“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.” –One smart thing some dead Sith said once.
Last summer, a CGI version of the classic franchise film Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back was released in Japan, and now, the monstrosity has reached our shores. The trailer shows a lot of the scenes we all remember from the first time around doing this story, almost to the point where you feel like “lemme just go watch the original trailer.”
Plus, they knew what they were doing by having those two Pikachus at the end of the film. You know what you are doing.
Also, I do not care for Ash’s new voice actor in the English dub, so just hearing it makes me want to back away slowly. 4Kids was not perfect, but the original voice actors for Pokémon are iconic for a reason. Veronica Taylor is the dub Ash Ketchum. No offense to Sarah Natochenny, who does great work, but it’s hard to forget the original person in that role.
There’s just something hollow and empty about the way this remake looks. I have grown more accustomed to good CGI cartoons through watching The Dragon Prince, and even those Barbie shows on Netflix use the CGI to accentuate the type of movements a doll being would make. This just feels like a very empty, paint-by-numbers version of something that was already good in the animation art form it originally used.
Plus, the movie didn’t do that well in Japan, because it had the nerve to come out alongside Makoto Shinkai’s Tenki no Ko/Weathering With You, which dominated the Japanese box office. It’s just so clearly uncreative that it’s honestly offensive on a nerd level, but then again, there are over twenty Pokémon movies and most of them belong in the bin.
Considering how well Pokémon: Detective Pikachu did, this especially feels like such a waste of creative energy. I also think we learned from Detective Pikachu that some Pokémon just look … weird outside of their traditional animation, because then we’re forced to think about things like scales, fur, and other texture issues. Mewtwo will never look good in CGI, and we should just figure out that he is still a cat breed and maybe some short fur would look better than making his body look like the genitals of some unknown eldritch horror.
The film will be released on Netflix on February 27, 2020 as a Netflix Original movie.
Just give me a Misty spinoff series and keep the rest, please.
(via Polygon, image: Screenshot/Toho/Netflix)
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