In many ways, we all go full circle eventually. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust and all that. We begin our lives bald, incoherent and in need of constant care and attention, and many of us will end up that way too. There’s something oddly satisfying about that: it’s a great unifier, something that none of us can escape no matter how hard we try. This is all a long-winded way of saying that Bryan Cranston has been cast in the “Power Rangers” movie.
Maybe that needs more explanation. Earlier in his career, long before he became an Oscar nominated movie-star thanks to “Trumbo,” a household name and Emmy winner thanks to “Breaking Bad” or even regularly employed as the dad in “Malcolm In The Middle,” Cranston was a jobbing actor who took, as so many do, the jobs that come along. And one of those jobs was dubbing villain Snizzard (part Snake, part Lizard, obviously) in “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers,” the popular kids TV hit of the 1990s that repurposed footage from Japanese shows (hence the dubbing). Not only that, but Blue Ranger Billy Cranston was even named after the actor.
More than two decades on, Hollywood’s insatiable appetite for empty nostalgia has led to Lionsgate’s big-budget “Power Rangers” reboot, with Naomi Scott, Becky G, RJ Cyler, Dacre Montgomery and Ludi Lin set to play the martial-arts using, robot-owning heroes, and will be squaring off against Elizabeth Banks as villain Rita Repulsa. But in a move that shows a rather touching affection for his early days, as well as presumably a healthy American love of money, Cranston announced on his Twitter account that he’s joined the new movie.
The actor, who’ll next be seen in “The Infiltrator,” will play Zordon, the mentor of the heroes, who takes the form of a floating head (he’s trapped in a time warp, you see), which is what presumably allows Cranston to join the movie despite it already having wrapped. It’s perhaps not the ideal place we’d see the actor, but he’s done worse for money (the “Total Recall” remake, for one), and there is something pleasing about him getting a paycheck for the same property that once probably helped him keep a roof over his head. You can see Cranston’s head in a pillar of light when the film opens on March 24th, 2017. Have a look at the film’s (absolutely terrible, could be advertising anything) poster below.
