Fan films have become huge business and have even paved the way to potential opportunities in Hollywood. Dan Trachtenberg directed "Portal: No Escape," a fan film based on the "Portal" video game series, and the short has been viewed more than 15 million times on YouTube. Trachtenberg was also attached to the "Y: The Last Man" adaptation before it was scrapped. So when "Power/Rangers" appeared on YouTube on Tuesday, people were surprised at the familiar faces behind the project. James Van Der Beek ("Dawson's Creek" and "Varsity Blues") and Katee Sackhoff ("Battlestar Galactica" and "Oculus") star in the short film directed by Joseph Kahn ("Torque" and "Detention"), but there's a catch to the dark and gritty "Power/Rangers."

The thing is, Kahn hates fan films -- works made by fans of a film or franchise, not the original's creators or copyright holders -- and the whole idea of "dark and gritty." In an interview with HitFix, he explained how "Power/Rangers" was developed and his intentions behind it. "I'm not really into fan films at all. Two of the worst types of filmmaking out there that are not credible to filmmakers … one is porn and the other is fan films," Kahn said. The director also called the whole idea to reboot a franchise into something serious and stylistically similar to Christopher Nolan's "Batman" trilogy is a "cliche." For Kahn, "Power/Rangers" is meant to push the whole concept of a serious and violent reboot as far as possible.

The uncensored version of "Power/Rangers" has been pulled from Vimeo due to a take-down notice from the copyright owners. Kahn has taken to Twitter to explain why his short film is protected as fair use. You can watch the producer of the project, Adi Shankar, share his thoughts -- with plenty of profanity -- on the "Power Rangers" bootleg below.