So, take Ninja Turtles, add an A-Movie studio with Power Rangers B-actors, write a knockoff of The Neverending Story, give us a villain who's essentially Loki, and you get one of the most well-directed dorkfests of the 90's. Warriors of Virtue is a forgotten movie with a large amount of effort put into the production value, one with costumes almost as good as the ones from the earlier costume-driven film Nightbreed. But its story needs some work.
This movie is basically all about energy told through the spectacle of production. We see some expertly-directed scenes in this debut of Ronny Yu, later known for Fearless. I mean, only Yu would put so much passion into directed a montage of a martial arts master using his skills in the kitchen. The flashiness of these action sequences still has the general behavior of 80's and 90's martial arts cheese, but each scene is handled professionally, which means the spectacle here is lived up to the fullest potential that 90's family films would allow. On top of that, we get a careful balance of colors through some highly convincing set pieces, which is probably the best thing about the movie. Obviously, Ronny Yu did the absolute best that he could've done with what he was given.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems. First of all, our out-of-whack story really does need some fleshing out. While it's not a horrible story and there are some decent moments, the whole of story-world concept wasn't given the care that was needed. On top of that, while we have much better kangaroo costumes than Tank Girl, we also have some pretty cheap acting. The cast of the kangaroos were not given enough character development to work with, and our villain, who easily has the worst dialogue in the movie (do not think thoughts???) is basically a bad proto-Loki and Angus MacFadyen performance so poor it's often laugh-inducing.
So Warriors of Virtue is basically a movie strictly for a Power Rangers fan. It's got most of the ingredients necessary for Power Rangers, but with an impressive production level. Yu justified his existence in Hollywood with his direction, although we rarely heard much from the four Law brothers who created the characters, largely because these characters were as thrown together for the 90's anthro buzz the same way Street Sharks and Biker Mice from Mars was, only being more tolerable.
This movie is basically all about energy told through the spectacle of production. We see some expertly-directed scenes in this debut of Ronny Yu, later known for Fearless. I mean, only Yu would put so much passion into directed a montage of a martial arts master using his skills in the kitchen. The flashiness of these action sequences still has the general behavior of 80's and 90's martial arts cheese, but each scene is handled professionally, which means the spectacle here is lived up to the fullest potential that 90's family films would allow. On top of that, we get a careful balance of colors through some highly convincing set pieces, which is probably the best thing about the movie. Obviously, Ronny Yu did the absolute best that he could've done with what he was given.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems. First of all, our out-of-whack story really does need some fleshing out. While it's not a horrible story and there are some decent moments, the whole of story-world concept wasn't given the care that was needed. On top of that, while we have much better kangaroo costumes than Tank Girl, we also have some pretty cheap acting. The cast of the kangaroos were not given enough character development to work with, and our villain, who easily has the worst dialogue in the movie (do not think thoughts???) is basically a bad proto-Loki and Angus MacFadyen performance so poor it's often laugh-inducing.
So Warriors of Virtue is basically a movie strictly for a Power Rangers fan. It's got most of the ingredients necessary for Power Rangers, but with an impressive production level. Yu justified his existence in Hollywood with his direction, although we rarely heard much from the four Law brothers who created the characters, largely because these characters were as thrown together for the 90's anthro buzz the same way Street Sharks and Biker Mice from Mars was, only being more tolerable.