulsa. Perhaps the movie will give her some sympathetic story about why she became evil, perhaps we will see some flashbacks that give her reason. Who knows? We will have to wait until the end of March to see more about Rita Repulsa.
What do you think and expect about the character? Let us know in the comments section below or send us a Tweet!
