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Presented May 27th & May 28th
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I felt bad about sleeping through that morning's season finale but was pleasantly surprised by light traffic in the city when I drove to Universal Studios Hollywood here in California. It was supposed to be 84°f but it was probably 10°f higher when we got out there. And, despite the lack of shade or quantity of restrooms, I had fun--even in line. You saw all sorts of vintage Power Rangers shirts and toys that kids had brought to the event. There were mostly ±5 year olds but there were a few loyal preteen fans from yesteryear as well.
Now, I had the good fortune to run into one of the crew members who work on the show (2nd unit MMPR Productions) at the event and after the small talk, he said under his breath, "Don't expect the same, uh, level as the show...."
I interrupted with, "Oh, I dunno about that. I went to the VR Troopers one and it wasn't nearly as big as the 1994 President's Day MMPR appearance by the original cast but still really good. Besides, live action stunt shows and shooting stunts are choreographed in a much different way."
And he told me, "No no, that's not what I mean. ``They'' wanted to spend as little money on this as possible." With that, he left--still, I knew I was going to get something cool.
Now, in 1995, the VR Troopers stunt show at Universal Studios Hollywood's Castle Theater (the same one used for this show) was short and my seat had a poor view so I couldn't enjoy it as much. But there was a Skugs Fight with Battle Grid-mode troopers (Brad Hawkins was not at the show because he was recovering from a TV episode-related injury. There was no fighting in the Above: Oversized RedRacer from Power Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue live show.
Rangers Turbo outside of castle theater.
Below Right: Yellow Ranger lands after a back flip
As known, Koichi Sakamoto nor Makoto Yokoyama--the action directors for the TV series or their stunt team had nothing to do with this appearance. Which was fine by me because they know how to make it look good on TV. In my opinion, American stunt choreographers certainly are not bad at what they do at all--it's just that for sentai-type stuff, they only manage to do a good job with the live shows. Like, for example, the VR Troopers show I saw. I don't know who these stunt guys are and, frankly, I don't wanna know.
First the good. They ran unreleased music from the television serials including BGM from Power Rangers Turbo WITH lyrics, songs from "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers The Album: A Rock Adventure" (which sounded great in there, BTW!) while running a Trivia guessing game on the dual projection screens while Event Staff seated the audience.
Below left: Green Ranger before a set of exciting handsprings.
The Trivia game was rather cool because the questions didn't just relate to PRLR and that it challenged long standing fans but two things did bother me...the software was clearly running on M$-Windows® because the animation was choppy, slow and froze occasionally. The other thing is that they refer to Andros as a cast member in Power Rangers Zeo. Basically, the cast just sat there and answered questions from the audience, stopped in the middle to introduce Ryan/Titanium Ranger. Which was cool the first time--he rises on this platform and fireworks to shooting out of the stage. Then he takes off his helmet and shifts his fists a little bit. They answered more questions and then we left.
At Right: Green Ranger thrust punches for the audience.
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