Detective Pikachu

[dorchadas]

名探偵ピカチュウ? More like 迷探偵ピカチュウ!

I saw it yesterday with lisekatevans and I thought it was just okay.

My capsule review would probably be that the parts with pokémon were mostly well-done and the parts with humans were mediocre to bad.

lisekatevans's first statement after we left was about how the reporter intern Lucy was basically the only woman in the movie, other than the evil henchwoman who you could tell was evil because she was wearing stilettos and then turned out to be a ditto anyway, and the head scientist who only appears in flashbacks. Lucy was the ace reporter always looking for a new scoop...except she was an unpaid intern chasing down unsubstantiated rumors, and Roger rightfully didn't want to publish tabloid garbage. And then she spent big chunks of the movies just not around, like when she said that she'd just go back to the car or when the bulbasaur stopped her from going further into the wilderness to where Tim talked to mewtwo.

I almost feel like Tim and Lucy were in different movies that just happened to share the same screen. Tim was in a serious story about a boy reconnecting with his father, and that's most of what Detective Pikachu was trying to be about. Lucy was in a zany story of millennial precarity in a magical city of pokémon, and honestly that's much more interesting to me. I don't want serious drama with pokémon. I want wackiness and pokémon living alongside humans and scenes like the bulbasaurs walking through the stream or cubone crying for its dead mother or snorlax asleep in the bike lane. Or the pikachu/mewtwo battle at the end of the movie, which was my favorite part of the movie because it was the part without dadfeels.

I did appreciate that Tim worked in insurance, though. One of my problems when I played Pokémon Fire Red was that literally everything in the world revolved around pokémon.

I liked the pokémon scenes better than lisekatevans because I have at least some pre-existing pokémon background. I've only played Fire Red and Pokémon Go, but I recognized Red in the Ryme City video about how there are no battles, I got the reference to Mewtwo escaping from the Kantō region twenty years ago, I laughed at jigglypuff singing in the bar with the sleeping patron next to it and snorlax blocking the street again, and I appreciated that Lucy had a psyduck because Kasumi had a psyduck in the original Pokémon anime. And the villain's plot was a reference to the character in the first game who wanted to turn into a pokémon.

Though as lisekatevans, there's a lot of ableism in the idea that being in a wheelchair is so unbelievably bad that literally becoming inhuman is preferable.

In conclusion, I want an adaptation of 電撃ピカチュウ (Dengeki Pikachū, "Lightning Blast Pikachu"), which has sequences where all the pokémon are talking to each other. Just adapt those parts. The intra-pokémon interactions, like psyduck demanding a foot massage, the pikachu/mewtwo battle, or the underground pokémon battle arena, were the best parts. Cut out all the humans, or leave them as just background crowds, and make the pokémon the stars.

Basically, give me Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: the Movie.

The Sonic trailer played before the movie, which caught me by surprise. It's delayed and it was widely panned, so I'm surprised they haven't pulled it. There was no overt mockery in the theatre, because lisekatevans and I were two of five people there, but she was taken aback by how awful it looked. She commented on the usage of "Gangster's Paradise" as the trailer song and I said it was the most Sonic-esque thing about it. I feel like at this point, that trailer is only further hurting marketing.

I was neutral on Detective Pikachu, but it's much better than...that

Comments

[omnipotent]

I have played Pokémon since Red/Blue/Yellow and I was unsure about Detective Pikachu, so I chose to read your review despite the spoilers. I think I may wait for this one to hit Redbox.

Cut out all the humans, or leave them as just background crowds, and make the pokémon the stars.

It works in the anime and in the animated movies; so I think this concept would work in the movies too.

I really think the Sonic movie should be pulled too, but I'm guessing too much money has been spent on it and the producers & directors want a return on investment.

[dorchadas]

Huh. Maybe I should watch the anime, then!

I feel like this point, Sonic is the sunk-cost fallacy. Even if they redo the whole movie so Sonic looks like the video games, it won't fix the hackneyed "he's in the real world!" plotline.

The only good part is the two-second shot of Dr. Eggman in Sonic's world at the end.

[norfolkian]

I'm thinking of going to see Detective Pikachu at the weekend. But then again, our local cinema is doing a showing of Dr Strangelove, which would be really cool on the big screen, I think.

[dorchadas]

Of the two, I would suggest Dr. Strangelove. Detective Pikachu doesn't need the big screen.

[norfolkian]

Dr Strangelove is one of my favourite films, so I've seen it many times. So, I'm trying to decide if I want to watch something new or familiar. :)