Just came back from the cinema. My expectations were quite low after reading the impressions. Fortunately, the movie was enjoyable for me.
However, the movie has many issues and has many missed opportunities in my opinion. These are the most negative things for me (this all only my personal opinion):
- The flow of the movie felt very strange. It felt many times like that the movie wanted to go from one scene to the other as fast as possible. They didn't gave enough time to digest everything what happened.
- Similiar to the first point, I also thought that the cutting was strange. Scenes got cutted so fast from one perspective to another perspective. I would have wished if the camera would have been more calm, so that I could observe the enviroments and Pokemon better.
- The jokes were too much and too weak for me. The humor that came from Pikachu/Ryan Reynolds isn't quite my thing. Sometimes it felt like, if Pikachu hat to tell a joke every minute. And they felt forced to me sometimes. (However, I really liked the jokes that were about Pikachu's gestures and behaviour).
- All three points above made the movie feel like being on an ADHD trip for me.
- I found the thing about the giants Torterras dumb. The idea about gen-manipulated sizes is cool, but their sizes were just far too big and took the immersion a bit away.
- The strongness of Psyduck's attack. It's like a mini atomic bomb. (This Pokemon should be illegal in Ryme City! ;P )
Some characters were so extremely typical cliché. Even their costumes/outfits/behaviour reflected their chliché.
- As stupid as it sounds, there was too little Pokemon in this Pokemon movie? I mean, I would like to have seen more interactions between Humans and Pokemon. (e.g.: seeing people lying on a Lapras in the lake, seeing people flying with their flying pokemon, people doing sports with Pokemon). We see it sometimes (like Pokemon cooking with their partner), but of the time the Pokemon were just there. We also don't see many times Pokemon using their skills. I wished a bit more.
- All in all, the movie felt too Hollywood-cliché like, in that it tried to checked off all criteria to make this movie as secure as possible and trying with that to reach the masses. However I think that this strategy went backwards. (This all is just an estimation of my side)
Now this sounds far too negative then it really is and there are many things that the film did good. Like I said,
I enjoyed the movie. However I feel like that there was potential for much more. If you're slightly interested in Pokemon, then go watch it. And if you have kids, they will probaby enjoy it hell a lot :-).
All that said, I reaaaaaaaally really really hope that they make more movies. I really like the world that they created and is such cool to see the Pokenon in a live action movie. Every live-action Pokemon movie will be day 1 one for me. Hope that the sales don't stop them to do more :(.
I need more! I need Pokemon Movies, Pokemon Live Action TV-Series, Pokemon Wildlife Documentaries, and more! ;P