Pokemon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back Review

 

As I reported several weeks ago, I've been rewatching the Pokémon anime with my son recently. We blew through the Indigo League (Season 1) of the show, and we're currently enjoying the Orange Islands arc, which is a bizarre, yet incredibly charming follow-up to the original season. These early chapters of the show have so many creative, fun episodes that speak to a time where the brand hadn't fully defined itself yet. I'll admit though, that we rolled straight from Season 1 to Season 2, and I completely forgot about showing him the first movie. The official Pokémon YouTube channel randomly added this Pokémon film to watch for free on July 4 of this year, which was a bizarre, yet funny way to celebrate America. We'll get my kids in on our annual tradition of watching National Treasure before too long. For being a lifelong Pokémon fan, (let's call it a "Pokemaniac") I never really kept up with the movies, beyond the first three. I remembered how crazy and dark Pokémon: The First Movie was, and knew that my son needed to witness the power of Mewtwo.

 

Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back came out in the US in 1999 to massive box office success. This was right in the apex of Pokémon's worldwide ubiquity, and the movie no doubt benefited from the franchise's immense fandom in this era. In fact, this is still the highest earning Pokémon movie, other than the unsettling 2019 live-action film Detective Pikachu, which I think a lot of people went to see out of pure curiosity, given its eldritch, realistic interpretations of many beloved Pokémon. The marketing push for Pokémon: The First Movie was significant as well. I remember collecting trading cards (separate from the iconic Pokémon TCG) that featured scenes and frames from the movie. Burger King had a set of awesome solid gold collector's cards that I remember being the talk of the playground. It felt like Mewtwo was suddenly everywhere.

 

Mewtwo Strikes Back follows up on some small, easily forgotten plot points from the anime that showed Giovanni, the villainous mafioso head of Team Rocket, bragging about his mysterious "ultimate weapon." His ultimate weapon eventually breaks free of Giovanni's restraints and flies away, and we see that Mewtwo is said weapon. The movie shows these events again, but from Mewtwo's perspective, and the entire intro of the film adds all of the needed context and backstory for who and what Mewtwo is. He is a genetically altered, enhanced clone of the enigmatic, legendary Pokémon Mew. Whatever modifications were done to his DNA made Mewtwo capable of human-level sentience, which makes him a formidable enemy, as he retains the intense psychic power from his gene-father, Mew. Mewtwo, after being used as a weapon and witnessing human cruelty, retreats to New Island (the site of the original laboratory where he was brought into existence) where a vast palace has been constructed, along with a new cloning facility.

 

The designs of the palace and the laboratory are amazing. All of the architecture and lab equipment have a sort of biomechanical, H.R. Giger meets Neon Genesis Evangelion aesthetic that I was surprised to see in a Pokémon movie. There's also some charming, very corny, early CGI in the movie that I loved seeing. On New Island, Mewtwo creates a false story to send out to the world that the island is home to an esteemed Pokémon tournament, and invites trainers with strong Pokémon to come to the island. The few strongest and most determined trainers, make the perilous trek across the sea, and through an extremely dangerous thunderstorm to New Island. Once there, Mewtwo confiscates their Pokémon and rapidly develops a clone army to incapacitate the trainers. He then reveals his goal: to overwhelm and subjugate the world with powerful clones and wipe out humankind - an obviously absurd retaliation for the cruelty he suffered in the custody of the scientists who created him and Giovanni. Ash frees the captured Pokémon and they engage in a battle against the clones, while Mewtwo engages in a battle of supremacy against Mew, who has made a surprise appearance.

 

One of the most infamous moments in this movie, and a scene that broke the heart of millions of children in 1999, is when Ash gets caught between the intense, explosive attacks of Mew and Mewtwo and straight up dies. He turns to stone, almost like Han Solo in carbonite, and falls to the ground. In a tragic scene, Pikachu tries to wake up Ash to no avail. Then Pikachu begins to cry, and all of the fighting Pokémon begin to cry as well and inexplicably bring Ash back from the dead. It's one of those scenes that works for kids, but makes literally zero sense, even in the context of being in the larger-than-life Pokémon universe. Mewtwo is touched by Ash's sacrifice and comes to see the error in his ways. He, somehow with god-like powers, rewinds time to before the trainers ever arrived on New Island and wipes the memories of everyone there and disappears along with Mew. The movie's ending is somewhat underwhelming and unsatisfying, but it does ultimately make sense, given that Ash and the gang don't mention these events at all in the subsequent anime episodes.

 

Image Credit: NintendoWorldReport

 

It was interesting seeing Pokémon get the silver screen treatment. You could tell there was a considerably higher budget on this film than an average episode. Every frame of the animation was dripping with style and quality, and just an overall premium feel that was often lacking from the anime. The fight scenes were much more dynamic and action packed, which I appreciated given that Pokémon battles are kind of the entire point of this franchise. Often in the show, it felt like fights were quick, underwhelming, one-hit-knockouts; other than the famous Lt. Surge fight between Pikachu and Raichu, where we see Pikachu's infamous plot armor get rocked by Raichu's big, nasty hooks. But the entire opening battle sequence in this movie, between Ash and a random trainer named Raymond (who is wearing a bandana that looks uncannily similar to Team Aqua's logo from Ruby and Sapphire versions), is better than every single Pokémon battle shown thus far in the show. Raymond nonchalantly throws out Donphan, who despite being a largely forgotten Generation 2 Pokémon, has been elevated in popularity thanks to its appearance in the movie, because we knew literally nothing about Generation 2 yet. We had seen Togepi and Ho-Oh thus far, but they were just hand-waved as being mysterious or rare Pokémon. Donphan was the first real look we had at a proper Johto Pokémon, and its surprise appearance here in Mewtwo Strikes Back created quite the stir in conversation. "Who was that crazy rolling elephant guy?!" 

 

All of the fight scenes on New Island were excellent as well. When the cloned Pokémon started fighting their original counterparts, the battling was pretty brutal. There's a pretty upsetting sequence where Ash's Pikachu is refusing to fight his clone, but the clone just repeatedly slaps the living daylights out of Pikachu and beats him down. I also had to see my favorite Pokémon, Blastoise, get completely rocked by his respective clone. My toddler was wondering why I was now the one yelling and crying at the screen.

 

 

Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back is a fun, if flawed film. It was novel seeing a slightly more mature Pokémon story with considerably higher stakes. Mewtwo did feel legitimately dangerous, with a power level that outclassed every trainer and Pokémon we've seen thus far. Personally, I would've loved to see the trainers and their Pokémon team up to take him down, especially with the excellent action sequences in this movie, but it required the "power of love" to ultimately lay Mewtwo low. While this was unsatisfying for me, a grown man, this movie is aimed at children, and I don't think it's a bad message that hardened hearts can be changed through acts of love. We do get to see a follow-up to the events of this movie in Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, a feature length episode in Season 3 of the anime. I don't believe I've seen that episode, so I look forward to seeing what else becomes of Mewtwo and his story.

 

VERDICT: Recommended