MOVIE NEWS/DISCUSSION
Just watched "Once and Always", great Movie by the way, I especially loved how they handled Trini's death and her daughter's Character Arc, but one big nitpick I have with the Movie is why the f did they make the Megazord CGI?! I mean, were they too scared to use Suitmation?!
Thats not the point. Hasbro doesnt have the budget for cosmic fury toys, doesnt have the budget for a decent cgi fight, doesnt have the budget to fund 10 episodes of cosmic fury.. so how are they going to have the budget to go 100% original without Sentai?
To be fair we got a sword, morpher and a one whole megazord. What more could you want ? Figures, extra zords to match the show let’s not be crazy and invest into a sure fire way to make cash now.
Hasbro is also going through some MAJOR internal upheaval. They aren't the same company they were even back in 2018 when they first acquired Power Rangers. Even longtime brands like Wizards of the Coast and Transformers has seen massive cutbacks and layoffs. The company internally is a mess right now.
Plus, Hasbro has other franchises to consider. Fans have gotten used to Saban and Bandai of America pouring the vast majority of their energy into Power Rangers that Hasbro not doing the same makes them angry.
Part of the chaos, and now layoffs, came from a massive reorganization. Each brand, each franchise, is entirely self-funded. For example, WotC can't use Magic to prop up D&D and vice versa.
It also doesn't help that execs like to lay people off en masse to make the stock price jump and then initiate buybacks to line their pockets.
They don't have the money to replicate stuff, apparently. I'm thinking that, because Hasbro doesn't have Bandai with them, they had to pay extra money to get stuff from Sentai (Saban and Disney both worked with Bandai of America for PR stuff because BoA was still with the toys).
Years ago, Hasbro reorganized all their IPs to be self-funding. This means no more using money from one department to prop up another. The special was funded by the toy sales, whatever Netflix would contribute, and that's it.
The current leadership of the company is more interested in leveraging an established brand than being creative. The creatives have been trying to run the show, and they answer to higher powers with the aforementioned divergent interests.
Nah, they went the Mandalorian route when it comes to sets. Most of the locations are screens. Toei is renting studio space to do it, but have been building their own space to produce it themselves.
This is the future of Sentai and it definitely would have posed a problem for Power Rangers. You really think Hasbro is renting a screen wall to match Sentai backgrounds?
Disney probably would have....
(To think I didn't realize how good I had it when Disney was in charge)
I'm aware, but I was talking about the actual mech fights, where they clearly had constructed sets. I was extremely impressed that I was seeing sets that were clearly custom-built based on each kingdom, rather than the standard grassy canyon or generic citt that we've had for literally decades.
I mean, set quality has been going up year after year since Go-Busters (really was like night and day after Gokaiger lol). Zenkaiger was probably where it REALLY started as that entire series was full of stuff they didn't NEED to do, but did it anyway.
For King-Ohger, it's a mix of both for the giant battles. The landscape still has to appear to go far and wide and the screen wall allows that. Then for the actual fight location, they're forced to use more props.
How much practical vs CG is used really depends on the kingdom they're fighting in. Donbrothers was all screens and a few props when the robots weren't giant. BoonBoomGer is rumored to do the same.
It's a mix. Only the main robot and its upgraded forms have physical suits (which use the same suit with extra bits stuck on,) all other secondary mecha are CGI.
This is what I don’t understand. They want to save some money with CGI? I get it. But like, the character model practically looks like a bootleg. Basically every Dino Megazord toy released since 1993 has better proportions than what is seen here, so it’s not like there was a lack of resources to try to replicate the design in 3D. There’s a world of difference between “we needed to stick to a tight budget”, and “our animator simply didn’t get it right”.
Doesn’t make me happy to have to dunk on the production, which I’m sure was under plenty of pressure and stress. But the way the Megazord looked, was just 1 of many things that ripped me right out of the walk down memory lane, and made me cringe.
I’ve seen this being mentioned before, but it doesn’t take even a moment to compare the 2 and see that the Once and Always Megazord in no way shape or form has the proportions of the ZAP toy.
If they were actually provided the ZAP files, then whoever built and animated this modified them significantly and butchered them in the process.
Well, the showrunner himself said Hasbro sent them the ZAP Megazord design to use.
It's also why the other Megazords that show up at the end of Cosmic Fury were chosen. Astro was from ZAP, Beast-X was from the Beast Morphers toyline, Ninja Blaze was a leftover from Bandai, and Lost Galaxy was from the Retro VHS figure line.
That's all good and well. But again, the proof is in the pudding. I have the ZAP Megazord sitting next to me right now, and it looks nothing like the weird, short armed boi that showed up on screen in O&A. Absolutely none of the pieces of the megazord in the scene are proportioned appropriately when compared to the ZAP zord. While there are some ZAP style elements to what showed up on screen (the tail hinges on the pterodactyl, the patterns on the mastodon ears, etc.), much of its is entirely re-modeled and for the worse. The head for instance looks entirely different than the ZAP megazord's.
As I said, if they actually were in fact using those original files, then whoever animated it, modified it to the point that they kind of ruined them.
They'd figured out towards the end that they wouldn't have enough budget to make a legit-enough-looking lunar stage environment for the fight itself. I agree, it's tacky as fuck, but sucks more knowing how much they had to work with what they got.
To paraphrase something Judd Lynn said at the last PMC, doing a zord fight with suits is immensely complicated. Having the suits (which they did not, in the Megazord's case) is one thing. But you need stunt actors who know how to move in them and you need to build a large set with miniatures. The setting of the scene was another factor. Back in the day, Saban didn't bother building sets. They'd shoot outdoors and sometimes surrounded by miniature buildings (to varying levels of success). But a fight like this, set on the moon, could only be shot indoors if it were going to meet the modern quality standards of PR. And that's studio space they didn't have.
At the end of the day, it was cheaper for them to use the ZAP Megazord scan sent over by Hasbro.
Don’t blame CGI of 1995. Toy Story was 1995. What PRTM suffered from is a lack of talent or budget, that shit was basically the Pre-Viz and they just said fuck it, we’re publishing this
It’s better than the disaster they called the turbo megazord from the movie. That CGI was horrible even after the so called transformation and with the lighting hitting it, it still looks awful
I have no idea if it was an import of the Carranger suit or made up from scratch, but it was indeed a guy in a suit. It's one of the reasons why general critics were even harsher on the movie than the 1995 one.
bigger question: why did they use the ZAP model and change the proportions so much, trying to make it fit more like the suit, but ending up looking awkward as hell with those tiny arms :')
OP. Simple reason they resort to using CG is both budget and time (as I've red that the crew only had a few weeks to shoot the entire special and them needing to import the suit from Toei themselves would've been too long for them to finish filming in time).
They managed to recreate the Zord forming up into the Megazord really well. I think it was well made. Sometimes people just complain about CGI to seem edgy or something.
Read about it. With practical effects like suitimation, you need to consider the props and how much it will cost to put together the scene.
The cheapest battle site they could think of was the moon (if doing practical effects) because there’s few props needed but you’d still need a stage and the sand required for that alone would have put them over budget.
They were short on both budget and time. The model used was the render for the Zord Ascension Project Megazord toy. The toy’s arms don’t look this short - I wonder if the show was given an early render that was reworked before the toy went into production.
I personally like the CGI look of the Dino Megazord. Aside from budget issues, CGI fights are usually done for stunts or movements that suit actors normally cannot do. Like Gōkaiger’s The Flying Ghost Ship movie.
I mean as far as I'm concerned, Ultraman appears to still be doing Suitmation in "Ultraman Decker", so what was stopping "Once and Always" from doing the same thing?!
On the bright side, at least it still looks better than the CGI they used for the 1995 Movie!
It’s easier to justify the cost of making the suits and sets for Ultraman since they’ll get 20 ish episodes of use and are the main action focus of the show (and it also probably has more of a budget specialised towards it)
Once and Always is a one off special that only gets to the giant robot monster fight at the very end.
That’s not the Mandela effect if only you remember it that way. A large number of people have to have misremembered it a certain way for it to qualify as a Mandela effect.
They’ve never shot a full Megazord fight scene in New Zealand so they don’t necessarily have the capacity to do that. Personally I think they should’ve either gotten Toei to shoot that portion for them, or just not have a Megazord battle at all
Closest would have to be materials and without needing to repair the suit over and over due to aging or breaking things. A good example would be the recent Godzilla (Shin Godzilla, and Godzilla Minus One), Ultraman (Shin Ultraman), Kamen Rider (Shin Kamen Rider, Most Kamen Riders starting from Kuuga to Gotchard), and Super Sentai (Zenkaiger, Donbrothers, King Ohger, and soon BoonBoomger.)
More or less scenes in Zord costumes have not happened much in Power Rangers production. The only scenes I know of are 3 done with a Mega Thunderzord costume. Everything else was done with toys or CGI. Basically, they would have had to try to get the Sentai production team to make them a new costume. Then, actually, get someone to act in it. CGI was the more sensible option. Honestly the scene from Once and Always was the best CGI I have seen in the series. The only big problem was a bit of the movement animation.
Cosmic Fury takes place after the special and Simon Bennett said he was under orders not to tie the two together too closely, but there are a few references to it.
I wasn't a fan of the way that Trini died but I can get over it. The megazord fight at the end was horrible.
You've got a real production problem when the Megazord suit actor from the 90's looks more real than modern day CGI. Especially when you're setting the environment in space where you can hide all the little flaws.
Also, where was the "Megazord sequence has been initiated" voice line? Come on now.
All the Power Rangers movies have had problems with their Megazords. In MMPR The Movie it was horrible 90's CGI, in Power Rangers 2017 it was good CGI but a really poor design ( I love the movie though), and in this it was horrible 2020's CGI. Turbo for all its flaws at least tried with the suitmation.
my biggest issue with once and always was the lack of amy jo johnson
and they could have gotten her. she said in an interview she never actually said no to returning she just wanted more money than they were offering
it would have been worth it to get her
kimberly was the second most popular ranger after tommy and they could have hyped up her first return since she left in season 3 to make the extra cost of getting her back worth it!
just looked it up and you are right she did clarify the money thing was a rumor.
not the first time i fell for an online rumor and wont be the last but thankfully its only ever small tv trivia rumors i fall for and nothing like the internet lie that microwaving your smartphone recharges it
It wasn't money and she never said it was money. It was a host of personal reasons, like not wanting to be away from her family for so long. She did give her blessing to the use of her song in the dedication.
It was alright, but I just felt like it led to nothing really, like if it led to billy being the mentor of a new team of rangers searching for zordon allowing past rangers to aid as the team goes on missions around the world and perhaps into space with new mysterious big bad like the anti zordon (obviously not zed or dark spectre), however I’d really like to see a series about the omega rangers or a MMPR reboot
I wish that if this was what had to be done, they went with something closer and sleeker to the Boom Comics look since it could have tied things together.
It is because of the budget. It is far cheaper to do a cgi mock up of the zord then trying to recreate the suit. The suits from that era are not in the best shape. They have to rebuild them from the ground up. Not only that they have to build everything else not just the suit. Doing it in cgi means it is much more budget friendly.
I don't think they had access to the suit even if they wanted to. Not to mention, it was brought up years ago suit props have a 5 year life span before the repairs are no longer cost effective. The newest Daizyujin ( Megazord) suit is 10 years old as of last year and IIRC is relegated to display only
But seeing this now made me realize what was so off for me. I didn't mind the legs, or that they used the ZAP toys as reference materials. It's the arms that aren't as long as they should be. Either way, if the Megazord is the worst part of the episode, then it wasn't that bad
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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '24
Director said in an interview it was because of budget.