The Chasm

Hello again, MantaChasm! I’m back and wanted to take a short post to discuss something very exciting to me: Detective Pikachu! Now I know what you’ll say, ah it’s a kid’s movie or it couldn’t be that good, and you would be correct! Sort of. So let’s get into it!

Detective Pikachu is a film based off of a game of the same name, a non-canon RPG where you play as the human character Tim Goodman. I will go on the record right now that I have NOT played this game: I’ve been a strong player of the core games since Pokemon Yellow but I don’t have a strong affinity for non-core games. In my opinion they always seem to fall flat when incorporating Pokemon themes in different ways, something about abandoning the turn-based battling, capturing and training aspects that just rubs me the wrong way and feels like the game is lacking. But I digress; the plot is weird (a Pikachu that can speak to a human and is a detective? Hmm…) but when I saw the first trailer for this movie and heard Ryan Reynolds’ voice as the titular character I have to admit: I was curious. Not to mention the visuals… Seeing that trailer was our first look at Hollywood’s rendering of CGI Pokemon and I was not disappointed.

And as more trailers were released I grew more excited: was this going to be the first live-action Pokemon movie and not be garbage? We’d seen several anime adaptations in recent years crash and burn HARD, CG that made you wince, and careless directors who cared only about “their vision” of the media and not the years of established canon and lore. Unfortunately I was unable to see it when it was released, but most of what I heard was good, and those reviews made my itch grow. When my wife brought the DVD home as a surprise I was overjoyed, finally I could watch it and see for myself.

So, as the movie started and we opened on a lab scene I was intrigued: we’ve seen many labs come and go in the Pokemon games and they usually bring some good story into the mix. We pan across and see Mewtwo (AHA, Cinnabar Island’s lab, I thought) and almost immediately I’m having flashbacks to the very first Pokemon movie Mewtwo Strikes Back. There’s a problem with the containment… I start to grin… Mewtwo wants to escape and audibly says “They’re outside”… a direct quote from the first film and I’m getting giddy. He breaks free, creating a near identical wave of devastation to the first movie. And as he burst out of the flaming wreckage I knew: this was going to be a good movie.

And how right I was! Now overall the plot was definitely aimed at the pre-teen age group. I’m not going to compare it to the game’s plot because as I mentioned before I haven’t played it, but as a Detective Pikachu movie in a vacuum it was very much the “unassuming hero reluctantly agrees to pursue a goal, has a struggle along the way, stumbles into evil organization’s plot, foils said plot in a creative way that results in a happy ending” story line. Nothing against it, just explaining. Slightly cheesy comedy–that’s expected–but good acting overall in my opinion. Ryan Reynolds stole the show for me as the voice of Pikachu, very well done as he’s an excellent voice actor in general. Honestly, I had to look up the human character’s names for this write-up because I really didn’t care to remember them…

But onto the visuals. Whew, talk about exceeding expectations! I come from a time when Pokemon were believable biologically: a Charmander was a reptilian creature that ate, slept, breathed and had to keep the flame on its tail lit to survive (some sort of metabolic catalyst, I’d assume). They had slightly cartoonish attributes because that was the medium they were created for, but they could still be expected to exist in real life. Nowadays Pokemon consists of floating ice cream cones and keychains, creatures that look more at home in an episode of Yokai Watch! than in Pokemon where the creatures MADE SENSE. And to be honest, Detective Pikachu did a great job of picking the monsters that would look best in this render, none of the ridiculous recent Pokemon but plenty of Generation 1 through 4. I actually have to hand it to the art department, you all made me realize something I’d never really thought about: Gyarados is a FISH. And as a fish they would have fish-like features: slimy scales, pointy cartilage spines and a gasping mouth with floppy lips. When the Gyarados came on screen and I could see a lone spotlight filtering through the thin skin around the lips on its lower jaw I was blown away. Gyarados doesn’t have a nearly-perpetually open jaw like all of their game or art renders imply, but rather it gasps its mouth open and closed like a fish gasping for air out of water. Bravo, graphic designers, bravo.

One more thing that I absolutely have to give a shout out to was continuity of the lore. At no point did Detective Pikachu try to rewrite Pokemon history or alter the lore to better fit its needs. In fact (and this is very crucial in my opinion) they actually did a better job of this than the Pokemon anime itself! A few years ago there was a Pokemon movie called Mewtwo and Genesect or something: all I remember is that it starred Mewtwo and Genesect (go figure). It was the big reveal of Mega Evolutions and Genesect’s first debut in the animated series, and the Mewtwo in the film was explicitly called out as NOT being the same Mewtwo from the original movie. Whoa, hold on: NOT the same one? How is that? Mewtwo is an artificially created Pokemon by the lab in Cinnabar, specifically by Mr. Fuji and possibly Blaine (if you want to drizzle some Pokemon Special on this). If the lab was completely destroyed and all of the research and supplies with it, and Mr. Fuji seems completely reformed (not going to be crafting any new super Pokemon anytime soon) then how could another Mewtwo just show up on the scene? Ah, here’s the answer… it can’t, and no amount of retconning can fix that in my opinion. Writing in another one just so you can have a plot element is lazy writing, and I personally hold that against the creative team at Pokemon.

So how did Detective Pikachu do this better? Well, I’ll tell you: that lab Mewtwo was in in the beginning scene? NOT where he was created. In fact, the movie goes to great length to make it VERY CLEAR that Mewtwo was created in the Kanto region and that it was captured and contained in that lab for study. It’s never insinuated that there is more than one Mewtwo, and that’s what makes this particular one so important. After all, if you could just cook up a new one whenever you wanted why go through all those lengths to find and capture one at its strongest? Beats me, and if we’re being honest here it’s Mewtwo’s uniqueness that makes it such a tragic and special character. Seems like a waste to go through all of the events of Mewtwo Strikes Back to just say “oh, and by the way there are more out there so the world is still probably doomed anyway…” But one more fun fact before I get off my soapbox: when the “Evil Organization” in Detective Pikachu recaptures Mewtwo onscreen it’s done in a near-identical fashion to how Giovanni recaptures Mewtwo in the Pokemon film Mewtwo Returns. Coincidence? I think not!

Overall, I would very much recommend this movie to old-time fans of the Pokemon series, the ones who grew up with the franchise in its early years and really don’t follow it much anymore due to it losing the magic it originally had. This movie brings a little of that back to us, and does it in a feature length Hollywood film at that! I was very impressed at the care they went through to make it a Pokemon movie, and not someone’s “artistic vision” of what Pokemon is after its described to them. And who knows, maybe in the coming years we’ll get a little more thrown our way. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a preview for Red: A Pokemon Story…