'Power Rangers' writer says casting Black and Asian actors as Black and Yellow Rangers was 'a mistake'
'Power Rangers' writer says casting Black and Asian actors as Black and Yellow Rangers was 'a mistake'
Former 'Power Rangers" head writer Tony Oliver says he now views the decision to cast a Black actor as the Black Ranger and an Asian actress as the Yellow Ranger as 'such a mistake.'
Yeah. I can believe that Trini was an accident. They wanted two girl rangers. Blue, Red, and Black are "boy colors" whereas Yellow is neutral.
And Zack's character was pretty normal for the era (black guy who incorporates "hip hop" into everything he does) but there is zero chance it was not intentional to cast the Black guy as Zack the Black ranger.
And yeah. Even as kids on the playground we all knew that was racist as shit. I'll always remember my homeroom teacher trying not to laugh her ass off while she was telling us we can't talk about how they should have cast a Native American as the Red Ranger.
What's funny is right before they changed costumes with ZEO, they gave Tommy a Native American ancestor and then he became the red ZEO ranger.
Tommy is white... White ranger. Tommy discovers he is like 1/32 Native American... suddenly becomes Red ranger.
Honestly, that is pretty par for the course. Go get that ethnic minority scholarship you slightly-less-than-totally-white guy.
The real question is what they should have done with the blue ranger. All I can think of is David Carradine.
I found Rich Evans' Lemmy account
Let's be honest here: if the Carradines knew power rangers was a thing they would have insisted on putting on some yellow face and taking Thuy's job.
Pink ranger must have been an accident, too.
No? Pink is a "girl" color. And even in the original sentai source material, Pink was a girl (hence the skirt). Yellow was a dude which is why you can really tell what scenes were filmed with the US stunt team/actors and what were from the original (hint: Is the bulge in the crotch or the chest?).
Racist as shit? Jesus christ. Cultural inappropriate maybe. I've seen neo nazi beating up a black guy once what was that then? Super turbo mega omega level racist?
Yur gay
the optics might not have been the best but walter and thuy were amazing as power rangers
I think it was probably an even bigger mistake to have the Black Ranger fight with break dancing Kung-Fu moves, but what do I know.
Hip Hop Keto
Should have cast a russian as the red ranger. I mean if you're ALREADY being racist....
You could cast a person with depression as the blue ranger. Oh....I see you have that covered. And a female sex symbol as the pink ranger. Oh, thats covered too.
There’s no way they’d let a Russian play as the team leader.
Damn....I didn't even think about the fact that the red one was the leader. It's been 30 years since I saw that show, and I was always a green ranger fan. Dark, brooding, mysterious, but does the right thing in the end.
My mom HATED making the gold shield on the chest for my halloween costume. She made a soft one, that looking at pictures now looks AWESOME!
But I remember at the time thinking "BUT MOOOOOM!!! IT HAS TO BE HARD!!! HOW IS A SOFT SHEILD GOING TO PROTECT ME AGAINST KUNG FU ATTACKS, AND SWORDS??? Plus all the lazor beams and lightning strikes! This thing is soft and wimpy!"
And then my mom said "HEY! I spent a LOT of time making that costume! I think it looks really cool! Now you appologize for being ungrateful or next year I won't even make you a costume! You'll have to settle for store bought!"
"Yes mom, sorry mom."
Looking at it as an adult, I still think an actual hard motorcycle helmet would have really pulled the whole thing together, but I can't complain. We were a poor family, and she was making a custom sewn costume from scratch, that would only be used once.......and then I actually ended up using it to lay claim to always getting to pick green ranger when I'd play power rangers with the neighborhood kids. Never got the dagger though. Always had to use a tree branch. Which my sister then widdled down with a knife, and painted to look like the dagger.
I hadn't thought about this in years. It makes me realize how lucky I am, when I see TONS of families being toxic to each other. I don't have the mental capacity to understand how family could hurt their family. Yeah shit sucked growing up. Shit ALWAYS sucks when you're poor. But I remember my mom splitting 2 sandwiches between her 3 kids, and not eating herself, just so we wouldn't go hungry.
I should call her and appologize for being a brat sometimes as a kid. I think back to some of the shit I said/did, and now wonder how she didn't just haul off and smack me sometimes...
Nothing burger
Honestly, I think it’s more commendable that the rangers were so diverse at the time than it’s outrageous that the Black and Asian characters wore those colors. They could have easily casted all white kids back then. The characters were treated with respect by the producers and were well liked by fans. This is only an issue to people 30 years later.
Hmm...
tldr Saban didnt want unionized actors and went out of their way to cast functionally nobodies for the lowest price. Its why after this dispute, it was much less common for cast members to be retained for the next season. Outside of Jason David Frank and Johnny Yong Bosch, it was much more rare for any ex cast member to return in a series several series later.
I didn't read the article linked with the photo, it was just at the bottom of this page, and I thought the contrast was interesting. The article OP linked says she left of her own accord, while the clickbait headline at the bottom of the page says she was fired and regretted it.
Honestly couldn't care less about it, at least they were casted in the 90's.
What's he got to say about Billie's actor being bullied off the show for being gay?
https://ew.com/article/2010/08/26/original-power-ranger-harassed-gay/
I have a vague memory that the original show from Japan had a man in the yellow costume and when it was adapted for American audiences they wanted yellow to be a woman. This lead to a effectively trans character because of an occasionally noticeable bulge.
Power Rangers is a patchwork work edited with footage from a few different shows. Robots from one, costume fights from others. It was not really a reboot, they just took the footage of this yellow-costumed guy fighting and use it directly.
“asshole move made with full awareness” is probably a better term than “mistake”
Leave it in the 90's, weirdos.
It happened and ended, lessons were learned no harm was done.
Related key & peele skit https://youtu.be/mOyE_l80D4Y
Still one of my wifes favorite sketches of theirs.
I'm just goin to leave this here.
How did I not notice this before now?
The pink for girl and blue for boy was there too.
Is red the odd one out?
/s (not sarcasm towards racism, but about the way producers were thinking)
The funniest thing about this was that Zack and Trini’s replacements were Asian and Black, respectively. So they just swapped it while keeping the diversity.
This went way over my head and I was thinking: the writer's taken their mask off as a racist??
Didn't make the colour connection