Film of the Week: Pokémon – Detective Pikachu

A spoiler free review

At last, a good video game movie. Video game movies have been notoriously bad for many reasons. Adapting books, comics, TV programs, have always been easier than trying to transition a game onto the big screen. There have been many video games that have tried, but most haven’t quite made it big. Other than Need for Speed, Pokémon – Detective Pikachu is a decent video game movie, and I think I’ve figured out why that is the case.

With Need for Speed, that franchise is massive, spanning multiple games, each with their own self-contained storyline. Racing cars and being the best is always the main objective. Creating a film with the same film does, in theory, appear easy. All you have to do is write a synonymous storyline to what appeared in the games, slap the title on and you have a decent movie adaptation of a video game. With Need for Speed, there’s room to move. The majority of the games have a map in which you can roam around freely in, and in the franchise’s prime it was one of the greatest racing games out there, and many have heralded Need for Speed: Underground 2 as the best for multiple reasons, but most quoted reason is the insane amount of customisation that can be done to every car in the game, boosting their stats to insane levels.

My point is, there’s room to move. Like Need for Speed, Pokémon is a massive franchise; bigger even in every aspect. Many people don’t commonly associate Pokemon purely by the card game, but instead by the games which can be played on the Nintendo consoles, and the hugely popular Pokemon Go, which caused a little bit of controversy when it first launched with how people were walking into things, trespassing, walking too far away from home – nevertheless it is still incredible popular among Pokemon fans. Another aspect of the Pokemon franchise is the TV show. 22 seasons of the TV show have been produced, and it is tradition to release a feature length film after each season has wrapped up, meaning 21 films have been produced, with the 22^nd currently in development.

Unlike Need for Speed, which only had the games to work from, Pokemon had so much more. Whilst you have the games, each one with a self-contained storyline, therefore making it easy enough to make an original story for the film as it isn’t at all breaking continuity of the franchise, there have already been multiple films made from the games. 22 films in fact. Imagine if those 22 films had never been made, and the first live-action adaptation was indeed the first Pokemon film, known as Pokemon: The First Movie. Everything about the animated movie is to be made into a live-action version, would we be happy about that, or angry.

Now, moving onto the what we have today, Pokemon – Detective Pikachu couldn’t be done wrongly. Whilst it doesn’t follow the character Ash, but that’s OK, because neither do the games. This is a completely original version of Pokemon, establishing its own continuity, which is exactly what the games do with each new one released, and doesn’t touch what has already been implemented in the TV shows and films.

Most other live-action adaptation of video games doesn’t succeed as well as the studios would’ve like them to, is because they tried to condense a story we already know down from being 20hrs plus to 1hr 30. That doesn’t work, because a lot is going to be cut, and therefore won’t at all live up to the expectations the games have put on the filmmakers. With Need for Speed and Pokemon, the franchise allows for a live-action version of their franchises, and no game franchise can be adapted into live-action better than Pokemon.

Pokemon – Detective Pikachu is an entertaining ride. The Pokemon were comedic at times, and whilst I can pinpoint a couple of unnecessities in the movie, such as one of the characters, showcasing the actual Pokeball – if you’re only going to feature it once without explaining anything about it within that movie’s continuity, then why feature it in the first place? So, it’s not going to be worshipped as the best movie ever, it certainly can be looked up at as being the best live-action adaptation of a video game, which if you take the entire franchise into account, isn’t technically an adaptation of the video game, but instead is just an original story made into a live-action film. If you’re a fan of the franchise, I certainly recommended.

Side note – I was highly curious with why Ryan Reynolds was voicing Pikachu. Upon seeing the first trailer, it sounded completely out of place and only made Pikachu talk for the film. But, it actually offered a reason as to why Pikachu can talk, and by the end of the film, all as it should be.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)