Bryan Cranston Says POWER RANGERS Movie is "Unrecognizable" Compared to The TV Show

Lionsgate's live-action Power Rangers movie reboot is rocketing toward its March 2017 release date, and a lot of '90s kids who grew up with the show are super excited to see how it stacks up to the TV series. Now one of the movie's stars has given fans a huge clue about what this film will be like, and some of you may be slightly distraught to find out that it won't bear a close resemblance to the show. Bryan Cranston, who was recently cast as Zordon and has his own deeper history with the franchise, spoke with The Huffington Post about taking the job and the tone of the new film:

“At first I was, to be honest with you, I was reticent to looking at the role because I remember the television series was kind of farcical and silly and ‘pow’ and ‘zow’ — weird movements and things like that. I was like, 'Oh, OK.'

“I wasn’t really high on it until I talked to the producer and read the script and talked to the director. After that I went, ‘This is different.’” He continued, “This is as different a reimagining as the ‘Batman’ television series as it became the ‘Batman’ movie series. You can’t compare those two, and nor can you compare this movie version of the ‘Power Rangers’ to that television series. It’s unrecognizable for the most part. There are tenets of the folklore that you hold onto for sure, but the inspiration is different, and the sensibility of it, and the approach to the film making is completely different.”

Cranston clarified that he was talking about Christopher Nolan's trilogy when he mentioned the Batman movies, and made sure to mention that he didn't think Power Rangers would skew quite as dark because "you're dealing with teenagers." But getting inside the teenage mentality is apparently going to be a big part of the film:

"So the appropriateness of that, and real teenage life, and going through high school and the cliques and the popularity or lack thereof, and the bullies and all the different sections and sub-sections of high school life, and the insecurities of these kids and things like that — hopes and dreams — and you embrace all of that into a retelling of the ‘Power Rangers.’ And what you would get is this new version, this new reimagined version."

There's a lot to take away from that, but my main question is how are fans going to react to a statement like that? For the most part, they're fans of the show and the way things were done on the show, so to hear that this movie will be "unrecognizable for the most part" seems like a pretty massive shift in style. And let's face it: genre fans aren't the most open-minded people when it comes to adaptations of franchises they love. In their minds, things have to be done in a very specific way, and this sounds like it might be more of a ground-up reimagining than a slight twist on the old show. What do you think? Are you looking forward to the movie? Would you be happy with something that keeps some of the "tenets of the folklore" but drastically changes everything else, or would you prefer a more straight-forward adaptation of what you know from the show?