About the Zoroark movie teaser from 2010...

[King Robert]

Anyone else think that the teaser, that featured Ho-Oh and Lugia, was once meant to tie into a possible HG/SS movie until they changed it to feature Zoroark?

 

[Lluksonak]

Zoroark was going to transform to Lugia and Ho-oh, but I dunno why they scrapped that idea, maybe the 3 legendary beasts were enough.

 

[Dogasu]

I guarantee you the teaser was more "we don't have any useable footage ready at the moment so let's just whip up a quick shot of Hou'ou and Lugia." HGSS was coming out in like two months and so it made since that they'd want to advertise them then.

Zoroark was going to transform to Lugia and Ho-oh

There's been nothing released that even suggests that this was the case.

 

[Lluksonak]

I guarantee you the teaser was more "we don't have any useable footage ready at the moment so let's just whip up a quick shot of Hou'ou and Lugia." HGSS was coming out in like two months and so it made since that they'd want to advertise them then.

Zoroark was going to transform to Lugia and Ho-oh

There's been nothing released that even suggests that this was the case.

Oh, I must've misread that one trivia thing on the movie's wiki page, my bad.

 

[Silktree]

HGSS was coming out in like two months and so it made since that they'd want to advertise them then.

A teaser featuring Celebi and/or the legendary beasts would have still promoted HGSS. None of the other movie teasers were so misleading.

It's entirely possible that the original plan involved Lugia and Ho-Oh instead of the beast trio. I'd imagine that it was always the plan to use Celebi for the main distribution.

 

[Robo-Floatzel]

I think it was nothing more than a ploy to sell HG/SS and wasn't a preview for the actual movie. If could have been that, or it could have been because Gen 5 was coming out the following year that the original plans were to have Movie 13 be about Lugia and Ho-oh, featuring all the Johto legendaries as a tribute to Gen 2 and the recent release of HG/SS; but then some last-minute script changes came sometime before the Japanese release of HG/SS to promote the then upcoming BW1.

I think in the original script that featured the G/S mascots that Zoroark was a relatively minor character in the same vein as Munchlax in Movie 7, but then they realized "Hey, Zoroark looks a lot like Lucario, he had his own movie, and Gen 5 is coming out in a few months, so let's make the entire movie about him!" and Zoroark's role was expanded while Lugia and Ho-oh were eventually phased out of the movie entirely.

The beasts and Celebi were the only things that remained of the original script, and while just having Celebi and the beasts would still promote HG/SS, I feel as this is not the case. We may never know the real answer as to why the teaser was drastically different from the actual film, but then again, the teaser at the end of Movie 10 had Regigigas coming out of a flower field, and while he was in Movie 11, his role was relatively minor, so it's obvious that this was the same situation.

 

[Silktree]

the teaser at the end of Movie 10 had Regigigas coming out of a flower field, and while he was in Movie 11, his role was relatively minor, so it's obvious that this was the same situation.

But it isn't the same situation, seeing as Regigigas did appear in the movie. Its role wasn't that negligible and the teaser didn't necessarily indicate that it would be the star.

I think in the original script that featured the G/S mascots that Zoroark was a relatively minor character in the same vein as Munchlax in Movie 7, but then they realized "Hey, Zoroark looks a lot like Lucario, he had his own movie, and Gen 5 is coming out in a few months, so let's make the entire movie about him!" and Zoroark's role was expanded while Lugia and Ho-oh were eventually phased out of the movie entirely.

A movie featuring six legendaries would have been too much (Movie 12 technically featured five legendaries, but Heatran certainly wasn't treated as one and the Creation trio had already appeared in recent movies). But I think that a movie featuring Lugia, Ho-Oh, Celebi and Zoroark (not Zorua) could have worked. Alternatively, they could have used Zorua as a Munchlax-like Pokémon, but I can understand why they wanted a Generation V Pokémon to be the star.

 

[Dogasu]

If could have been that, or it could have been because Gen 5 was coming out the following year that the original plans were to have Movie 13 be about Lugia and Ho-oh, featuring all the Johto legendaries as a tribute to Gen 2 and the recent release of HG/SS; but then some last-minute script changes came sometime before the Japanese release of HG/SS to promote the then upcoming BW1.

No. The decision about who to feature in the movie would have been made well before the Arceus film came out. OLM isn't kept so out of the loop that they wouldn't have known something as basic as "there's going to be a new Generation starting a few months after next year's movie"; they absolutely knew that Lugia and Hou'ou weren't going to be in the final movie when they made that teaser.

Hou'ou and Lugia were put in the teaser because they're the version mascots of a set of games set to come out in two months. That's it.

People really need to stop over-analyzing these meaningless teasers.

 

[Silktree]

OLM isn't kept so out of the loop that they wouldn't have known something as basic as "there's going to be a new Generation starting a few months after next year's movie"; they absolutely knew that Lugia and Hou'ou weren't going to be in the final movie when they made that teaser.

You do realize that promoting a new generation didn't mean that Lugia and Ho-Oh couldn't be included, right? Celebi and the legendary beasts were in the movie. Just because they knew in advance about Generation V doesn't mean that they never entertained the idea of incorporating the HGSS mascots. A year is a long time.

Hou'ou and Lugia were put in the teaser because they're the version mascots of a set of games set to come out in two months. That's it.

That could very well be right, but it isn't as obvious as you're making it out to be.