Legend of the White Dragon Review: A Beautiful Disaster

For people of a certain age, Power Rangers carries a large amount of magic, thanks to the heavy dose of nostalgia involved. For the last 33 years, the face of that Magic has often been Jason David Frank. Frank, along with directors and co-creators Aaron Schoenke and Sean Schoenke, embarked on a 2019 Kickstarter campaign to create a movie that tapped into that magic and nostalgia, called Legend of the White Dragon. The result is pure magic. Make no mistake, it’s a complete mess, but it’s pure unadulterated magic.

From a marketing perspective, it makes total sense. Jason David Frank is the face most Gen-Xers and Millennials associate with The Power Rangers. Strictly speaking, Legend of the White Dragon isn’t a Power Rangers project, but it’s heavily inspired by them. The main superhero is clad in a full-body suit with a helmet. He can teleport through the sky with a trail of colored light behind him everywhere he goes. He’s proficient in hand-to-hand combat. The parallels are obvious and intentional.

The premise is that Erik Reeds, aka The White Dragon (Jason David Frank), has just fought an ancient and evil foe, Ashtagor (David Ramsey). The struggle destroys a big part of Virtuo City, and 1,263 people lose their lives. The citizens blame The White Dragon, and when Erik’s identity is revealed, he’s forced into hiding.

Jai is fueled by one thing and one thing only: revenge.

Dark Day, as it became known, was three years ago. Erik is still in hiding but takes small opportunities now and then to secretly check in on his family from afar. On one such day, that decision exposes him, and the authorities start closing in.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Virtuo City, Big Pharma CEO Jai Katua (Aaron Schoenke) still mourns the death of his fiancée, Vanessa (Ciara Hanna). Like many others, Vanessa was lost on Dark Day. Jai blames Erik for her death and is working hard on a solution to allow him to wield the same powers that Erik has at his disposal.

This is only possible because during the fight on Dark Day, the Dragon Crystal that gives Erik his powers was broken, and Ashtagor recovered a piece of it. He eventually would appear to a grief-stricken Jai and manipulate him into taking the crystal and using it for vengeance.

Now, three years later, Jai is fueled by one thing and one thing only: revenge. He uses his vast resources to create a serum that will allow him to harness the power of the Dragon Crystal fragment he has and hunt down Erik.

Somewhere in all of this is a really inspiring Power Rangers-adjacent story.

Erik and his allies must now find a way to recharge the piece of the Dragon Crystal he still has while avoiding attacks from local law enforcement and from Jai Katua, clad as a more sinister version of The White Dragon. This use of the Dragon Crystal brings about the prophesied Dragon Prime.

Somewhere in all of this is a really inspiring Power Rangers-adjacent story. Some version of this exists where all the pieces fit together very nicely, and Legend of the White Dragon becomes the start of a new and beautiful way for the over-35 crowd to continue enjoying this specific genre of superhero films and television.

Unfortunately, this isn’t that version. Instead, Legend of the White Dragon is an absolute train wreck from beginning to end. Part of that isn’t Aaron and Sean Schoenke’s fault. They faced incredible obstacles after Jason David Frank’s 2022 death. The fact that a final product was even attainable is a success unto itself.

Still, not everything is the result of their sudden production constraints. Jason David Frank is phenomenal as Erik Reed. He has real emotional depth, and while he doesn’t move quite as nimbly as he did 33 years ago, he still knows how to perform fight choreography with impressive results.

Unfortunately, beyond that, there simply isn’t much to love. Jai is a fully unlikeable villain. In fact, he’s like a Temu Kylo-Ren. Jai spends 99 percent of Legend of the White Dragon brooding and angry, even when his grief should cause him to have a more nuanced set of emotions. He’s not a true villain in the sense that he is being actively manipulated by a greater force of evil. He’s just a puppet with a bad temper.

Additionally, many other actors in the film feel like extras with lines. By themselves, their lines end up feeling forced and mechanical, but next to Frank, who is doing laps around them from a talent perspective, they seem like they’ve never acted a day in their life. Some characters smile in every scene regardless of what’s going on. Others sound like they’re reading from an off-camera cue card.

Erik’s allies, Iris (Rachele Brooke Smith) and Connor (Jason Faunt), are charming in scenes with each other. Iris has a sort of Gina Carano in The Mandalorian vibe about her, but neither Smith nor Faunt bring anything extraordinary to their roles. They could have been played by just about any actor that fits the desired archetype and gotten similar or better results.

The camera work in big CGI fight scenes is completely dizzying.

Andrew Bachelor plays U.R.I., a holographic entity that helps Erik and his allies when they begin working on charging the Dragon Crystal. Bachelor was very entertaining for the first scene or two. He comes off as a playful Zordon-esque character, but when the novelty wears off, U.R.I. ends up becoming more of an on-screen nuisance than someone audiences will want in anything bigger than a small dose.

The costumes are doing the job they’re supposed to do in reminding everyone that this is Frank and the Schoenkes’ vision for an adult Power Rangers film, but they look cheap. The anti-radiation suits that Erik and his allies wear into the Dragon Crystal’s charging pit are part Mandalorian, part Spartan, and still color-coded so that Jason David Frank can dress in green.

The camera work in most scenes is fine, but in a major CGI-reliant fight scene, it feels like someone without any camera training is trying to keep up with very fast-moving objects. The result is a scene that could easily cause dizziness to an average viewer, and God help anyone with vertigo who is unfortunate enough to be watching.

The MPA rating given to Legend of the White Dragon is R for violence and language. Yes, it earns its rating, but really only because of one scene. There’s a moment when a character, in a blind rage, takes what could have been heroism and becomes judge, jury, and executioner when he shoots two characters in the head.

As their blood paints the ground beneath them, it becomes clear why the movie is rated R. Still, the rest of the film is so tame by comparison; it would have been much more consistent with the tone of the film to imply the executions and allow the PG-13 rating that it would have most likely earned.

With all of that in mind, the worst sin Legend of the White Dragon commits has nothing to do with any of that. Instead, the film carries so much backstory and exposition in an attempt to make the audience care that it would have benefited from being a series instead of a movie.

With all the flaws in Legend of the White Dragon, there is a real story about the power of being present.

Legend of the White Dragon was clearly just one part of a bigger planned franchise—a franchise that Jason David Frank’s untimely death all but ensures will never happen. Still, the film suffers from how much it wants to explain itself and has backed itself into the corner of needing a follow-up simply to justify the first film.

Still, with all the flaws in Legend of the White Dragon, there is a real story about the power of being present. Erik Reed’s family watches the news obsessively as they wonder if Erik is alive or if he’ll ever come home. Erik’s daughter Ashley (Jenna Frank) is played by Frank’s real-life daughter, and it’s absolutely heart-wrenching to watch her character looking for her father, knowing that in real life, Jason David Frank wouldn’t survive the full production of this film.

There is humor that is genuinely fun to watch. In one scene, Connor teasingly asks Erik if he’s some kind of music guy, to which Erik nods to the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers as he says that he played flute in high school. Other jokes and small easter eggs throughout the film are great reminders that buried under a mattress of bad acting and poor production quality is a film that’s trying its absolute hardest to be an entertaining and heartfelt movie.

Legend of the White Dragon clearly failed to launch a new franchise, but perhaps that’s okay.

In fact, Legend of the White Dragon is at its best when it leans into that humor. This is mostly because it finds its strength when it stops trying to be the Power Rangers. When Erik, Connor, and Iris are working on restoring power to the Dragon Crystal and just having fun, it’s easy to just be in the moment and enjoy the chemistry happening on screen.

Then there’s Jai Katua. Yes, he’s absolutely insufferable, but there’s an important message about how revenge can consume an individual. While Jai’s arc ends up being just a bit on-the-nose with that message, it still resonates as a cautionary tale to anyone willing to listen.

Legend of the White Dragon clearly failed to launch a new franchise, but perhaps that’s okay. Maybe the better thing it accomplished was a farewell for Jason David Frank to his fans. Clearly, this film isn’t trying to win any awards but rather tap into the goodwill and nostalgia of the 90s kids that adopted Tommy Oliver as a hero. When Legends of the White Dragon stops worrying about being an adult, edgy spiritual successor to The Power Rangers and leans into those humorous, intimate moments, it finds its voice and creates pure magic.

Legend of the White Dragon is now playing in select theaters.