I wasn’t a fan of the Power Rangers television series when it aired — maybe I was a year or two too old for it, or maybe I was already over my Voltron days. Whatever the case, I haven’t found excitement for the upcoming Power Rangers movie. And then last month Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston signed on to the film as Zordon, a character that appeared as a giant floating head in a tube in the TV series. I thought, that’s interesting. And then a teaser poster for the film was released (you can see it right after the jump), which was not what I expected from this particular franchise. Okay, so maybe I am a little curious now to see what the Power Rangers movie will be.

And now we have Bryan Cranston talking about how the movie is wildly different from the 1990s television series, comparing more to a Dark Knight-style reimagining of the franchise.

Above is the Power Rangers movie teaser poster that I referred to in my opening. As you see, it’s not what you might expect from a movie version of the Power Rangers. It looks more like a Steven Spielberg-inspired YA adaptation. Certainly Lionsgate/Summit has made a lot of money on YA adaptations. I’m not sure why, but this poster makes me interested in this movie, which I otherwise shouldn’t care about. Now lets jump to Bryan Cranston’s comments.

Cranston told The Huffington Post that at first he was “reticent to looking at the role” because he remembered the “television series was kind of farcical and silly and ‘pow’ and ‘zow’ — weird movements and things like that.” And Cranston should remember the television series, as he used to do voice work for it.

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. 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 by “Batman” he was referring to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series, but admitted that he doesn’t know if “the tone is as dark as that because you’re dealing with teenagers.” The Dark Knight comparison doesn’t excite me much because almost every big screen reboot over the last eight years has tried to take that approach. Darker and grittier isn’t always better. Besides, the Joseph Kahn Power Rangers short film was kind of that, and I couldn’t make it through the whole 14 minutes. It’s what Cranston said next that gets me interested.

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.

It sounds like a description of that teaser poster. I’m interested to see that movie. I’m not sure I like the look of the new Power Ranger suits but that might just be because I wasn’t into the franchise previously.