A few days ago we ran a post about “Power/Rangers,” director Joseph Kahn and producer Adi Shankar’s gritty, bootleg short film depicting the grown-up Power Rangers as broken, dysfunctional survivors of an ugly dystopia. If you’re curious about the film, however, you are out of luck, as the people behind the Power Rangers franchise, most notably creator Haim Saban, had the film pulled from Vimeo and YouTube after it had already racked up more than 10 million hits in just a few days. (To put that into perspective: that’s way more than Birdman’s jaunt around Times Square earned.) 

This invites the question: Why was “Power/Rangers” pulled from the Internet when seemingly the sum of human endeavor, not including the music of Prince, can be found, officially or otherwise, on YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, and other services? For that matter, why were the people behind the official Power Rangers so apoplectic over an online take on their characters when countless brands, comic-book companies, and corporations have practically lined up to have their copyrighted characters prominently featured in The Lego Movie, Toy Story, Foodfight!, Wreck-It Ralph, and Robot Chicken? Even Disney, which has long been considered among the most litigious corporations in the world, decided not to fight Escape From Tomorrow, the movie secretly filmed at one its theme parks and filled with luridly non-Disney subject matter. 

That turned out to be the right move. Despite being decidedly off-brand with Disney’s image, allowing the tiny film to live and die on its own modest merits turned out to be a non-story. But if Disney had waged the expected legal war against Escape From Tomorrow, then suddenly it would have become a big story playing into the worst stereotypes about Disney as thin-skinned, litigation-crazed monsters. Had Disney fought the film, Escape From Tomorrow would have stopped being an interesting, low-key experiment, and would have become THE FILM DISNEY DIDN’T WANT YOU TO SEE, which is way sexier and more conducive to juicy press than being the weird, non-commercial independent film Disney is surprisingly chill about you being able to see. 

Permission helps, too, and it’s easy to see why companies were eager to have their wares featured in the likes of Toy Story and The Lego Movie. Even if the characters are treated in a respectfully irreverent way, who wouldn’t want to be associated with a winner? Who wouldn’t want to be part of a narrative a mass audience fall in love with? Who doesn’t love free publicity if it’s not too insulting or dark? Sure, there are also movies like Foodfight! but the upside to that film bombing so spectacularly is that because pretty much no one one—other than listeners of The Flop House—saw Foodfight!, there is no negative link in the public imagination between this woefully botched motion picture and, say, the California Raisins or Charlie Tuna, both of whom lent their fading prestige to the film. 

In hindsight, “Power/Rangers” did not reflect well upon the Power Rangers brand, nor did it fit the series’ squeaky-clean image. And though Shankar insists that what he has made is nothing more than a fan film, it has professional-level production values, acting (James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff), direction, and special effects. “Power/Rangers” has the misfortune to look exactly like what it is: a professional production done by veterans during their downtime as a creative experiment. The idea might not have been to get money or pitch an R-rated Power Rangers movie, but it would be disingenuous to argue that they did not seek attention by releasing such a boldly bleak take on a kiddie favorite. “Power/Rangers” is a victim of its success: If it were a $10,000 goof shot, cast, and put together by amateurs or fans, then it would have been a lot more likely to fly under the radar and not attract the attention of Saban. 

The problem was that “Power/Rangers” went viral in a way that made it impossible for Saban to ignore it. Since the official Power Rangers feature film is not due out until July of 2016 and is rumored (but unlikely) to star the high-powered likes of Liam Hemsworth and Meryl Streep, it’s not as if the bootleg short can promote it. In sharp contrast to the good-nature ribbing the likes of Batman takes in The Lego Movie, “Power/Rangers” is brutal in its deconstructionist take on the Power Rangers as emotionally shattered, PTSD-addled adults. This is no good-natured roasting; this is an attempt to portray the Rangers in a much different, much darker light.

We live in a culture where people are expected to make everything available for public consumption, from their personalities and thoughts via social media to their life’s work via iTunes or YouTube. So we are inherently fascinated by the few people like Prince, who refuse to acquiesce to this new paradigm, who believe their songs are their own, thank you very much, and you should purchase them if you want to hear them, not push a button online. 

Part of me respects this willingness to go against the herd and refuse to allow your life’s work to be available to anyone with a computer and Wi-Fi. So even though I would love to link to Prince’s “Batdance” at least three times a day, I respect that he’s one of the few artists who refuse to allow their music and performances to be seen for free on YouTube. That adds to his prickly, contrarian allure. 

I love the notion of the Internet as a Wild West where the old rules don’t apply and all your old television, film, and musical friends are as close as a trip to YouTube, but I also respect the idea that when someone creates something, they have the rights to their creation, and the definitive say in how it is seen or exploited. On that level, Power Rangers creator/rights-owner Haim Saban was entirely within his rights to demand that a short film with professional production values centering on intellectual property he owned be taken down because it did not reflect his vision for his characters, and advertised its unauthorized status. 

The irony is that the video being taken down could be the best thing that could happen for Kahn and Shankar. It transforms an interesting, if fairly muddled and self-serious short film into THE MOVIE HAIM SABAN DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE, which gives it the unmistakable allure of the forbidden fruit. By taking “Power/Rangers” away, Saban has made it more powerful and more desirable. So at this point the worst thing for Kahn and Shankar would be for Saban to back down and let the video go back up on YouTube, because then audiences could see it for what it really is—a technically impressive but rather dour exercise in what-if?—as opposed to a secret film too explosive and gritty for the general public.