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View Full Version : Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (Rob Letterman)



Henry Gale
05-09-2019, 07:22 PM
IMDb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5884052/) / Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon:_Detective_Pikach u)

http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/pokemon-detective-pikachu-poster.jpg

Henry Gale
05-09-2019, 11:14 PM
I actually saw this a couple of weeks ago but never made a thread, which isn't a knock against the movie since it's something that has no reason to work at all but somehow manages to with unexpected ease, even to the point that when it takes bold narrative swings you're more impressed because the foundation is already sturdy enough to sustain questionable developments. There's a twist towards the end that simultaneously ties together the movie beautifully while also being kinda batshit (Zubat (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Zubat_(Pok%C3%A9mon))-shit?) insane.

Obviously a big factor here is your relationship to Pokémon (assuming you ever had one at all), and as someone who happened to grow up at the absolute ideal time when it exploded in North American in the late '90s (I think I would've been about 8 to 10 years old when the original series and cards were everywhere), with the added the fact that this comes out on the twenty-year anniversary of The First Movie™ means this -- in addition to planting many worries about time and my own mortality-- packs a no-brainer wave of nostalgia in looking like the kind of live-action realization of these characters I could've only dreamed of when I was in love with it all as a kid. But luckily the foundation of it isn't built on that as much as the son-father uncertain grief storyline, which ultimately helps anchor it amongst all the CG characters bouncing around the frame and the clunky-but-fun mystery at the center of it all.

Another thing that makes it is how good it looks and sounds. You don't expect a $150 million Pokémon tentpole centered on a Ryan Reynolds-voiced Pikachu directed by the guys whose last two movies were Gulliver's Travels and Goosebumps (which I also liked!) to be the type of thing that makes unique stylistic choices in the modern blockbuster landscape, but the watching the choices to shoot it on 35mm with the neon lights of its production design beaming into the hazed sets of its nighttime sequences with Henry Jackman's hefty, misty, ethereal and fleetingly Vangelis-esque score paired up gives enough moments of joy on pure aesthetic levels. So it's a shame that its third act largely loses that and begins to more look like any other modern big-budget movie with a daytime skyscraper hopping and office building-crashing chase dressed with a mostly gray, concrete-heavy palette (just slightly grainier and more glisteningly synthy), but luckilymost of its goodwill was locked in for me by that point, not to mention there was still the absolute delightful absurdity of Bill Nighy's voice coming out of Mewtwo's body to keep me more than entertained.

So it's not on the Lord/Miller level of turning a bad idea into something brilliant, but it's certainly as functional and faithful an iteration of these characters in a movie as I think I could've expected. Also, I guess by being simply solid, it by default might now be the best big-screen video game adaptation? And I'm saying all of this as someone who kinda hates Deadpool. But I'm also now an adult recommending Detective Pikachu. What a weird time 2019 truly is.

MadMan
05-14-2019, 05:20 PM
This was hilarious and fun. I got exactly what I wanted out of a movie where Ryan Reynolds is a talking ball of fur.

Ivan Drago
05-19-2019, 08:12 AM
This was....okay. The visual effects and world building are cool, as is the score but holy hell was the mystery convoluted. A lot of the one liners also fell flat and the acting was hit and miss. It needed more than a few rewrites for sure.

I also saw this in 4DX, and it may be my last time seeing anything in that format. The environmental smells and vibrating seats are the high spots but the flashing lights and fog really took me out of the experience of watching it.

Irish
06-14-2019, 01:14 AM
It's strange how there was a big reaction to the trailer but this movie came and went without notice. (I mean, outside MC. I really thought "Pikachu" would be a thing because of Ryan Reynolds but ... nope. Nobody cared.)

TGM
06-14-2019, 01:18 AM
It's strange how there was a big reaction to the trailer but this movie came and went without notice. (I mean, outside MC. I really thought "Pikachu" would be a thing because of Ryan Reynolds but ... nope. Nobody cared.)

Probably has to do with the movie really just being okay. Nothing all too especially great, nor is there anything particularly objectionable, it's just kinda perfectly fine, and that's that. I know for me at least, it was yet another in one ear, out the other sorta experience, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if that was the case for many others as well. *shrug*