You probably know this, but I’m a mega fan of Pokémon. I’ve been a fan of it for as long as I can remember. Because of that, I have been waiting for a live-action movie or a movie that uses the real world to combine with the Pokémon world.
Enter “Pokémon Detective Pikachu,” a movie that combines the real world with the Pokémon world. This movie, which stars Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu and Justice Smith as Pikachu’s crime-fighting partner, Tim Goodman, takes those worlds and does a good job combining them to make a good movie. They don’t just use the Pokémon world by itself. It was a good movie apart from the translation of the property, the Pokémon world and characteristics, which I loved.
I’ll be honest, most of the movie was just me fanboying about seeing each and every Pokémon translated into their live-action counterpart. It is easy to tell the makers of the film know the property and how things should look. Pikachu looks cute and fluffy, Psyduck looks creepy and Charizard looks like a lizard.
These are only a couple of examples of the Pokémon in the movie, and I loved every single one. There wasn’t a single Pokémon where I thought they should have made them look different. They were perfectly designed. This movie was the perfect translation from the video game world to the movie world in terms of the Pokémon designs.
The world is also one of the more interesting parts of the movie. There is a lot of subtext about aspects of the world that aren’t mentioned at all in the story of the actual movie. I liked this aspect a lot just because it makes the world feel more real. The hints for fans of the series were also really neat. The main character has posters with legendary Pokémon on them, like Rayquaza and Articuno, which means people know about them. Overall, the world was so much fun to watch exist.
Although the most important parts of the movie were the world and the translation of the video game characters into live-action, it’s important to note the plot. I’ll be honest, the plot is one of a basic detective movie. There’s not really anything special in that aspect of the movie. The addition of the Pokémon and the Pokémon world does change the detective movie plotline to make it a little bit more interesting.
At its heart, the movie is one a lot of us have seen before. It has the typical characters going around the world looking for clues, asking people questions and finding the twists. That stuff is cliché, but because of the addition of the Pokémon world, it makes the movie much more interesting and makes the typical detective movie unique.
This might be a hyperbole, having only seen the movie once, but I think “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” is the best movie based on a video game property ever. That’s not a high bar, but I think with the foundation set in this movie, there is a lot of potential for different movies that could be made with the property. I can say I am excited to see what might be done with the Pokémon property now that it has successfully been translated to the silver screen.
