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The moral message of Pokémon: The First Movie is about as light-footed as a hungry Snorlax, but that doesn’t dilute its power. “Tell me what are we fighting for,” the song goes, “we’ve got to end this war”. The theme is assisted by the rather on-the-nose Blessid Union of Souls track, “Brother, My Brother” that plays over the sequence. It’s the difference between a boxing match and a fight to the death.
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The series is built on “battles” between these creatures, so how can it preach love, tolerance, and peace? The answer comes in one character’s poignant insistence that “Pokémon aren’t meant to fight - not like this”. The genius of this Pokémon-vs-Pokémon scene in The First Movie is in how it addresses one of the key complaints made by Poké-skeptics about the franchise’s morality. He is also capable of speech, which makes him a valuable tool for storytellers looking to bridge the human-Pokémon divide, just as Team Rocket’s unique Meowth has always been. This makes him the rarest of commodities: a Pokémon with a clear narrative purpose, driving force and a character arc as he searches for his raison d’être. His character has always existed as a compelling midpoint on the spectrum between Pokémon and humanity, positioned as a creature whose explicit connection to people pushes him away from other Pokémon, while his human creators see him as nothing more than a science project. It’s no coincidence that Mewtwo pops up again as a main player in Detective Pikachu, the writers replicating the Pokémon’s back story of human experimentation. This triggers a grotesque sequence in which the Pokémon fight their doppelgängers as Mewtwo battles Mew - his own original form. When they get there, Mewtwo easily defeats their Pokémon using a set of clones he has created and he subsequently clones all of their Pokémon as well. A handful of trainers, including our hero Ash, are invited to battle the “world’s greatest Pokémon master”. Furious with humans for creating him as a mere experiment, and with the Pokémon who allow themselves to be used as pets/servants/competitive fighters by humans, Mewtwo lays a trap. The movie focuses on a nefarious plot hatched by the genetically engineered Pokémon Mewtwo. But Pokémon: The First Movie is a vicious exercise in emotional trauma - largely thanks to its final act.

The short film that precedes the feature, Pikachu’s Vacation, is vintage Pokémon and sets a larky tone that the movie almost immediately dispels.
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Like many young British Pokémon fans, I first experienced the film on home video, arriving in a garish yellow box with a free Mewtwo trading card. If the longevity and magnitude sounds surprising, ask a child of the late ’90s just how hard Pokémon worked on their emotions.įor a fresh-faced, adult generation, 1998’s Pokémon: The First Movie – or Pokémon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back for fans of extraneous subtitles – was a watershed moment in those feelings.

Now we have Detective Pikachu, the franchise’s first live-action adaptation.

Pokémon is estimated to be the highest grossing media franchise of all time, having made more money than Harry Potter and the Marvel Cinematic Universe put together thanks to a vast array of video games, trading cards, the long-running anime series, and billions of dollars in officially licensed merchandise.
