My long, winding Pokémon anime journey has passed another milestone. I've logged my reviews for Season 1 (Indigo League), The First Movie and Season 2 (Adventures in the Orange Islands), and now my son and I have watched the inelegantly titled Pokémon the Movie 2000. This is, without a doubt, the Pokemon movie that I have seen the most in my life. I think we must have had this film on VHS or something, as I can distinctly remember watching this movie regularly in my wonder years, and I doubt we rented it that many times. Myriad aspects of the movie were coming back to me during this viewing; I suddenly found myself remembering plot elements, characters and lines of dialogue as if it hadn't been two decades since the last time I watched the movie. I remember really genuinely adoring this movie, actually preferring it to the first movie, but as whether or not the movie deserves that level of love, that will need some slightly deeper analysis.
Pokémon the Movie 2000, which had a completely different, though equally stupid name in Japan, came out in the US in... you guessed it - the year 2000. This was the perfect way to celebrate that the doomsday anticipations of Y2K didn't come to pass. Instead of contending with a full-scale technological collapse (that very well may have saved us from the modern hell in which we now find ourselves) we instead got to see Lugia on the big screen!
All joking aside (though I do genuinely wish sometimes that the Internet had never been created), I've long held Lugia as my favorite legendary Pokémon, and that's a direct result of this movie, as the film released a few months before the Gold and Silver Versions were released. In fact, I think Generation 2 had the coolest roster of legendary Pokémon in the entire franchise, with Celebi being really the only one that I don't care for. Lugia, Ho-Oh and the three legendary beasts (I've always called them dogs) run circles around all of the other legendary Pokémon, as far as I'm concerned.
This film takes place during the second season, while Ash, Tracey and Misty are still exploring the Orange Islands. The adventuring party arrives on Shamouti island, where they meet a tribe of people who are preparing to celebrate a festival themed around the three legendary bird Pokémon: Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno. Think of the movie Midsommar, but with Pokémon, and without ritualistic murder; other than those small differences, it's pretty much identical. There's a young woman on the island, Melody, who serves as the festival's maiden and she chooses Ash to be "the Chosen One." These festival activities are themed around an ancient prophecy that they assume to be merely a fairy tale, but still celebrate it, out of adherence to the tradition. Nevertheless, Ash being dubbed the Chosen One places a duty on his shoulders; to go retrieve three glass orbs from the legendary birds' islands.
The story's villain, an enigmatic man named Lawrence III is a Pokémon collector and he aims to capture the three legendary birds with his enormous flying airship. He believes that if he can ensnare all three birds, the guardian of the water, Lugia, will be summoned from the ocean's depths, and he wishes to capture Lugia to be his ultimate prize. This plan begins in earnest with Lawrence's catching of the fiery bird, Moltres. Nature immediately responds in a chaotic fashion, as Moltres' removal from the elemental balancing creates widespread unrest in the environment, with both the weather and the wild Pokémon beginning to behave erratically.
Zapdos and Articuno enter the fray and Lawrence's airship is demolished, as the three birds duke it out in the skies. Eventually, Lawrence's prediction comes to pass and Lugia emerges from deep below the waves and attempts to corral the legendary birds from spiraling further out of control. Though Lugia struggles to control the chaos, he teams up with Ash, who discovers that the prophecy is in fact real, and Ash is the legitimate "Chosen One." He collects the final orb and fulfills the prophecy, bringing balance back to the elements and sending the birds back to their individual islands. Lugia thanks Ash for locking in to save the day and descends back into the sea.
My main complaints with the movie come as a result of its plot. It feels like the fixins' were all there to make a really delicious, substantial meal of a movie, but the cook had no idea how to make the recipe taste good. While I enjoyed the finished product, it just doesn't really stand out in any meaningful way. It's a relatively straightforward story compared to Mewtwo Strikes Back. This film doesn't try to convey any sort of grand message to the audience, and it's not overly emotional or sentimental either. If there's anything even resembling a message in the movie, it's that it feels like a Godzilla-esque cautionary tale about humans overreaching into nature, and nature responding in an extreme way to humble the greedy aspirations of man.
Instead of focusing on story, like in the first movie, Pokémon the Movie 2000 opts for a more action-adventure forward approach. The action is great and quite dynamic. Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno feel immensely powerful and dangerous, which is appropriate given their status as elemental avatars. I would've personally loved to see Lugia really be able to showcase his god-like powers in a greater showcase. This Pokémon is established to be essentially the guardian over the seas, and therefore inconceivably powerful.
Unfortunately, in this movie he served as more of a plot element and MacGuffin than he did a character or a ferocious kaiju-like entity. It felt like the movie would've been served better if Lawrence III had occupied a more dangerous role in the plot, and then Lugia could've been utilized as that extreme, corrective force of nature against him. Lawrence received essentially no characterization, and that's not always necessary for a good villain. Sometimes great villains are just evil and they don't have some tragic backstory, but they have to feel highly dangerous for this to work properly. It could've been as simple as just making the airship into a considerably more lethal weapon. Perhaps seizing the three legendary birds could have enabled some weaponry, powering up his ship in some planet-threatening capacity and Lugia is required to take down the aircraft.
I don't generally like judging a movie for what it isn't, I just feel that the story was by far the weakest part of this movie and it could've used some more substance or style to elevate it beyond just being a run-of-the-mill children's movie.
All in all, Pokémon the Movie 2000 is a fun, breezy film with dazzling animation and solid action. It was satisfying, as a Pokémon OG, seeing the three legendary birds from the original Pokémon games get spotlighted prominently in a feature film. Again, for me the real treat came in seeing Lugia, though I would've loved to see him portrayed in a slightly different way. It's a short movie, clocking in at a very tight 80 minute runtime, so it won't eat up much of your time. If it weren't for the noticeably larger animation budget, I could've seen this being a television movie, instead of a theatrical release. Despite my complaints, I did enjoy the film, though considerably less than I did as a child. I can recommend this movie if you're already a Pokémon fan, but I think it would leave neophytes to the franchise underwhelmed.
VERDICT: Recommended
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