- Joined
- Jun 17, 2006
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- #41
I saw the movie yesterday and I really enjoyed it.
I really liked the Rhyme City setting. Seeing Pokemon everywhere just made the setting more realistic and fleshed out. It does look and feel like a city where people and Pokemon can live together in harmony. Not allowing Pokemon battles or people to catch Pokemon kind of worked with that too. Admittedly, seeing cave drawings hand Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics with Pokemon was kind of hilarious to me, but it does establish that Pokemon have been in this world basically from the start and they just roll in it. Most of the Pokemon designs work pretty well in CGI. Even Charizard looked better than I expected. I think that the Pokemon with fur liked Pikachu looked the best, although Psyduck and other Pokemon with feathers looked pretty good. I do kind of wish that there was a bit more variety in which Pokemon were featured here. I can understand why they mostly focused on first generation Pokemon for marketing towards a more general audience, but a part of me is kind of disappointed that we didn't get a CGI Lucario, Popplio or Cyndaquil at the same time. It doesn't bring the movie down by only having a short amount of Pokemon. It was probably a better idea to go that route in terms of their production and just testing the waters on how CGI Pokemon look like, but it's more of a problem I have as a long time fan than I would if I was more of a casual Pokemon fan.
I really liked the relationship between Tim and Pikachu. It grows pretty naturally over the course of the movie and it was much more emotional than I expected it to be. I thought it would be more of a comedy given the trailers and while there are still plenty of funny moments, I wasn't expecting as many emotional scenes with Tim dealing with his father and bonding with Pikachu. It was a nice surprise all things considered. I think some of my favorite moments were about Tim regretting his decision to not give his father a chance and trying to save Pikachu after it got hurt. Those were some of the most emotional moments of the movie and they felt so genuine and earned. A lot of people have already praised Ryan Reynolds' performance as Detective Pikachu and he does have a lot of fun with the role. I kind of wish that the trailers didn't show as much of his scenes in a way because I had already seen them multiple times before the movie even started. They were still funny, but I think that they lost a bit of their punch because they were featured so heavily in the promos and trailers for the movie.
I thought that the overall storyline was pretty engaging. While there weren't a lot of suspects to choose from with the actual villain, I was still caught off guard with the reveal. I kept going back and forth on who the villain actually could be for awhile and the twist with the Ditto was especially surprising. I was fine with how Mewtwo was used. It was imposing and mysterious, but ultimately a victim of the movie's villain rather than the true mastermind too. I was a bit confused on how it apparently already has existed for twenty years, but seemingly wasn't more widely known in spite of that. Part of that probably also comes from how they make direct references to the anime's first theme song, which gave me the impression that it could exist within this universe too. It's more likely that it was just a reference, which is still pretty neat. I liked how many nods there were to different parts of the franchise like the cards, anime and main series games. It really gave the impression that the people involved cared about the franchise as a whole and wanted to throw some neat Easter Eggs for longtime fans to pick up on.
The climax was surprisingly intense. I liked seeing Pikachu's attacks and as I said before, that Ditto twist was a huge surprise. It was also surprisingly brutal considering what it was trying to do. The ending twist with Detective Pikachu being Tim's father was spoiled to me shortly before I saw the movie, although I might have figured it out during the climax anyway. Fortunately, that didn't really have a negative impact on the ending for me. Having Tim decide to stay with his father after everything they went through together was an emotionally touching and satisfying way to end the movie. Plus, actually seeing Ryan Reynolds during the last scene was pretty neat. It was rather sweet that Tim could reconnect with his father through his bond with Pikachu.
It did feel like the movie was a bit too slow paced at times, but I'm almost positive that the amount of trailers I watched prior to it contributed heavily to that issue. I had already seen most of these trailers online, so watching them again in a theater just felt like padding. I still can't emotionally handle dog movies if my reaction to the trailer for A Dog's Journey was any indication. I did wonder if they were going to play the Sonic trailer in front of this movie and they did. The ridiculousness of seeing that trailer right before this one was pretty hilarious though. I wasn't a huge fan of Lucy. I don't know if she could be written out of the story altogether, but she wasn't particularly interesting or compelling, despite her desire to become a more respected reporter. She does well for the role she has in the movie, but I can see why she wasn't really focused on during the promotion for the movie compared to the other leads. The romance between her and Tim also felt pretty forced. It fortunately wasn't focused on heavily during the movie. The main relationship is between Tim and Pikachu, but trying to force in a romance angle between them just felt so flat for me. They just don't have much chemistry to make Tim's comment about how he finds Lucy attractive believable. It just felt tagged on as the obligatory main male and female leads developing feelings for each other. It would have been more of a problem if the movie focused on that more, but it luckily didn't. Her Psyduck was pretty cool and funny though.
Overall, it was a pretty fun and solid movie. I remember thinking that this movie would be stuck in development for years and I didn't believe it was actually going to happen until the first trailer dropped. After seeing it, I'm glad that they did make it and I think it was pretty smart to adapt a side game instead of one of the main series games or the anime. As cool as it would have been to see Pokemon battling more often in the movie, I think having a pretty simple story to work with and showing just how people and Pokemon can live together works in its favor. It basically gives the creative team a chance to tip their toes into the franchise, seeing how to make CGI Pokemon designs work and potentially use this movie as a building block for any possible future movies. I also kind of appreciate that the movie feels pretty self-contained or at least doesn't leave a lot of room for continuations. In an age where studios are trying to create their own cinematic universes, trying to do that right off the gate could have been more of an issue for this movie. I know that there are rumors of a sequel being in development, but I don't know how that will work given this movie's ending. I can definitely see them having more movies set within this universe, but I don't know about featuring these characters again. It's a fun movie for long time Pokemon fans, as well as for a more general audience, so I think it's worth watching in theaters.
I really liked the relationship between Tim and Pikachu. It grows pretty naturally over the course of the movie and it was much more emotional than I expected it to be. I thought it would be more of a comedy given the trailers and while there are still plenty of funny moments, I wasn't expecting as many emotional scenes with Tim dealing with his father and bonding with Pikachu. It was a nice surprise all things considered. I think some of my favorite moments were about Tim regretting his decision to not give his father a chance and trying to save Pikachu after it got hurt. Those were some of the most emotional moments of the movie and they felt so genuine and earned. A lot of people have already praised Ryan Reynolds' performance as Detective Pikachu and he does have a lot of fun with the role. I kind of wish that the trailers didn't show as much of his scenes in a way because I had already seen them multiple times before the movie even started. They were still funny, but I think that they lost a bit of their punch because they were featured so heavily in the promos and trailers for the movie.
I thought that the overall storyline was pretty engaging. While there weren't a lot of suspects to choose from with the actual villain, I was still caught off guard with the reveal. I kept going back and forth on who the villain actually could be for awhile and the twist with the Ditto was especially surprising. I was fine with how Mewtwo was used. It was imposing and mysterious, but ultimately a victim of the movie's villain rather than the true mastermind too. I was a bit confused on how it apparently already has existed for twenty years, but seemingly wasn't more widely known in spite of that. Part of that probably also comes from how they make direct references to the anime's first theme song, which gave me the impression that it could exist within this universe too. It's more likely that it was just a reference, which is still pretty neat. I liked how many nods there were to different parts of the franchise like the cards, anime and main series games. It really gave the impression that the people involved cared about the franchise as a whole and wanted to throw some neat Easter Eggs for longtime fans to pick up on.
The climax was surprisingly intense. I liked seeing Pikachu's attacks and as I said before, that Ditto twist was a huge surprise. It was also surprisingly brutal considering what it was trying to do. The ending twist with Detective Pikachu being Tim's father was spoiled to me shortly before I saw the movie, although I might have figured it out during the climax anyway. Fortunately, that didn't really have a negative impact on the ending for me. Having Tim decide to stay with his father after everything they went through together was an emotionally touching and satisfying way to end the movie. Plus, actually seeing Ryan Reynolds during the last scene was pretty neat. It was rather sweet that Tim could reconnect with his father through his bond with Pikachu.
It did feel like the movie was a bit too slow paced at times, but I'm almost positive that the amount of trailers I watched prior to it contributed heavily to that issue. I had already seen most of these trailers online, so watching them again in a theater just felt like padding. I still can't emotionally handle dog movies if my reaction to the trailer for A Dog's Journey was any indication. I did wonder if they were going to play the Sonic trailer in front of this movie and they did. The ridiculousness of seeing that trailer right before this one was pretty hilarious though. I wasn't a huge fan of Lucy. I don't know if she could be written out of the story altogether, but she wasn't particularly interesting or compelling, despite her desire to become a more respected reporter. She does well for the role she has in the movie, but I can see why she wasn't really focused on during the promotion for the movie compared to the other leads. The romance between her and Tim also felt pretty forced. It fortunately wasn't focused on heavily during the movie. The main relationship is between Tim and Pikachu, but trying to force in a romance angle between them just felt so flat for me. They just don't have much chemistry to make Tim's comment about how he finds Lucy attractive believable. It just felt tagged on as the obligatory main male and female leads developing feelings for each other. It would have been more of a problem if the movie focused on that more, but it luckily didn't. Her Psyduck was pretty cool and funny though.
Overall, it was a pretty fun and solid movie. I remember thinking that this movie would be stuck in development for years and I didn't believe it was actually going to happen until the first trailer dropped. After seeing it, I'm glad that they did make it and I think it was pretty smart to adapt a side game instead of one of the main series games or the anime. As cool as it would have been to see Pokemon battling more often in the movie, I think having a pretty simple story to work with and showing just how people and Pokemon can live together works in its favor. It basically gives the creative team a chance to tip their toes into the franchise, seeing how to make CGI Pokemon designs work and potentially use this movie as a building block for any possible future movies. I also kind of appreciate that the movie feels pretty self-contained or at least doesn't leave a lot of room for continuations. In an age where studios are trying to create their own cinematic universes, trying to do that right off the gate could have been more of an issue for this movie. I know that there are rumors of a sequel being in development, but I don't know how that will work given this movie's ending. I can definitely see them having more movies set within this universe, but I don't know about featuring these characters again. It's a fun movie for long time Pokemon fans, as well as for a more general audience, so I think it's worth watching in theaters.
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