Before 'Karate Kid: Legends,' Its Director Wanted to Make an Epic Take on The Power Rangers

Karate Kid: Legends features all the hallmarks of the Karate Kid franchise: a kid who’s moved to a new city and struggles to fit in, develops a crush on a local girl (and a rivalry with a borderline psychopath who knows karate), learns karate from a wise, if eccentric mentor, and defeats his rival in a karate tournament. It wouldn’t be the first time that director Jonathan Entwistle was involved in a project that had “teenagers with attitude”; he rose to prominence with TV shows like The End of the F***ing World and I Am Not Okay With This, both of which dealt with teenagers in unique situations. It turns out that Karate Kid: Legends wasn’t the first time that Entwistle was attached to a franchise revolving around teenagers, as he was tapped to bring a new version of the Power Rangers to life.

Back in 2019, Entwistle was tapped by Paramount Pictures to direct a new Power Rangers film. That project soon evolved into a film and a connected TV series, but it was eventually shelved. Power Rangers fans kept speculating about what Entwistle’s vision for the world would have been, and now they know. During a Reddit AMA to promote Karate Kid: Legends, Entwistle went into great detail on his plans for what he wanted to do with the Power Rangers, and it sounds truly epic.

Jonathan Entwistle’s ‘Power Rangers; Would Have Put the Focus on Tommy Oliver, and Featured a Multiversal Approach

Entwistle’s approach to the Power Rangers took an inspired touch; while he was planning to create an entirely new team of Rangers, he also wanted to reveal that it revolved around Tommy Oliver — aka the Mighty Morphin’ Green Ranger, and his evil alternate universe counterpart Lord Drakkon, who sought to conquer all of reality:

From as early as 2018 I had created an entire new universe for Power Rangers – kind of a multiverse… I wasn’t doing MMPR specifically, but Tommy Oliver was the center of the world, all the mythology was surrounding him being one of the most important people in the universe… because we all know what he would become. So it was basically a time-bending HUGE story about stopping Drakkon from taking power over everything.

Lord Drakkon first appeared in the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers comics by Kyle Higgins and Hendry Prasetya, published by BOOM! Studios. He was an alternate version of Tommy who, rather than joining the Power Rangers after being freed from Rita Repulsa’s mind control, became a cruel dictator. Drakkon would eventually menace every Power Ranger who ever lived during the “Shattered Grid” storyline by Higgins and Daniele Di Niculo, which crossed time and space; it sounds like Entwistle was drawing inspiration from the comics. He also mentioned that Jenny Klein, who would act as showrunner for the potential Power Rangers series, had a story with “King Arthur vibes” and “sentient” colors — which isn’t too far off from some of the things that’ve actually happened in the world of Power Rangers.

The Power Rangers Project at Netflix Wound Up Being Scrapped Due to Shakeups at Hasbro

The push to reboot the Power Rangers came in 2019, when Hasbro bought Entertainment One and had designs on providing film franchises for most of its toy lines. But Hasbro wound up selling eOne to Lionsgate a few years later, which led to Hasbro looking to develop the series elsewhere. Netflix did eventually make a Power Rangers movie with Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Once and Always in 2023, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Power Rangers franchise while bringing back Power Rangers alums, including Walter Jones and David Yost. Disney+ is currently developing a Power Rangers series with Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) as showrunners; if fans want a truly new take on Power Rangers, they should also check out the Power Rangers Prime comic by Melissa Flores and Michael Yg, which reinterprets the Power Rangers mythos in a truly unique way.

While Karate Kid: Legends is a solid crowd-pleaser and a unique update on the Karate Kid franchise, reading what Jonathan Entwistle had planned for the world of Power Rangers makes me wish it had happened.

Karate Kid: Legends is now playing in theaters.