‘Pokémon: The First Movie’ at 25 – Review

Pokémon – The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back (1999)
Director: Kunihiko Yuyama
Screenwriters: Takeshi Shudo
Starring: Veronica Taylor, Ikue Ōtani, Rachael Lillis, Eric Stuart, Satomi Kōrogi, Maddie Blaustein, Philip Bartlett

Sensation isn’t a strong enough word to describe what happened when Pokémon released its first film, Mewtwo Strikes Back. The Japanese multi-media franchise had already been a massive success globally, causing conservative parents in the USA to claim it to be Satanic and abhorrent (as with Dungeons & Dragons). The original games were released originally in 1994 in Japan, 1995 elsewhere. The anime began in April 1997, and by the following year, The First Movie was being released in Japan. The USA version would come out in 1999, with a large swathe of cuts and edits and redubs.

The rough plotline of the film (specifically focusing in on the USA dub because changes during localisation significantly altered character motivations and so forth) is as follows…

In the world of Pokémon, the powerful pokémon Mewtwo is created as an enhanced clone of the mythical Mew. Enraged, it escapes its creators and vows to forge a new empire for itself. It lures the series’ central characters of Ash, Misty, and Brock, to an island in the centre of a great storm, where it intends to use their Pokémon to create a clone army and, combined with Mewtwo’s psychic powers, take over the world. It’s up to the brave heroes to stop Mewtwo’s dictatorial plans, putting themselves in great danger to do so.

For anyone who grew up with the anime series and with the film, revisiting it will no doubt unleash a wave of nostalgia, not just through the iconography of the film which is invariably burned into the minds of a generation, but the jokes that were carried over from the show. The famous ‘Who’s That Pokémon?’ segment that would sandwich the advertisement breaks have a callout, the iconic theme tune gets a remix, and the show’s first mysterious appearance of Mewtwo gets revisited. It seems that even with the film, the creators were in part playing on the knowledge of the fans, giving fanservice even as they enjoyed the show at the time of airing. Perhaps the only miss is not seeing the full extent of Team Rocket’s introduction, or their famous ‘Blasting off again’. These, however, are small things only of interest to fans of the show.

Mewtwo Strikes Back is essentially an 80-minute episode of the series, coming in as another adventure in the central storyline of that anime, but anyone turning it on for the first time would probably be able to follow along without too many hitches. The animation is plain for the most part but showcases a few small moments of interest, such as the 3D models for the doors at Mewtwo’s Bond-like evil megalomaniac lair, which were a rarity for the franchise but would become more prominent as the years progressed. Certain iconic moments, such as one character being turned to stone, still have the power to lodge in the throat, and Meowth’s famous line about looking at our similarities instead of our differences is perhaps the most profound part of the film.

It is the most profound in the USA dub, that is, because the film’s main issues (it wasn’t a showstopper to begin with) are the changes by the team in charge of the dubbing and edits for the American release. The localisation was managed by 4Kids Entertainment, a company notorious for messing up anime dubs and reducing the complexity of the source material for an American audience. The YouTube series, ‘Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series‘, a comedic re-dubbing of the ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ series, makes constant reference to 4Kids and their badly handled dubs, weaving it into their own versions of plotlines from that show. With this in mind, you know this won’t end well for Pikachu and friends.

The dubbing itself isn’t great to begin with, with many of the characters (even the main cast in part) coming across as unconvincing and stilted, even more so than in the show. There are multiple instances of various species of pokémon being incorrectly named, something that, bafflingly, the producers decided to keep in and argue that the characters might do this by accident, rather than just re-recording the lines. Also, somehow, one of the characters believes that Vikings exist, but are now only in reduced numbers in Minnesota… a joke about the real-world NFL team the Minnesota Vikings. Why that line was added, or changed, and why the producers thought it was great, is baffling, and is only good in its absolute absurdist shock-value stupidity.

However, the most egregious disrespect to the source material is that a solid anime film with a few sprinkled moments of heart, complexity, and education, is reduced to confusing moral simplicity by a localisation team’s surety that the film mustn’t be complex for a young American audience. Discount the intelligence of children and young adults at your peril.

Cutting half of Mewtwo’s backstory as he develops in a virtual reality because it was seen as too complicated for children turns an interesting character with both villainous and sympathetic shades into a one-dimensional dictator, all because American producers believed their audiences needed distinctly ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides to the conflict. Discussions about the precious nature of life in any form, which echoed the cut backstory, are reduced in the dub to simply claim that violence is wrong. This is the sentiment put forward by characters Brock and Misty, who both run pokémon gyms as a job, earning their daily bread by forcing their creatures to fight others to show martial prowess in the exact same manner that they now criticise.

And then, to cap it all off, everything just ends, resolved from the final battle sequence to the credits rolling in under five minutes. Everyone’s memories are erased and they’re teleported away to safety and congratulations, film over, roll credits. It is short and sweet.

Aside from the nostalgia of revisiting this franchise a quarter of a century on, and a few scenes designed to tug at the heart strings, so much of Pokémon: The First Movie doesn’t actually work. The Japanese original version might be better, so go find that version if you can. The 1999 USA release is just about passable.

Score: 10/24

Recommended for you: Pokémon Anime Movies Ranked