With the MCU ending its Avengers saga (although, with a whole new phase to continue on infinitum) and Star Wars scheduled to end its less than stellar sequel trilogy, the world of cinematic universes is starting to feel ambiguous. Certainly not dead, God no, but definitely heading for a slump. Pokemon as a franchise has always been compelling to those who played the games as a kid, partially because of nostalgia and partially because the idea of personalizing your friends for competition, and having those friends as lovable and bizarre monsters with unique traits and character, is such a fun idea to really sink into. I, like many other kids in the 90s, desperately wanted a live action version of the Pokemon world, to realize the adventures in my head as something seemingly more tangible, but one quick look at the games with a more adult eye and you realize the difficulty of making this dream a reality. We could get into how the stories are minimal -- or outright bad sometimes, lets face it -- or how the characters were mostly one-note, or how the game was obviously built as a game and in no way makes much sense as a tangible world, but the two biggest factors in the series' difficulty in live action would be making its monsters -- often stylized in that anime fashion, or otherwise just bizarre (see: Mr. Mime or Jynx) -- look real, and confronting the fact that through the haze of touting friendship themes and teamwork, Pokemon is literally dog fighting. It's the reason most of the games take place in near utopian conditions, with the only conflict being your own ambition and a collection of egotistical nutjobs. If the games ever did confront this fact, they would be fighting an uphill battle to try and justify it all (credit where credit is due: Black/White did a pretty damn good job addressing this a little, but even that skirts by it some). Detective Pikachu, excels at the former, and does an apt job avoiding the latter, which I would consider, as far as the viability of this series in the live action movie world of things, a complete success. If there is one thing I can praise this film on, it is in how it convinced me that Pokemon can be a cinematic universe I could get lost in. All of that said, it isn't really a very good movie.
Detective Pikachu pulls off its realistic monsters by letting them play in an interesting stylistic zone, occupying cuteness and a weird unreality. They paradoxically feel both cartoony and real. Their cartoony style comes mostly from how intelligent they all seem to be, the kind of thing movies can get away with whenever a trained monkey is a side character or something. We can identify with the facial expressions and movements of a monkey to consider it largely human-like, but not quite human, and it gives creators leeway to exaggerate their realistic or humanistic natures. All of the Pokemon here do the same: they showcase complex facial expressions, are able to function in human society just fine, and seem largely tamed or docile. They don't exhibit the threat of a wild animal, while retaining the threat of a human with super powers like, say, being able to electrify you with their cheeks if so annoyed, and are able to understand their human counterparts perfectly, even being able to mostly communicate back. Their realism comes more so in their textures and color pallet, which de-saturates the colorful video game monsters into something closer to a natural tone. The textures, to be perfectly honest, are just plain weird. Pikachu looks fine as a cuddly, furry thing, but Lickatung looks oddly sticky and the scales on Charizard or Charmander look a bit contrasting with their more cartoony, expressive eyes. Not all of the Pokemon are winners from a design standpoint, but enough of them are (such as Cubone or the alien looking Mewtwo -- although he looks better with his eyes white than normal) that the general impression is that this is all more than believable enough. In a lot of ways, the weird textures themselves give a surreal quality to the whole thing that allows for you to suspend a lot more disbelief than you would in a normal film. There is a tone to the world that was incredibly well captured, a complete embrace of just how weird all of this is, but also how fun.
The world they have created is also partially how we skirt around the whole "dog fighting" issue. Ryme City, in which this film mostly takes place, bans Pokeballs and battling, which means Pokemon and people must coexist completely. Some Pokemon run around wild in the streets, others tag along at their partner's heals and help out with either their jobs or simply act as a friend like the lovably bizarre Psyduck (maybe my favorite Pokemon in the film). This skirts around another issue in the games: the collector mentality. For a game that tried to emphasize that you and your Pokemon are friends, it never quite rationalized how that could be when your goal was essentially to collect all 151 Pokemon in the first game (now nearing the 900 range). It always felt like a paradox to me, that these creatures were your friends yet these impersonal tokens for the avid collector. Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly attached to my well-stat-ed Espion I bred for in my current playthrough of Pokemon Moon, but my Pokemon PC box full of 60+ other Pokemon speak to a contradictory theme. Detective Pikachu is able to avoid this by implying that everyone has (or should have, by social pressure) a Pokemon buddy. It is implied that people have one, and that one is all they need. The film is getting away with this largely by telling a relatively small scale story (and I do mean "relatively" -- more on that later) and never fully committing to exactly how many Pokemon any given person has. Honestly, this is pretty true of the game, where most people only ever have 1-3 Pokemon on them or around the house, and only the most dedicated trainers fill up their party to the max 6 you can carry (plus PC boxes full of them). But what of those other trainers? They exist in this world, as they are mentioned and posters for competitions can be seen in the scenery, but the film doesn't confront the issue, and thus also largely doesn't confront the "dog fighting" issue. I say largely, because there is an underground battling circuit, but it doesn't take much of the film, and, again, skirts by mostly (it also serves as one of the most exciting parts of the film, as brief as it is -- I can't believe I saw a realistic Gengar fight Blastoise in a movie!). But honestly, all of this is okay. While this makes me wary somewhat of how well subsequent films will fair (and I'm definitely excited for more), it isn't a detraction in this film. By making their world feel so fun and believable in that surreal way, I'm more than willing as an audience participant to overlook some of these ethical issues because it requires a certain light on this world that doesn't fit its style of unreality. It works, mostly, it just feels precarious.
I've spent a lot of time thus far talking about the transition these games took to become a livable world for live action film, and that's because it is by far and away the most successful aspect. The story, to put it quite simply, is bonkers, and not in a good way.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT
The plot follows Tim Goodman, a young man working as an insurance salesman who once aspired to be a Pokemon trainer but gave that up after his dad, a Pokemon detective, abandoned him when his mother died, dedicating his life to his job. After his father is declared dead, Tim teams up with his father's Pikachu who believes his death to be staged. The plot does a few things here, following the mysterious gas R that makes Pokemon violent, and a conspiracy told to them by Ryme City creator Howard Clifford, having to do with a genetically engineered monstrosity named Mewtwo. Clifford shows them that it was Mewtwo that caused the crash that killed Tim's father, because he was getting too close to the truth (he shows them this through a hologram technology that is able to recreate the scene of the crime somehow, an insanely illogical device that annoys me). They follow Clifford's lead to an abandoned research facility that unethically experiments on Pokemon and their evolutions, where Pikachu is lethally hurt. Tim follows some Bulbasaur to find a healer, which turns out to be Mewtwo, who heals Pikachu and tells them that Pikachu had set him free from the facility they where just investigating, where he was being experimented on. To sum the rest of this up really quickly (since all of the twists and turns add to bunk all anyway), Clifford is a liar and just wanted them to lead him to Mewtwo, who was apparently the source of R creation (by using his blood...? Something magic-sciency). Apparently Mewtwo had told Pikachu to meet him when Tim's dad's car crashed, but how any of this was in Clifford's plan is anyone's guess. Pikachu, however, realizes it wasn't Mewtwo who caused the crash, but rather he was trying to save Pikachu and Tim's father, and Clifford wants to use some cerebral device to take over Mewtwo's body and use his psychic powers to combine people and Pokemon, one person to one Pokemon, because apparently Mewtwo can do that if the Pokemon are rabidly crazy (such as they are when exposed to R). And remarkably, he succeeds by going Batman-style and filling parade balloons with R, blowing them up, and using his mind-controlled Mewtwo to combine people and Pokemon together (so you can visualize this: people turn into white orbs and get sucked into their Pokemon -- apparently taking over their Pokemon's minds as well). Luckily, Pikachu distracts Clifford-Mewtwo long enough for Tim to take the cerebral device off of Clifford, and Mewtwo is able to return everyone to normal. And, as a twist, turns out Tim's dad was going to die in that car wreck, but Mewtwo saved him by having him absorbed into Pikachu (hence why Tim could hear him -- it was his father the whole time!), and somehow having Tim nearby allows for his father's body to return unharmed from Pikachu. Like, just what in the fuck is this story.
Okay, so let's just parse this a bit. I don't want to dig into how ridiculous this all is, because we would be here all night. Firstly: in a dramatic sense, this movie really doesn't work. The villains are virtually telegraphed from the very beginning, none of the twists are interesting because they are plainly absurd and illogical even within the film's own internal logic, and the motivations for everyone involved feels muddied at best, nonexistent at worst. Secondly: there are numerous flashbacks showing Tim's dad, always with conveniently obscured face and white skin, making it plainly obvious this had to be someone we knew, i.e. Ryan Reynolds. Thirdly: just what in the fuck is this whole combining people and Pokemon malarkey? For a little bit of backstory here, Clifford suffers from a genetic disorder that has left him in a wheelchair, and he has been studying Pokemon's evolution mechanic in order to somehow cure himself. This somehow becomes him taking over the most powerful Pokemon ever and deciding the whole city should be as he is. There is just too much here to really unpack. It's illogical, and the villains are flat as a broken trumpet. There is some precedent in the games that people and Pokemon can combine like this when Bill from the very first game accidentally makes himself into a Pokemon, but that hardly excuses anything (especially, as I said before, the games themselves can't make a 1:1 transition into live action film -- this right here is a good reason). There is a smaller, more confusing issue that the film is implied to share a universe with the anime when they directly reference Pokemon: The First Movie when discussing Mewtwo, but I'm more willing to accept this seeing as Mewtwo's origin story was generally a good one, and we could see a live action rendition of it someday. Largely, I believe any subsequent movies in this world should mostly ignore the events of this one -- including any potential sequels, which already have the unenviable task of trying to make Detective Pikachu interesting when it can no longer talk now that Ryan Reynolds has been exercised from it.
This film is by and large a mess. If it wasn't for the achievement of its stylistic execution -- which is an incredible feat -- this film would be another for the trash heap that is video game adaptations in film. However, the novelty of the thing and the fact that the film is fun (although not nearly as funny as you'd expect), I can't help but give it the slightest of passes. It was too weird an experience to disregard, even if the whole movie aspect was a fiery, vertical plane ride in its third act.
6.0
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