Power Rangers Designer Explains How They Created Rita Repulsa’s Costume

It turns out bringing a villain to the big screen can be an arduous process, and that is certainly the case for Power Rangers villainess Rita Repulsa.

The film redesigned all of the Rangers and their Zords, but Repulsa and Goldar probably received the heaviest changes. Rita’s costume was the project of designer Kelli Jones (Sons of Anarchy), and as she told SyFy Wire, the suit did not start off as the bold green seen in theaters.

“I did Rita start to finish and as her character evolved. I did a bunch of illustrations that had her in a black outfit. but I didn’t want her to be too Underworld. So I did a bunch of variations for her then, making her dark green.”

Repulsa is played by the talented Elizabeth Banks in the film, who opposite of her character turned out to be a dream to work with. That’s a good thing too because the process wasn’t exactly comfortable.

“I got really lucky with Elizabeth. I had already done the illustrations with my illustrator before knowing that she for sure was signing on to the movie. I met her at Legacy, who was going to build the green costume” said Jones. “I made the black costume with the rope and the tarp up in Vancouver. So it was really her coming in and showing her the illustrations and explaining the first variation where she’s tied up in ropes to the green variation. How lucky were we that she was like, “Cool.” She just wanted to make sure certain things were covered, but she was super open to it.”

It would be some time before Banks actually got to see her real costume, and there wasn’t time to get a second one made if it fell through.

“The green costume especially takes 10 to 12 weeks to make, and by the time she does her main fitting, it’s a week before she has to start shooting — so it has to work. But she does full body scans, so they had her sizes down to the millimeter. It was formed to her and held together by this really strong nylon out of France. We couldn’t have asked for a cooler actress for those costumes.”

As for the actual costume, you might be surprised to know that she’s completely covered in the suit, despite appearances to the contrary.

“Some of it is just molded rubber. We were going to use some neoprene, but that wasn’t working. We tried some silicone, but that wasn’t working either. A lot of it is molded rubber and then make the molds of it, so it looks like armor but is actually bendable” revealed Jones. “It’s one full suit that comes up to her neck. Even though it looks sheer in the front, that’s the nylon holding up the breastplates and holding them together. It takes a hell of a long time to get into the one she puts on, because it’s so tight and specific to her body. Even the shoes, we molded pieces over shoes that we got at Zappos. We molded boots over the shoes.”

As for what she’s most proud of, Jones said “Every little piece of Rita’s costume, down to her nails. I looked up some avant-garde work online and I saw this crazy nail installation. I thought it would be cool on her hands. And then the crazy helmet that sort of grows out of her head.”

Power Rangers currently holds a 73.44 on ComicBook.com’s composite ranking. It’s currently on Blu-ray and DVD.