Controversy is always hanging around movies. In the case of the new Power Rangers film, the producers were likely expecting it due to rebooting a popular franchise. However, this one they probably didn't see coming. We can guess that because if they had, this never would have happened. New posters were released for the new movie showing off each of the five new Rangers, and each had a caption attached. The original tweet of the character Trini has already been pulled from Lionsgate because fans reacted harshly to what that post said.
The issue is that while the new Yellow Ranger is played by singer and actress Becky G, in the original TV series the part was played by actress Thuy Trang, who died in a car accident in 2001. As such, fans aren't thrilled about the "driver's Ed" comment that was attached to her poster.
Prior to the original tweet being deleted by Lionsgate, it was met with a great deal of criticism from fans for the poorly setup joke. They called it "poor taste" and "gross." The fact that the original tweet was deleted shows that Lionsgate noticed the bad move and so they pulled the tweet. The caption doesn't appear to actually be on the poster itself, so it's likely you'll begin to see all of them inside your local theater soon.
While certainly, this comment was unintentional, it was also an incredibly poor coincidence. Not all of the other captions attached to the other Power Rangers posters are even attempts at humor. The Pink Ranger's poster just says "Feels like Flying." They could have just gone with a comment like that here and everything would have been fine. Even if they had included this caption on a different poster, it would have worked just as well, all the characters are teenagers after all, and it likely would have gone by unnoticed. It's likely a lot of fans of the original series didn't even know what happened to Thuy Trang, so it's not surprising that it wasn't on the studio's radar either.
This isn't the first time that controversy has met the new Power Rangers movie. When Bryan Cranston was announced as Zordon in the movie, the original Blue Ranger David Yost, was critical of the decision based on negative remarks Cranston had once made in an interview regarding Yost's sexual orientation. Cranston has since apologized for the statements.
Controversies aside, the new Power Rangers movie seems to be growing in hype the closer we get to its March 2017 release date. Fans of the original series are certainly curious, if somewhat apprehensive, about how it will turn out. We should be seeing the first trailers here very soon so we'll have an idea what we're going to get when Power Rangers hits the screen next year.
