Not long ago, some film makers made a trailer for a fan film called MMPR Movie. Very quickly, the thread discussing the trailer and subsequent fundraising efforts on rangerboard descended into trolling and some quite harsh personal abuse. What I am going to do here is talk about why the trailer failed to captivate the attention and imagination of the fandom (as well as funding), and perhaps what should have been done instead.
PLEASE NOTE: I define ‘failure’ as an inability to get anywhere near the target donation level. With 27 hours left, I doubt they’ll get the extra $99,300 required.
First, I guess it’s best to show the trailer to begin with.
The fundraising has finished and there were five pledges (given in chronological order, the timing of some of the donations will be discussed below)-
Luke Shaw- $10
t.brewer- $25
Monin Sak- Undisclosed
nate678045- $25
Tri Dam- $50
Jack Paleczny- $50
meetfrankmusic- $15
Beast575- $10
So with basic arithmetic, we can conclude that Monin Sak donated $500 to give the total of $685.
I remember at one point on the PR IRC channel there being theories that Monin Sak is one of the producers trying to prime the pump by putting some of their own money into the project, but that’s just wild guessing, and maybe they just blew one person away. Who knows? I can’t say anything for certain and I’m too lazy to actually research the account.
Anyway, on to the analysis.
The makers fundamentally did not understand what the fandom wants
The trailer is dark and gritty, and is the sort of thing that fans of a lot of children’s franchises talk about when they mean dark. The problem is that there is just not a very large portion of the fandom which is willing to support a dark, gritty Power Rangers film. There are the occasional fan who would say it, but they are outweighed by the vast majority who argue that taking the show away from exactly what it is robs the show of why the fans watch it in the first place. Power Rangers is silly and cheesy, and it should stay so. There are people who are fans but are embarrassed by that fact and want a gritty film, but they make up a minority.
On top of that, the film is clearly aimed at the adult fanbase. The adult fanbase is, and always will be, a minority of the fans. Children always will comprise the bulk of the fanbase because unlike other franchises such as Transformers, the fans of Power Rangers drop out and don’t really look back once they hit a certain age. This needs to be recognised because this means that the trailer only appeals to an insignificant proportion of a small part of the fandom. A problem, to understate it.
The trailer failed to impress- it was heavy handed, made no sense and did little to excite
OK, I’ll take this one point at a time. Firstly there’s the whole ‘did he kill a child?’ aspect to the trailer. I personally feel that too much attention was paid to it, but it turned a lot of fans off because it ventured into territory that the show has always skirted around. This is a franchise that doesn’t want to use the WORD ‘die’ (the first use being in RPM I believe- “Ranger Blue” to be precise) and yet an adaptation has this sort of scene? It was clearly intended to shock and confront, when all it achieved was people thinking that the makers really don’t know what they were doing.
There were aspects of it that made little sense. His throne is in some alley somewhere? Random bums weren’t even paying him any attention, let alone fear? If that’s the case, why should we think the Power Rangers would feel threatened by him? What’s going on? When was he defeated by the rangers? Sure, the Q&A somewhat answered these questions, but the trailer as it stands makes no sense, and I’ll say the same thing for this as I did for Prometheus- you shouldn’t have to see supplementary material to be able to understand something.
The man playing Zedd was underwhelming, but it’s hard to make a judgement. My biggest gripe is with the costume. He just looks like some guy with a visible brain. There’s little for the viewer to link him with Lord Zedd apart from the staff that he was holding. I guess it would be a cool twist to have it turn out that he was some mutant who stole Zedd’s staff, but doing so would totally undermine the trailer. Whatever, if it’ll give Zedd a better costume. He looks more like Lothor than Zedd, and he reminds me of that alien with the transparent skull people kept saying Dax in Deep Space Nine dated at one point.
I get it: it’s a teaser trailer. However, it really didn’t pique my interest in what the movie will be. OK, Lord Zedd wants revenge. So? There are so many fanfics and fan films that tackle this idea that it’s hardly unique or interesting. MMPR will always have that nostalgia attached to it because it’s the first, but the fans (the people who will be giving their money to fund such a project... casual fans do not give their money to fan film makers) are to a certain extent really sick of people focusing constantly on reinventing the wheel with MMPR. How about this- a film which does the sort of story they wanted to make for the Time Force film before it was cancelled. Wouldn’t that have been sweet?
Finally, the people at MMPR Films spent a lot of time saying that they showed it to various alumni and got great reactions. Despite the general feeling of the people on rangerboard being “Eh, it’s not that important, vox pops are overrated”, a video compilation was released showing people giving a lot of “oh look, how pretty, is he still here?” responses. Seriously, watch the video yourself-
Perhaps it would have been nice to put work towards convincing us that this is something we want to see realised instead of showing us that other people also think it’s all right?
Production failed at engaging with the fan base
The problem with first impressions is that you only get one. Power Rangers fans are ruthless once someone pisses them off, and unfortunately the people at MMPR Films gave a poor first impression. This goes back to them failing to do the research. They seemed to think their product was awesome, showed it to the fans, and they... were underwhelmed. Technically it’s great, but it’s not the sort of product that they wanted to see. The reaction from the makers was in turn wholly negative and aggressively defensive (and I’ll be fair, the fans were at times quite rude in the way they expressed their opinions), which alienated the fans quite a bit.
They made the constant mistake of claiming they were better than fan film makers, they were making a feature film. Which is of someone else’s property. Oh yeah, it’ll probably be released in parts online. Or not, maybe all at once. Oh shit, what are we talking about? Anyway, there was another MMPR fan project going on, Red Rising (I’ll do a post about that in the future), and they derided it by saying it was filmed in an alley and that their product will be better because it will be a film, not a fan film. Deriding another product that the fans like? Bad idea. It’s also a bad idea to insult your opposition to get people to buy your product. My favourite commercial campaign has got to be the ‘Always CocaCola’ series of commercials from the nineties. You know what made it so good? It associated wonderful, exciting things with their product. They didn’t sing “Whenever there’s a beach there’s always the sun, Whenever there is fun there isn’t Pepsi, who seriously drinks that shit?”.
You’re making a fan film. Stop thinking you’re better than fan film makers because you are them.
The Q&A was filled with softballs and failed to answer basic questions about their budget and why they thought such a movie would be a good idea. The budget was a big issue, because they were asking for a LOT of money ($100k), and it looked like the budget was based around guesstimations rather than actual calculations. Not only that, but when information about what they wanted (from the Q&A and subsequent forum posts) their want list seemed extravagant. RED One cameras? Expensive armour suits? Give us a break. Spend some time with a skilled fan and you’ll have your ranger suits done for about a grand each. They will look great, and they won’t look like they’re trying to fleece the fans.
There were some changes in how it was talked about... done poorly
It took a while, but after a while the people making the film realised that the fans weren’t excited about dark and gritty Power Rangers. After that point, a few people from production started changing their language, saying that it’ll be like the Avengers movies, not The Dark Knight. This is, of course, no small change. The two movies have a very different feel to them, so talking about the movie in that way radically changes the product that is being sold. Not only that, but other members of production continued to talk about their Dark Knight style adaptation like that was the direction they were still going in.
So this led to a problem. Have they changed tack? If they changed their mind, does that render the trailer irrelevant, since it no longer represented the final product? If so, what do they have to convince us this revamped idea is something to invest in? Or is it merely that there is a creative conflict going on in the production crew? If this is the case, how can anyone be assured that the conflicts won’t cause the final product to be a torn apart mess?
Significant Announcements That Would Have Garnered Attention (And Potentially Donations) Came Too Late
Their announcement that they had Ron Wasserman writing music for the movie was a fantastic announcement. It was quite a coup to get the man on board because he does have a good name amongst the fandom and he writes fantastic music. However, this was announced after all of the above had happened, and at this point a lot of the fandom weren’t listening any more. The announcement was done with 65 days left in the fund raising which was far too late into the process. Pacing out announcements is great for a finished project, but not for one that needs funding. The announcement got some attention, since subsequently there was a $25 donation (I’ll be generous and assume these two things are related), but it didn’t get rivers of gold coming in.
A similar criticism can be made about Robert Axelrod doing voiceover work for MMPR. It was a big coup, but it came with less than 50 days left on the fundraising timetable. Arguably it brought in a $50 donation, but these sorrt of announcements should have happened earlier. Imagine if the original thread on Rangerboard had talk of these guests in it rather than talk of promises of content and surprises. It would have changed the discussion considerably and would have kept the negative people relatively quiet.
At T minus 40 days the movie's twitter account started getting more active in asking for donations, asking for money a little more actively. They also promised more announcements, including the past cat member that they had been promising since day one. With this little time to go and with a little over 0.5% of the target raised, I struggle to work out why they were taking their time. They didn't really have thousands of people, credit cards in hand waiting for them to give them the surprise so the rivers of gold would be unleashed, so why the constant delays?
David Fielding was another great coup for the production. This announcement was made at T minus 32 days, which once again was pushing the time limit quite a bit. With the combination of Wasserman, Axelrod and Fielding I will give them credit for getting these names on board for the production. Why they would want to be a part of this fam film is beyond me, but they’re on board and it’s a big thing for them.
The Problem of the Suits
As this article points out, the use of spandex for the suits in Power Rangers lends itself to being seen as a little... silly. The MMPR movie (the official one) used a type of armour suit, with varying levels of opinion from the fandom. So the makers had to decide on a suit, and they came up with the following design for the first draft.
The helmet is bland and lacks any sort of interesting thing to look at. It reminds me of the Phantom Ranger’s helmet, but made boring. The coloured visor is an interesting idea but it’s REALLY hard to pull off coloured visors- look at Time Force, there are a heap of shots where it’s clear that the colour is clearly a piece of cloth (when they’re not using the hero helmets). Changing at least this to having the dino theme would help bring it back to being halfway recognisable as a Power Rangers costume.
The sword looks like a ninja’s sword. Are they going to keep the combining weapon motif from the original? Will it be the same as the original weapons? If so, then the design wouldn’t work since the power sword in the original took the place of the ‘arrow’ in the overall blaster that looked like a crossbow. I’m guessing that they’re putting it on his back to get rid of the ‘grab from hammerspace’ thing the original show had, though a Go Busters style ‘transport’ system would probably work a bit better if you want to get rid of that aspect of getting weapons. That said, how can you claim that getting weapons out of hammerspace is implausible when the suits are essentially coming out of nowhere?
Thirdly, the gun shouldn’t be strapped to his leg like that. The holster would look better hanging from his belt, since that way there won’t be anything to get in the way of the person running. The belt looks odd, there’s a glowy light there, presumably instead of the power coin that... well, is a central image of the show. Everything that people picture when they think of MMPR has been stripped out, and at this point I wonder why they’re even bothering calling this a Power Rangers fan film when it looks like it will have no resemblance to the original show in any way.
I don’t like the quilted look of the armour. I’m going to say that it’s most likely the way it’s drawn, but a lot of those rippled bits look like padding instead of armour. It’s likely that the intention is that they are all hard armour (like Batman), but the render doesn’t make it 100% clear. Even if it is, it goes a little overboard. The suits from the official movie were all right, but the armoured nature of the design wasn’t overwhelming and it didn’t make a big deal of itself. It didn’t push aside the central motifs of the costumes, like this one did. The shoulder and knee pads are a bit much.
That said, the callbacks to the original suit are slightly better on this suit than the red one. The detail on the helmet and the general shape of the chest area suggests what came before it. With that said, it’s very diluted and only really makes sense if you’re truly looking for it. Where’s the tiger logo in the chest?
Secondly, they seem to have gotten rid of Saba, which makes no sense whatsoever. In place of Saba is a half length sword which looks underwhelming. This again goes to the big problem that if you’re going to take the show this far away from its source (turning a silly show into a dark, moody one), it becomes completely unrecognisable as being related to what it’s taking from. My main complaints about the overall design are the same as above- the helmet just doesn’t work since it shows no connection to the powers, and there is too much emphasis on the armour stylings and it takes everything away from what made the suits iconic.
You know what would have worked? Something that emulated The Phantom’s costume from the 1998 movie. The Phantom in the comics has a really simple costume- purple body suit, striped underpants, gul holsters, hood and domino mask. When they wanted to adapt it to the big screen, they retained everything that made it what it was- colour, overall design and look. However, they made it textured- it wasn’t straight spandex, but a thicker material that had texture and a type of jungle patterning over the body. It made the costume look *gorgeous* on the big screen and it was still faithful to the original material. Oh well.
What Did We Learn?
So what exactly should have been done differently? What lessons can be taken from this by people who want to do a similar project in the future?
Engage With the Fandom
One great thing about Linkara is that he actively interacted with the fandom long before announcing his HOPR series. He learned the general mood of the fandom towards certain seasons and learned what sort of product the fandom would be receptive to, and whether they’d be interested in watching such long recaps of Power Rangers seasons. He earned the respect of the fans, which is worth a fortune because the PR fandom in general is very unforgiving of new people coming in and telling them what they should like. While I’m sure it was unintentional, that is how the MMPR Movie guys came across as.
First Impressions Last
The fans in PR, once they don’t like someone, become ruthless. Look at the posts that deride Najee or Benta- the fans neither forgive nor forget and whether or not the very aggressive posts against them are warranted or not isn’t the issue here; rather the fact that the fans are difficult to turn once they decide they don’t like someone.
Give The Fans The Info They Need
Many times on the rangerboard thread there were questions asked regarding their target, the sort of product they intended to make and so forth. While a few of the questions were a bit much, many of the reasonable questions were meet with a "details coming soon" response which just caused frustration. I'm not saying that they had to be an open book, but rather just be straightforward in who they are, what they want to do, and what exactly the money is for. Sometimes plain English is what's needed.
If You Want a Lot of Money, Justify It
There have been many kickstarter projects that have requested a large amount of money. There is nothing wrong with asking for a large sum, but there needs to be a reason why such a large sum is being asked for. In the many times mentioned Rangerboard article, the producers were asked many times to justify their $100k number- how did they reach that number? What exactly will that money be spent on? These questions were either ignored or given a reply of “we’ll come up with a budget later”. How did they get the $100k number from then? It came across that they just put in a round, large number and hoped that pitching for as much as possible will give them what they really want and then some.
Where to From Here?
Well, the producers, from what they have said on their Twitter feed, seem to be going ahead with the project, despite their less than stellar fundraising results. It makes me wonder how they can afford those RED cameras and the crazy armoured suits they show above if they don’t have the money they claimed they needed to be able to make the movie.
In a final few thoughts, I’ve been somewhat negative and critical throughout this article, but I think one thing needs to be made clear: I think that the people behind this all the best and hope they will be successful. While I disagree with their creative direction for PR, what I think shouldn’t affect whether they think what they’re doing is wise. Where they need to pay attention, though, is that many of my criticisms come principally from a public relations front. Several times people on Rangerboard made a simple point- you’re talking to investors, act like it. If you don’t... well, it’s pretty hard to get people to give you their money.
Nice post, and good read. Thanks for mentioning Red Rising. Love hearing fan feedback and reaction... We're always seeking what people are looking for.
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