Bryan Cranston Compares Power Rangers Reimagining To The Dark Knight

Nowadays, it seems like everybody wants gritty and realistic. For the Power Rangers movie, an adapation of the cartoon-ish live action 90's series, that would mean some major changes to the franchise's style when it hits theaters in 2017.

Last month, it was announced that Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston joined the cast as Power Rangers mentor Zordon. Cranston has a reputation for acclaimed roles but most of them are for more mature audiences, not so much the teenagers or kids one might expect Power Rangers to target. According to Cranston, though, the Power Rangers movie might be a little darker or more mature than one may have thought. More specifically, he compares it to the iconic DC Comics film, The Dark Knight.

"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,'" Cranston tells Huffington Post. "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."

Hesitant on pegging Power Rangers as a dark, gritty film, Cranston shared some more details regarding the comparison.

"I don't know if the tone is as dark as that because you're dealing with teenagers," Cranston says. "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."

Power Rangers is set for release March 24, 2017.