This article will contain some spoilers of the Power Rangers movie, please read at your discretion.
A friend of mine sent me an article earlier as we were talking about certain issues that were being portrayed in the media and how it is indeed becoming more progressive. There was one part of the article that had referenced the film reboot of the smash 1990s hit, Power Rangers and suddenly, it hit me. I then remembered as I was watching the movie how I felt almost little to no sympathy for one of my favorite rangers, Kimberly Hart, the pink ranger, portrayed by British actress, Naomi Scott. While the rangers all had a different, yet sad backstory, when it came down to Kimberly's big reveal, I was disheartened and in fact, pretty angry at her backstory.
Like all reboots, there will always be something that people aren't going to like, but this just had to be the cherry on top of 2017 on the worst character backstory yet. In the movie, Kimberly Hart was a cheerleader who had harshly fallen from grace and from the start of the movie we all assume that she's being targeted by her former friends about sharing a "leaked picture". Now of course, since the Power Rangers are generally a kids' movie, we all assume that either Kimberly was set up to share an embarrassing picture or that an embarrassing picture was spread about her and she had to pay the price. At least, that's what I thought, but boy, I was wrong.
Instead, Kimberly reveals to Jason Scott, another fallen high school superstar like herself, that she had leaked nude photos of her friend on the cheer squad and that she landed herself in detention for fighting the boy who decided to circulate it and for being the one who started the cycle. In that moment, I could feel a slight twinge of annoyance of Kimberly's backstory. As someone who has been bullied, I felt that the way the girls reacted towards Kimberly was understandable. However, what I did not appreciate was how the movie wanted to victimize her for her wrong doing. What Kimberly Hart did was an illegal act of revenge porn and I, personally, am surprised that she, too, wasn't on house arrest, like Jason or registered as a sex-offender. Instead, we see the movie portray her as the victim who is trying to atone herself for the wrong doings that she committed in between trying to figure out what it's like to be a Power Ranger.
Personally, I feel that Kimberly Hart's backstory did not do justice for the original 1990s Kimberly Hart, portrayed by Amy Jo Johnson, where Kimberly was a gymnast and was actually kind to the people around her. I would have liked to have seen Kimberly with a hard-hitting backstory similar to Trini, Billy, and Zack's backstories, or, if they did want her to be the cheerleader fallen from grace, the writers of the movie should have gone a completely different route. Hopefully the next movies can stray from this backstory of hers and focus on developing her in a positive light. While yes, this is a backstory that will continue to haunt her, I hope that Hollywood does not use this as a trope to make us relate and feel sorry for the classic mean girl.
