Revis­it­ing Poké­mon: The First Movie 20 years on

It’s now 20 years since Poké­mon: The First Movie was released out­side of Japan – and the film’s pro­duc­ers real­ly weren’t lying with that title. Since 1998 there have been 20 ani­ma­tion sequels, with a live-action spin-off, Detec­tive Pikachu, due out this year (fol­low­ing the box office bomb Poké­mon 5, they’ve been pri­mar­i­ly released direct-to-video)

The suc­cess of the orig­i­nal video games series is often attrib­uted to the inge­nious mar­ket­ing slo­gan ​‘Got­ta Catch ​’Em All’, but that alone would have pro­duced a pass­ing fad. Poké­mon has endured as a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non pri­mar­i­ly because it taps into uni­ver­sal themes, in addi­tion recog­nis­ing children’s innate inter­est in col­lect­ing: fran­chise cre­ator Satoshi Tajiri cites his child­hood hob­by of col­lect­ing insects as a key inspiration.

Equal­ly cru­cial is the way the games active­ly encour­aged play­ers to con­nect in the pre-inter­net era. Gam­ing in the ​’90s was gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered a soli­tary expe­ri­ence, but Poké­mon made it socia­ble, quench­ing gamers’ desire to unite and do bat­tle togeth­er. The appeal of Poké­mon Go, the aug­ment­ed real­i­ty mobile game released in 2016, was the inter­ac­tive, social expe­ri­ence it offered, prompt­ing users to get off the sofa and explore the out­side world. It engen­dered a strong sense of com­mu­ni­ty, and for a fleet­ing moment Poké­mon Go meet-up groups were all the rage.

So when Poké­mon: The First Movie arrived three years after the first game, many fans com­plained that the sto­ry­telling failed to match that of the games. Crit­ics dis­missed it as for­get­table non­sense – less a movie than a mar­ket­ing exer­cise. Rewatch­ing the film today, the mes­sage seems no less con­fus­ing. The premise, con­cern­ing a psy­chot­ic Poké­mon clone who wants to be a Poké­mon mas­ter, feels basic and dat­ed. But it’s the cen­tral theme of the film, that fight­ing is futile and immoral, which feels espe­cial­ly jarring.

Scenes in which the Poké­mon clones fight each oth­er are accom­pa­nied (at least in the US ver­sion) by a cheesy pop bal­lad where the singer asks, ​“What are we fight­ing for?” Well, you’re fight­ing because that’s pre­cise­ly what the whole fran­chise is based around. As char­ac­ters line up to lament how ​“fight­ing is wrong,” it comes across as point­less mawk­ish­ness. This is down­played in the orig­i­nal Japan­ese ver­sion, but tweaks made by US dis­trib­u­tors exac­er­bat­ed it for an inter­na­tion­al audience.

In fact, that’s not the only aspect the US dis­trib­u­tors altered to the film’s detri­ment. In Japan, Mewt­wo was giv­en a lengthy back­sto­ry where he befriends oth­er Poké­mon clones who are prompt­ly tak­en away by the sci­en­tists that made them, pro­vok­ing his vil­lain­ous ram­page. US dis­trib­u­tors wor­ried that view­ers wouldn’t want a sym­pa­thet­ic vil­lain, so scrapped it. In doing so, they lost a large part of that character’s moti­va­tion for wrong­do­ing. There was also con­cern that young view­ers wouldn’t want to wait 20 min­utes for their first glimpse of Pikachu, so a vignette called Pikachu’s Vaca­tion was shoe­horned onto the start, which does lit­tle more than pro­long the film’s run­ning time.

The film has anoth­er fatal flaw – it’s not only an adap­ta­tion of a game but a TV series. Sup­port­ing char­ac­ters that serve a pur­pose in the car­toon series don’t have much to con­tribute here, oth­er than sim­ply prop­ping up and agree­ing with the main char­ac­ter. Case in point: the vil­lains of the series, Team Rock­et, aren’t the vil­lains of the movie, and con­se­quent­ly their roles feel a bit tagged on. Ash’s pals Misty and Brock feel equal­ly superfluous.

Towards the end of the film, there’s a scene where lead char­ac­ter Ash gets caught in the cross­fire between spar­ring clones Mew and Mewt­wo, and is turned to stone. All the Poké­mon, espe­cial­ly Pikachu, are dis­traught by this – but for­tu­nate­ly their tears bring him back to life and all is well again, sta­tus quo restored. It’s a fair­ly inof­fen­sive moment which serves to high­light a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between sto­ry­telling in film and video games.

In games, death is not ​“game over”. You sim­ply respawn and begin again. Char­ac­ters don’t die, they expire or faint,only to be revived like vir­tu­al Lazarus­es moments lat­er. Char­ac­ters in film with this pow­er over mor­tal­i­ty are rare, as with­out death their actions have few con­se­quences. There’s no jeop­ardy, no per­il, and it often makes for a tedious sto­ry. Despite this, Poké­mon: The First Movie was a huge suc­cess. It remains the high­est-gross­ing ani­mé at the US box office, and in France and Ger­many it’s the high­est-gross­ing Japan­ese film ever.

With the arrival of Detec­tive Pikachu, it’s inter­est­ing to see the fran­chise mov­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, rebrand­ing itself for a new gen­er­a­tion. Pokemon’s first film might be rid­dled with incon­sis­ten­cies, but for any­one who was 10 years old in 1999 it was the cin­e­mat­ic event of a gen­er­a­tion, and as such it’s stranger that it has been large­ly for­got­ten. If Detec­tive Pikachu wants to be more than just a flash-in-the-pan hit, it would do well to take heed of its pre­de­ces­sor and shape its sto­ry­telling accordingly.