Your least favorite Pokémon movies

[Bismuth84]

I noticed there wasn't any thread for discussing what Pokémon movies people liked the least, so I decided to make my own. Here are my bottom 4:

1. Zoroark: Master of Illusions: Zorua does nothing but talk about his "meema" (words can't express how much I hate that word) and "being/becoming strong" while being disgustingly pseudocute and Kodai is such a generic, one-note villain that I couldn't bring myself to feel either way about him and his actions.
2. Giratina and the Sky Warrior: I don't hate it AS much as M13, but it was still pretty bad IMO, mostly due to Shaymin ("Gratitude Pokémon" my ass...).
3. Kyurem Vs. the Sword of Justice: FELT MORE LIKE A MULTI-EPISODE ARC THAN A MOVIE. KELDEO LEARNED NOTHING, LOST TWICE, AND YET THE SWORDS STILL LET HIM IN. WHATEVER THAT STUPID SPINNING BIRD KICK THING KELDEO DID IN HIS FIRST FIGHT WITH KYUREM WAS. "BOX LUNCH CONNOISSEUR." VIC "YOU DIDN'T BUY MY CHRISTIAN MUSIC CDS BECAUSE YOU'RE JEWISH, SO I'M GOING TO MAKE A COMMENT ABOUT 'FIXING' YOUR JUDAISM" MIGNOGNA DOING AN ANNOYING, WHINY VOICE FOR KELDEO. IRIS OF ALL PEOPLE PILOTING A BLIMP TAKEN FROM A MUSEUM AND NOT FAILING MISERABLY. "SWORD" NO LONGER SOUNDED LIKE A WORD BY THE TIME THE MOVIE WAS OVER. WORST. POKÉMON. MOVIE. EVER. END. OF. STORY.
4. Genesect and the Legend Awakened: I'm a big fan of sci-fi themed Pokémon, so this movie should be right up my alley, right? Wrong. I don't mind the fact that this movie's Mewtwo is different, but what they did to Genesect is just... no. You wouldn't think a movie where a psychic mutant supersoldier and an army of prehistoric cyborg insects that can shoot elemental lasers fight each other in a big city would be anything but a dumb, fun 90-minute smashfest, but it somehow ended up EVEN MORE SACCHARINE IN PARTS THAN THE ZORUA MOVIE! HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?! I feel like this movie should have been a lot more like Short Circuit: something about a robot learning to be itself while still kicking major ass. And the voices were just terrible, especially considering we figured out the perfect voice for these guys a long time ago.

What are your least favorites?

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

BW movies felt disappointing to me. It's like they lack something. Last "Tarzan" movie was a good movie overall, but I don't care much about it.

 

[Bismuth84]

BW movies felt disappointing to me. It's like they lack something. Last "Tarzan" movie was a good movie overall, but I don't care much about it.

BW as a whole was disappointing. Every dumb decision in the series gives me a mental image of a bunch of bored people in a boardroom sitting around like, "Eh. Whatever works, I guess..."

 

[cricketlaxwolvesbandy]

Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution. Why?
Other than that then the Victini movie and Celebi movies which were boring.

 

[Ricbolog]

The Hoopa one

 

[P_S_B]

The Manaphy movie. I haven't seen it in a long time so it might not be as terrible as I remember, but from what I remember it was long and boring aside from the May being a mother stuff which was good.

Also the Hoopa movie which was just awful. It was OK up until the kaiju battle started, but then it went to shit with the main guest cast getting shoved into the background while stuff blew up. Evil Ash was literally trailer clickbait, went nowhere and could have been cut with absolutely zero effect on the film. The only reason it's not worse than Manaphy is that it is much shorter.

Victini movies were not great and they completely wasted the concept of dual movies, but they're just boring rather than offensively terrible and at least Victini is successful at being cute.

 

[Sai]

The Manaphy movie. I haven't seen it in a long time so it might not be as terrible as I remember, but from what I remember it was long and boring aside from the May being a mother stuff which was good.

Jackie the Ranger and the TR heart swap stuff didn't add much either. I also feel like the writers originally intended May to be the star of the movie but then backtracked on it and made Ash the hero at the end. May is seemingly the only female companion of the anime regulated to a background character in her own movie. The writers really didn't care for her much, did they?

I haven't watched any of the BW movies but the Volcanion one also put me to sleep. I think it was the failure of that movie that made them go the AU route going forward.

 

[UxieLover1994]

We've had movies where plot elements (like Mega Evolution) contradict how they're portrayed in the games. Half of the villains are very generic and sometimes an expy of a Disney villain. The story is often of the black-and-white morality, with Lawful Good heroes and Chaotic Evil villains. The world or even universe is always in danger, and Ash must always be the chosen one to save it. The featured Pokémon either contracts their canon portrayals (Shaymin), are played for oversaccharine (Manaphy, Zorua, Victini), or are just plain annoying (Hoopa). Even the worst Disney DTV sequels can sometimes be better than a Pokémon anime film.

I've listed some films that really stand out as bad.

• M05's English dub implied a "never a self-made woman" moral by having Annie and Oakley be Team Rocket members working for Giovanni, along with their goal being the old "take over the world" supervillain goal commonly found in children's media, along with the new backstory being very generic and cliché.
• M12. Never mind that it's badly outdated thanks to PLA, but this film hasn't aged well in other means. They, especially Sheena, disobeyed the standard "don't let anyone know you're from another timeline/world" right away, and potentially change Hisui/Sinnoh's past in drastic measures and risk a paradox. Also, telling the first person you see is a bad idea, since he could be the reason why Arecus is angry in the first place. When everyone started to vanish, they acted like the death of Arceus would mean the universe would be destroyed, even though Marcus said it would only alter time so they had no reason to show up, which would've erased them after Arceus was saved regardless. And yeah, Pichu did nothing but be cute and steal a key.
• M14. Two versions asides, it's easy to tell this was written as a different, more family-friendly film unrelated to Pokémon with Dred Grangil as the protagonist who's conflicted in his mother's dreams of restoring their ancestral homeland. Someone probably decided it would work as a good Pokémon film, and it got hastily edited to make Ash the protagonist instead of Grangil/Damon and make it more kid-friendly, leading to its final, unpolished version.
• M18. Plot Hole: The Movie. That is all.

 

[darksteel6]

Jackie the Ranger and the TR heart swap stuff didn't add much either. I also feel like the writers originally intended May to be the star of the movie but then backtracked on it and made Ash the hero at the end. May is seemingly the only female companion of the anime regulated to a background character in her own movie. The writers really didn't care for her much, did they?

I haven't watched any of the BW movies but the Volcanion one also put me to sleep. I think it was the failure of that movie that made them go the AU route going forward.

Yup Pokemon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea was one giant disappointment for me as well. After the great Lucario and the Mystery of Mew being a compelling and intense film and a great swan song for the 4Kids dub, I was proceeding with the TCPI dub with great trepidation and man oh man as their first dubbed film this did not give me a good impression of them at all. Pretty meh voice-acting over-all and the film itself was quite boring and poorly paced, with the overall story not engaging me very much. The most memorable thing about it was the song during the end credits("Together We'll Make a Promise") but other then that it was a real letdown.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

M18. Plot Hole: The Movie. That is all

What plot hole?

 

[ripplefieldz]

oh god i hated the manaphy movie SO much, which sucks because i'm a huge fan of pokemon ranger. i think the main issues i have with it come down to 1. manaphy is just straight up an actual infant which got super grating, and 2. they really did force this like, 10 year old girl into a motherly role and then not even let her keep it, huh? this kinda ties into point 1 too cause like every other egg pokemon as far as i know does not do this, i think animeverse nebby is the only other case of something like this happening and it was annoying there too. anyway may deserved so much better than this good god.

for a couple others, mewtwo strikes back evolution is one of the ugliest things i've ever laid eyes on, i actually kinda liked i choose you aside from the obvious point of how hard they ditched alola until it started to fall apart at the climax, and this last one is petty but i want to like the lucario movie but the fact that there's just a tree that is actually a rock with like, white blood cells or whatever and it kills the main cast and NOBODY ever acknowledges that this is absolutely not right even for the pokemon world. anyway yeah the hoopa movie was lame, arceus was an absolute bastard in it's movie + everyone fading away made zero sense for the reasons mentioned, and damon really should have been in the right, genuinely the whole dragon force plot point pisses me off so much because like. remember when the zoroark movie said "yeah, all the plant life here died but people were able to restore it and help it flourish"? the writers sure didn't! i think the rest of the movie was fine enough though, plus it's ash-almost-dies part def stuck with me the most

anyway, i actually really like some of the movies that have been brought up. keldeo i admit is more of a dumb fun movie for me, it's so absolutely stupid (shoutout to dedicated box lunch scene) and i love it dearly. also the swords of justice are just cool i think. zoroark and volcanion are probably up there as my favorites, genesect and the legend awakened was also one i really liked, and this one hasn't actually been brought up yet but diancie and the cocoon of destruction also falls a bit into the dumb fun category albeit more because it's just fun for the most part (i say for the most part since. y'know. the whole "everyone dies" bit at the end)

edit:

but it somehow ended up EVEN MORE SACCHARINE IN PARTS THAN THE ZORUA MOVIE! HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?!

so a group of prehistoric animals waking up in an unfamiliar world and trying to find their home, not knowing it isn't there anymore and kodai threatening to murder a baby are saccharine. riiiiiiight.

 

[UxieLover1994]

What plot hole?

Contradictions to games and even other movies. The second climax had some sort of DEM vortex that is explained away as "too many Legendary Pokemon" even though this is somewhat common, not to mention it could've been explained as a result of Shadow Hoopa's control over Dialga, Palkia, and/or Giratina. The same film also somewhat contradicts M12 by showing three of Arceus' plates being used in the past.

To be honest, at the time, I may have mixed "plot hole" up with "a**pull", since the latter usually points to unexpected and nonsensical plot twists that are unjustified, which M18 is very much guilty of.

so a group of prehistoric animals waking up in an unfamiliar world and trying to find their home, not knowing it isn't there anymore and kodai threatening to murder a baby are saccharine. riiiiiiight.

With M13, we spend more of the movie focused on Zorua instead of Zoroark, so... yeah. Sometimes, you need a despicable villain to balance out saccharine, or vise versa (just look at Frozen, for example. We get a lovable saccharine character in Olaf, and a nasty, sociopathic monster in Prince Hans)

 

[Soniman]

I Choose You is a cheap nostslgia pandering waste of time and I pretty much hate everything about it besides the gorgeous animation and end credits. Every single idea that went into this supposed 20th anniversary celebration was the wrong descion, I would've adored a movie focused around Ash's connection to Ho oh but it's not utilized well and Marshadow us shoved in at the climax because we NEED to market Gen 7 no matter how inappropriate it is. Gary, Misty and Brock are disposed of in this ANNIVERSARY MOVIE and replaced with boring uninteresting stand ins because we NEED to market Lucario and Piplup for the millionth time. Pikachu talking was just stupid, Ash dying was forced drama just bad bad bad. Utterly disappointed this was our 20th anniversary celebration

 

[Sai]

I Choose You is a cheap nostslgia pandering waste of time and I pretty much hate everything about it besides the gorgeous animation and end credits. Every single idea that went into this supposed 20th anniversary celebration was the wrong descion, I would've adored a movie focused around Ash's connection to Ho oh but it's not utilized well and Marshadow us shoved in at the climax because we NEED to market Gen 7 no matter how inappropriate it is. Gary, Misty and Brock are disposed of in this ANNIVERSARY MOVIE and replaced with boring uninteresting stand ins because we NEED to market Lucario and Piplup for the millionth time. Pikachu talking was just stupid, Ash dying was forced drama just bad bad bad. Utterly disappointed this was our 20th anniversary celebration

I still find it strange Misty/Brock weren't in that movie but in literally the same year of 2017 they showed up in SM anyway.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I love I Choose You. It's easily one of my favorite Pokemon movies. I remember people being really upset over Misty and Brock not being in it and I can understand to a point. People really missed them and thought that the anniversary movie would be a great way to see them in a new adventure. However, I felt like the backlash was a bit much. As cool as it would have been to see them in a new movie, they would have most likely been in the background since nearly all of the movies are about Ash or only give Ash something important to do. I actually liked his friends in I Choose You too. They weren't amazing, but a part of me wishes that they could have been proper main characters from the show just to see more of their adventures. I thought that they had decent chemistry, especially for movie only characters, and some of the photos of their adventures together just felt charming to me. I always thought that they wanted to emphasize that this was set in a different universe from Ash's original first journey by giving him new friends to travel with, although they definitely wanted to plug more Piplup and Lucario merchandise too.

Besides all that, putting Misty and Brock in the movie wouldn't have really changed anything, at least as far as the storyline is concerned. Their appearances in SM also made the backlash felt kind of moot to me. I always thought that seeing what they've been doing since leaving the cast and seeing their progress was better than seeing AU versions of them in a movie where they'd most likely not really do much, if anything. The SM appearances allowed for them to be the main focus, something that they wouldn't have really gotten in I Choose You, and we got to see them in four episodes, which is way more than anyone would have expected. I'm not surprised people still don't like that they weren't featured in the movie, especially if you don't like it at all, but I just don't really see how the movie could have been drastically improved with Misty and Brock there instead.

 

[PaperSplash]

Destiny Deoxys. Don't get me wrong; the setting and premise is super interesting. I really wanted to like the movie, but the actual plot just dragged on for so long that it ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth, and didn't exactly make me eager to rewatch it.

 

[darksteel6]

Destiny Deoxys. Don't get me wrong; the setting and premise is super interesting. I really wanted to like the movie, but the actual plot just dragged on for so long that it ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth, and didn't exactly make me eager to rewatch it.

That's probably my favorite of the Pokemon films to be honest, for me the film just flew right by.

That Genesect film on the other hand not so much, I was excited for it based on the premise but I found that it dragged too much, I got restless while watching it to the point that I can barely even remember what happened in the film, though to be fair it has been years since i've seen it so perhaps i'll like it more with another viewing.

 

[cricketlaxwolvesbandy]

Destiny Deoxys. Don't get me wrong; the setting and premise is super interesting. I really wanted to like the movie, but the actual plot just dragged on for so long that it ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth, and didn't exactly make me eager to rewatch it.

This Side of Paradise though

 

[PaperSplash]

That's probably my favorite of the Pokemon films to be honest, for me the film just flew right by.

That Genesect film on the other hand not so much, I was excited for it based on the premise but I found that it dragged too much, I got restless while watching it to the point that I can barely even remember what happened in the film, though to be fair it has been years since i've seen it so perhaps i'll like it more with another viewing.

I actually didn't care much for the Genesect movie either. Like you said, it was pretty boring and forgettable. The only big standout scenes I can remember is Ash riding on the Douse Drive Genesect and him sending out Charizard to save Mewtwo and the Red Genesect from falling from space. And I mainly remember the Charizard part because it was one of its only memorable roles in BW.

This Side of Paradise though

This Side of Paradise is an exception. I'd replay that song any day but not the movie itself.

The Japanese ending theme is also nice in my opinion, even if it's quite sappy.

 

[darksteel6]

I actually didn't care much for the Genesect movie either. Like you said, it was pretty boring and forgettable. The only big standout scenes I can remember is Ash riding on the Douse Drive Genesect and him sending out Charizard to save Mewtwo and the Red Genesect from falling from space. And I mainly remember the Charizard part because it was one of its only memorable roles in BW.


This Side of Paradise is an exception. I'd replay that song any day but not the movie itself.

The Japanese ending theme is also nice in my opinion, even if it's quite sappy.

Same with "Together We'll Make a Promise", i'll happily listen to that song but i'm not looking forward to rewatching that Ranger movie.