Adi Shankar Power Rangers

In 2015, Adi Shankar made a short ‘Power Rangers‘ fan-film that took the Internet by storm. It was a dark, gritty, and ultra-violent of the classic franchise which starred James Van Der Beek as a Ranger who had switched sides. Some fans loved it; some hated it, the film was not meant for the same younger audience that the original had targeted and Shankar shares that kids checking this out was never his intention.

The idea behind the film, though, wasn’t for people who had never seen a ‘Power Rangers’ show. In fact, Shankar explains it really was just for the fans:

“The short was designed so that if you didn’t watch season one, season two of Power Rangers, you wouldn’t understand what was going on. There was no establishment. There’s no, ‘Oh, this happened…’ There was no backstory. It was almost, like, episode five. That was by design because it was being made for people who watched those two seasons. That’s it.”

What is fun though is how in-depth the film was and how it made so many think about the context of the series online which Shankar shared saying:

“The crazy thing is that it was made for the people who grew up watching it, so season one and season two. And then being like, ‘Ah, and by the way, all these child shows are about weaponizing youth. It’s giving kids weapons and asking them to fight aliens and shit. It’s kinda weird. It’s part of our industrial-military complex. It was a social commentary on that, amalgamated with my love of Power Rangers season one and season two.”

Interestingly enough, this has caused him to have a huge online fan base which has directly affected his work going forward:

“The problem was, it just blew up so big that there was all these ripple effects that kept happening. I mean, look at the s–t I’m working on now, right? It’s a direct result of that, and people like, ‘Hey, you know something we don’t. Go make stuff.’ So that was cool.”

This film wasn’t the first piece of fan fiction which he has directed and likely won’t be his last.

Did you love Adi Shankar’s take on ‘Power Rangers’? Do you think that the recent film would have done better had it been created with his commentary on weaponizing children in mind? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Comic Book.