Detective Pikachu
Oh boy, this movie sucked. I really, really wanted to like it, but it wouldn't stop disappointing. The opening where they're stalking the cubone was okay, then it so quickly went downhill. Even for a "kid's movie" (not like there's an excuse for kids' movies doing this anyway) it was beyond cliché. There's just scene after scene claustrophobically squashed together with zero room to breathe or pacing to speak of (literally, within 15 minutes
they start breaking into the facility, find Mewtwo, they find the scientists who explain stuff, shit goes down and Mewtwo escapes, they escape the facility while fending off Greninja guards, they traverse the collapsing forest and find Mewtwo who then heals Pikachu), zero character development, zero originality, zero fun (yeah that's right).
I was so bored half way through I was just waiting for it to end. Normally I have a high tolerance for predictable tropes but I've never seen a movie so jam-packed with them from end-to-end. I like Ryan Reynolds (usually - I thought Deadpool 1 kinda sucked, 2 was funny), but the lines they wrote for him were painfully unfunny ( they even tossed in an explicit joke about climate change deniers that was so untactful it probably ended up working against itself). Like this is more bland and predictable than a 90's live action Disney movie I kid you not.
On a technical level it was genuinely
really cool to see the CGI Pokémon in a real life setting, but the novelty wore off around the 20-30 minute mark in addition to them taking a noticeable dip in quality after the opening scene. The action scenes are so crammed with ridiculous over-the-top crap happening that individual actions carry no weight (seriously, the anime itself was far more grounded than this movie), and the sound mixing didn't help with everything but the Pokémon's various beam attacks sounding so flat, light and unimpactful.
Another example where I fail to understand Rotton Tomatoes: Pokémon the First Movie is literally so much better than this, yet it holds a 16% and this holds a 68%. I know ever since that Nostalgia Critic episode it's been memed to hell, but I'm serious. That movie has a great plot that's also interesting and far more original than Detective Pikachu's, is very well-paced, isn't rushed, has plenty of quieter scenes that let you soak in the atmosphere, plenty of character development, and definitely doesn't treat its audience like children nearly to the degree that Detective Pikachu does. So many scenes in this movie also attempted to recreate scenes from the anime and other movies for pure fanservice but with none of the context or buildup that made those scenes iconic in the first place.
To compare, in The First Movie:
Scientists discover Mew, the "original Pokémon", and out of curiosity successfully create a genetic clone named Mewtwo. He ends up being fiercely intelligent, questioning his "purpose", quickly growing to hate how he's treated like a subject and ends up destroying the entire research facility. The leader of Team Rocket catches wind of this and confronts Mewtwo, promising to give him purpose by teaching him to control his powers, indoctrinating him with the concept that Pokémon are supposed to be nothing more than tools for humans, and getting him to aid in their nasty business. Over time this causes Mewtwo to develop a cynical worldview and break free from them as well. He ends up causing a shitstorm through the learned belief that all humans are evil abusers and Pokémon who love their trainers are pathetic and weak, and it takes Ash (almost) sacrificing his life for Pikachu by taking a shot from Mewtwo himself for him to realise all the fighting he started was for the wrong reasons and that not all humans are evil.
In Detective Pikachu:
A CEO has a team of scientists create Mewtwo (no mention of Mew… so no explanation for the name) which has the psychic ability to fuse a human's consciousness into a Pokémon so that a humans (and their intelligence) can "evolve" throughout their lifetime like Pokémon. They harvest a gas from Mewtwo that they can spray en masse to forcibly fuse society with their Pokémon (why does he force this on society? There's no explanation). Mewtwo is freed by the protagonists and is immediately a good guy who even heals Pikachu who got hurt in a completely random unrelated scene of them happening across a collapsing garden. The CEO then mind-controls Mewtwo give a speech to the city about his plan and to stop the protagonists from interfering - the gas gets sprayed and everyone transforms - the protagonist eventually knocks the mind-control device off the CEO's head (he could've done this at literally any time, he just waited to for a very long time for no reason), so Mewtwo snaps out of it and restores everyone in the city to normal.
Like wtf is that plot? There's no moral weight to it at all, no development to speak of, nor is there with anything in Detective Pikachu. Ironic how Mewtwo's whole conflict originally was about him feeling like a misunderstood tool for humans, when in this movie he was nothing more than a tool for and misunderstood by the writers.
This movie is terrible.
I'm not even a huge Pokémon fan/elitist or anything- I watched the first few seasons of the anime and the first few movies as a kid, and I've barely even played the games, I just rewatched The First Movie for the first time in like 15 years after watching Detective Pikachu.
really guys, it would be cool
.
