Reading throught the comments, it appears I have made a couple of errors regarding Pokemon facts. (boy I really hope someone got fired for that blunder) So a couple of corrections: *Electric attacks do actually effect Rock type Pokemon, it is the fact the Golem is also a Ground type means he shouldn't be affected. *Onix actually has really weak base stats, so maybe he wouldn't be able to pull Charizard out afterall. Any other corrections, or fun Pokemon facts you have. Please do let me know!
My Dad had never really cared for Pokemon, even voiced his disapproval of me watching it all the time and spending what little cash I had on the cards. But when my Mom died after a prolonged cancer battle, and I could barely leave my room for weeks afterwards, he saw this was in theaters and took me to see it. I love my Dad.
The Viking joke nailed it out of the park here in Minnesota, the theater was in an uproar in laughter and applause for 5 minutes. It came out of nowhere.
The fact they attempted to tie it into the main series was exactly why I was so hyped for this back in 2000. That was definitely a lv. 100 caterpie, btw.
I actually did cry at the end of the first movie, and truth be told, it still makes me tear up a little bit, despite knowing that Ash doesn't die. I think what gets me is thinking about it from Pikachu's perspective, as well as the performance of Pikachu's voice actor. When Pikachu thinks Ash is really dead, he sounds so heartbroken.
Especially in the remake. That VA really makes those “pika pi” noises sound so much like Pikachu is utterly heart broken. It’s the only reason why I tolerate the remake and don’t actually hate it.
Oh yeah exactly. Ash turning into stone? Don't care. All the pokémon crying? yawn... but Pikachu desperately trying to revive Ash? Aww men, that choked me up..
So, two things: - Ash's "death" scene always tears me up, not because of him, but because of pikachu's reaction. I don't know, that desperation of seeing a loved one go and being incapable of doing anything, it gets me on a personal level. - I have watched the full movie subbed, and although I appreciate Mewtwo's character a lot more, the existential crisis he goes through really hits close to home. I feel like tearing up everytime he speaks, I can feel his pain, and it hurts.
aaaa someone gets it when it comes to mewtwo!!!!! i tear up at least a bit everytime i go back to this movie 'cause of what he did and what he had to go through :"((
This and Pokemon 2000 are still my favorite movies of the franchise. Mewtwo's voice gave me chills as a child, both of fear and yet, awe-struck at how awesome it is.
It's so funny yet oddly adorable that Mewtwo's voice actor had no idea till years later just how impactful his performance was in this movie. Dude literally gained a following from voice acting *once.* You know you done a darn good job when something like that happens.
I’ll never forget watching this movie for the first time in a children’s hospital as a kid. I wouldn’t even become a Pokémon fan until much later on. This version of Mewtwo will always be my favorite and I’m actually one of those who doesn’t cry during Ash’s death 😅
I always thought that the names should've been reversed as a kid. Pidgeotto as a name adds onto Pidgeot, so I always figured it would make sense for Pidgeotto to be the name of the final evolution. I'm now wondering if this movie had anything to do with it.
@@seandewar47 I won't argue against that but I will say, as a five year old in the late 90s, I had zero grasp on the romance languages that utilised such a suffix nor did I know any English loanwords that borrowed it to the extent that I would understand what the suffix means. We're talking a child's logic, wherein the bigger word might mean the bigger creature. It's not what I think now, just an anecdote from when I was young.
To be fair, as a kid I immediately understood that normal Pokémon battles, and the kind of battling the clones were doing, were two very different things. It came up a lot in the show as well. One is for fun and to gain strength and experience, while the other is just outright abuse. Humans fight for fun and competition all the time. There's a big difference between that and fighting for anger or control. (Also they do mention the 'mons are fighting to the death so like...yeah 😅) and the message of "it doesn't matter that you're a clone, you're still worthy/the same" is in the Meowth monologue
yeah exactly, this is what i'm saying. the dub of mewtwo strikes back wasn't saying that pokemon shouldn't fight at all, but rather they shouldn't be fighting like this. we even hear nurse joy directly say that. i will admit that maybe the dub didn't portray that the best way they could, but it's not like they completely changed the themes of the film
This is how I read the intention, too. Evidently this sentiment wasn't made clear enough in dialogue for the general audience. The series would often have scenes with a battle where a Pokemon gets knocked out by one of the proganists', then in the next scene everyone's having sandwiches together or something, because it was clearly a friendly bout. Pretty sure that wasn't going to happen here with the clone battle.
7:27 rock types can still be hit by electric attacks, the problem was that golem is a rock AND a GROUND type because ground types can't get hit by electric attacks
@@BuryTheLight-tdsit's not that they forgot it's that they wrote themselves into a corner by giving ash two pokemon that can't handle rock right off the bat. His team at this point was Pikachu Pidgeotto and Butterfree, he literally had nothing to win unless they use the the "sleep counts as a loss" rule
Man this movie was everything to me growing up. I would get up Saturday mornings with my brother and watch the show religiously. It was such an incredible time. Thank you for reviewing this absolute nostalgia trip and taking us along with you!!
Fun fact Mew was suppose to be a jerk in the movie calling Mewtwo nothing but a clone and pretty much how worthless his existence was. The reason they wanted Mew this way was because it looks cute and innocent so it was like don’t judge a book by it’s cover type thing
Actually the original idea was Mew hated Mewtwo because he has been cloned without authorization It was scrapped because It was hard to make mew sound both endearing and threatening
I wonder how much better it would have been if we had gotten the original idea where Mew spoke & we saw how crude he really was, hating Mewtwo for being a copy AND hating humans for making "a copy." Also, it would have been better had we gotten the original idea & seen in the show where Ash had clashed with Mewtwo PRIOR to the events of the movie.
@@BuryTheLight-tdsI kind of have to agree, while not liking the clones is a believable attitude in general, it seems off-brand for how Mew is portrayed in other parts of the series.
@@BuryTheLight-tdsI like to think that Mew didn’t like the specific humans who made a copy and had nothing against Ash and other non scientist humans. I like to believe Mew is smart enough to tell good humans from evil humans. I also have a very dark fan theory that it was Mew who sabotaged the other clones in that cut scene. Including Ai/Amber consciousness. It explains why there were so many failed clones.
I was sad that the producers removed the scene with the little girl for the english version. Not only it developped Mewtwo's personality but it was very touching and cute. So seeing scientists dies in a fire is fine but a ghost kid explaining what is sadness and joy is not? Yeah that makes sense 😂Characters dying in an explosion is less scary than a kid talking to mewtwo! They keep that and the weird transitions with Bellssprout, Odish and Giglypuff. One horrifying scene and one reallty weird are more important than developping the main character apparently. Wise choice Fox kids!
That's right! The card was also referenced in the movie itself as the first card the antagonist ever got, and the root of his obsession in catching super rare Pokemon irl
@@aaronjohnson4404And? 4Kids wasn't great and censored a lot of things but it pretty much introduced a lot of kids to anime. Yugioh GX literally didn't even have its 4th season localised. For all its flaws its still pretty nostalgic to me and I quite like the voice acting
4:40 Just so you know, the extended opening sequence was actually added later after the movie had debuted in 1998 in Japan. I pointed Michael Haigney (who adapted the movie) to some footage of the scene and he didn’t recognize it, suggesting it wasn’t available when localization started on the film.
@@User_Here414 it's....very different in animation compared to the original, I watched the remake first and liked and then watched the original and felt that it was better
I really like that in the Finnish dub of this film, which was based on the 4Kids version, the lines of how "Pokemon aren't meant to fight like this." was changed into "Pokemon aren't tools for war.". Do I like this film? Yes, but from the early Pokemovies I prefer the 2000 and the Entei one over this.
I saw this movie either on TV or on VHS as a kid. And even though I can see the hypocrisy of the "Pokemon shouldn't be made to fight" speech, seeing the pokemon crying over Ash was just heartbreaking. Plus the scene of Pikachu slapping his clone until he broke down. Still, I have a soft spot for the third movie; Molly was adorable and should've been used in the series. Though, I do remember being completely confused with her relationship with Ash. I thought they were (half?) siblings due to Molly's dad and Ash looking alike and that picture of a younger Delia too. Anyway...speaking of film adaptions of an anime, I reccomend the film adaption to "Kimagure Orange Road". I saw it on Tubi yesterday and it's so atmospheric and heartbreaking. And this is coming form someone who hasn't even seen the show!
You actually don’t have to worry about switching to the original Japanese dialogue in the remake movie, cause the English dub retains the original Japanese dub. I’ve watched the remake in the English dub, and almost all the dialogue is the same as it’s being said in the English subtitles.
I remember watching this movie last year or 2, and despite not really being a big Pokemon fan, it was definitely a decent movie. Also, Ash now finally retiring from Pokemon is definitely shocking when I found out due to how long he was a major part of the Pokemon universe! Dang, have the times changed
@@warllockmasterasd9142yeah and also if adults do watch Pokémon I can bet a decent amount of them watch because they want to see what happens to Ash ( because he is from their childhood ) so they will be leaving with the new cast
@@CoolDino8682Nope. I’m 35 and have been watching Ash and Pikachu through all 25 seasons and I also love watching the new cast with Liko and Roy and Freid and Captain Pikachu. My 6 year old daughter is more upset about Ash being replaced.
■ Pokemon will always have a place in my heart. PokemonGO is when many new generations got excited for Pokemon again... I don't believe we will have that same level of hype for Pokemon ever again... However, I do believe that Pokemon: The First Movie was the only movie I was allowed to see as a child. My father was very against Pokemon due to the hidden messages. He told me it was full of violence & I should never ever watch it. My brother on the other hand, he was kind enough to allow me to watch it when the babysitter came round. I'll admit, I didn't see much of my brother during the time with my babysitter but they left me downstairs while they were I assume upstairs. I watched this movie & cried. It was the only movie so far in my whole life that managed to make me cry so hard... I relate to the poor Pikachu 😢
Bit of an explanation for the dub: Pokémon like to battle, testing themselves and stop when one faints. What MewTwo was doing in the dub was forcing them to fight to the death. Either the originals would die, or the clones would. That's why the trainers and Nurse Joy were so appalled.
The ancient Mew card was promotional for the second theatrical Pokémon movie. The first movie had exclusive/promotional cards that include Pikachu, Dragonite, Electabuzz, and Mewtwo
I loved watching the first pokémon movie as a kid and still love it as an adult. I didn't know about the missing scenes about mewtwo's backstory. I have to admit I cried when I first saw Ash died in the scene due to Pikachu's reactions to Ash's death. I knew even as a kid then they were not going to kill the main character off in the movie, but I really felt for Pikachu who in his point of view just witnessed his friend's death.
This is one of the many movies that made my childhood, I especially loved the songs in the film! But I guess I can understand how some people might think that the first Pokemon movie hasn't aged well in retrospect.
I actually just watched some scenes of the CGI remake for this movie, and the dialogue for the english dub is surprisingly kept the same as in the Japanese. The english subtitles are actually “dubtitles” so changing the language doesn’t really change much as its the exact same dialogue as the English version
Okay so I swear that the first time I saw this movie they put in the deleted scene at the beginning. I’m not sure if some channel aired this movie with this scene included on TV, I’ve been Mandela effected, or if I slipped into an alternate reality at some point in my life where that scene was taken out in the English version. I do know that I have distinct memories of seeing this scene and how I always thought the ending made sense given that it was a callback to the beginning that I remember.
I'll admit, I did cry the first viewing. But it was because I generally cried whenever I saw Pikachu crying. Also, I have to question, did Mewtwo in the original Japanese schedule them a boat ride home to go with his "I don't want to hurt you, so go home"? Because if not, he basically told them to swim home and they were going to die anyway.
Looking back with spell of the unown I feel the movie was trying to be like the last two movies but with everything that got rushed and what the writer wanted to tell but sadly what we got was a badly plan movie that the writer sadly was ashamed of
9:28 That had me laughing pretty darn good. 😂 Still though, I remember me and my sister actually having both those gold cards in the pokeball, and the new card. It’s been over 20 years though, so naturally they were lost with time, but still, such memories. For what it was, me and my sister both enjoyed it.
I liked how you went and compared both of the original and English dubs. Having watched both versions and including the cgi remake (which was pretty much like The Lion King 2019), I do agree that the og movie had better writing with Mewtwo’s arc and the fighting morals.
“I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life… that determines who you are.” Such a beautiful line in the movie, & the way Mewtwo’s voice actor reads it sounds so genuine. 🥲
No matter how many time si watch this movie, Ash's death always makes me cry. I think it's the music that does it, plus pikachu's reaction to it. It's especially powerful when you consider that in the beginning of the show, pikachu wouldn't give a single toss about Ash. As for the music aspect, I only say this because when I listened to the Sountrack for the movie some time ago, the music from this scene came up and reminded me of the context. Which made me cry. I love this movie with all my heart, even with its flaws! ❤
I loved this movie as a child. I actually got to compare the English and Japanese. The English dub soundtrack slaps it was weird to see no music in Japanese.
Something about that intro with the glossy pokeball just rockets me back to my childhood, loved this movie as a kid and I don’t think I can ever shake my love for it now at 21.
I watched this movie for the first time last year (I’m 25 lol). Idk why but I found the scene where Jessie and James were saying the wrong Pokémon names funny when James blurts out “It’s Meowth!” The millisecond he pops up on screen😂
I remember being a kid and going to see the movie in theaters. I think Ash dying was the first time that I cried at a movie that I saw in theaters. Still cry during the scene when all the clone and regular Pokemon are fighting. Very impactful.
1:29 It was not the Trading Cards, they flopped. It was the Battle Game Cards that people collected. 2:04 The Ancient Mew card was actually a promotion for the second film, Pokémon the Movie 2000, in which it was even owned by the main villain, Lawrence III. The promotional card for the first film was a Mewtwo card. 2:51 Onix not being able to pull Charizard out by himself is because he actually has extremely weak statistics and is purely defensive. 3:11 No one was smoking anything when writing and animating this sequence. 4:04-13:00 Mew is actually a Mythical Pokémon, not a Legendary Pokémon. 4:36-15:57 The scene with Doctor Fuji's daughter Amber's clone Ambertwo is actually a ten-minute prologue named The Uncut Story of Mewtwo's Origin (1999), only included in the kanzenban and Japanese television versions of the film and based on The Birth of Mewtwo (1998), a radio drama originally broadcast over the five Sundays leading up to the film's premiere in Japanese theaters, between June 7, 1998 and July 12, 1998. 5:51-6:08-15:39-16:49 In the original Japanese version, Mewtwo is portrayed as a confused being who questions his worth as a clone and wished to have a more direct confrontation with humanity. In the English dub, he is more boastful about his powers and certain about superiority to Mew and wants to destroy the world with a hurricane that he created to get revenge on humanity. 7:25 Rock-types can still be hit by electric attacks. The problem was that Golem is both a Rock-type and a Ground-type, and Ground-types are immune to electric attacks. 8:04 Brock is actually just a 15-year-old who gets all romantic and googly-eyed and flirts with girls, telling them that they are beautiful and asking them to be his girlfriend. He does not say anything that might indicate that he gets some kind of sexual satisfaction out of it. 8:34 This is actually foreshadowing the fact that the mysterious woman in the hologram is Nurse Joy, kidnapped amd hypnotized by Mewtwo. 11:46 Team Rocket is pretty stupid, though I am not sure why Meowth got Sandslash mixed up since he is beyond smarter than Jessie and James. I cannot be too hard on James for not getting it right, since Jessie's stupidity probably does rub off on him. 12:39 To be fair, we have seen Ash Ketchum pick up logs four times the size of him in the future, and withstand things that would definitely kill a normal person. If he actually hit Mewtwo, I think that he could do some damage. 13:04 Mew was originally a jerk in the Japanese version. It is commonly stated that in the Japanese version Mew called Mewtwo nothing but a clone and pretty much told him how worthless his existence was, basically saying how the clones are "inferior and should die". This is either a mistranslation or an outright lie. The actual line is roughly "The real ones are real. If the clones fight only using their bodies and not with skill, the real ones will never lose." The reason that they wanted Mew this way was because he looks cute and innocent, so it was like a "don't judge a book by it's cover" thing. The English dub instead has Mew giving Mewtwo a speech about how real strength comes from the heart. In the end, Mewtwo is not the only one learning a lesson, Mew had to learn about equality between clones and originals as well. 13:32-14:14-14:18 The normal Pokémon battles, and the kind of battling that the clones were doing, were two very different things. It came up a lot in the anime as well. One is for fun and to gain strength and experience, while the other is just outright abuse. Humans fight for fun and competition all the time. There is a big difference between that and fighting for anger or control. The moral is more meant to be "fighting in THIS manner is wrong", because despite the reputation, Pokémon is more sportsmanlike and akin to Japanese beetle fights, which are non-fatal tests of strength. Mewtwo said beforehand that he got rid of all the Pokémon's abilities to use moves, so they are just fighting to the death, which is most likely what the English translators (Norman J. Grossfeld, Michael Haigney and John Touhey) meant by "Pokémon aren't meant to fight... not like this..." Because of that, you should not curse Nurse Joy for saying that line, or even Neesha, who clearly did not say it. There is also the message of "it does not matter that you are a clone, you are still worthy/the same", which Meowth talks with his clone Meowthtwo about. 14:41 Almost all the dialogue for the English dub of the remake, Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution (2019), is surprisingly faithful to the original Japanese script. The English subtitles are actually "dubtitles", so changing the language does not really change much as it is the exact same dialogue as the English version. 20:30 According to Takeshi Shudo's notes on the film, Ash was petrified but not killed when Mewtwo and Mew's Psychic blasts collided with him, and the tears simply restored him. Miranda's tale of "the legend of winds" was added to the English dub to provide an explanation for why Pokémon tears had the power to bring people back from the dead. In the original, she just did not want anyone's lives to be endangered by the storm. This explanation was also mentioned by Ambertwo in The Uncut Story of Mewtwo's Origin's English dub, when she was dying and young Mewtwo began to cry. 22:02-22:09-22:56 Steve, the "middle finger" scenarios that you present are completely different, and I feel like you are doing the film wrong by presenting it as the same thing. Mewtwo wiping everyone's memories of the events does kind of make sense. He says much less at the end of the original version, telling Mew that the events are best forgotten, and only saying to Ash that the clones will live somewhere in the world. He wiped their memories so that no one would look for him and his clones, and even if one person remembers the events somehow, it will slip and then there will be trainers looking to capture Mewtwo, and he does not want that to happen. He just wants to be alone with his clones. The remake's post-credits scene, which was previously a shot of Mew flying off into the mountains, now shows Mewtwo and the clones flying toward Mount Quena, foreshadowing Mewtwo Returns (2000). The events did happen and are canon. You are right about the experiences that the cast (sans Mewtwo, Mew and the clones) went through being wasted, but only on them, not the viewer. The viewer gets to take all this home; it really happened to Ash and company, and Mew and Mewtwo still had character development. It could also be that the English dub was poorly translated and censored to the point of the entire ending being ruined. I also think that it was unneccessary and a little unfair of you to sarcastically curse Ash just for wondering why he, Pikachu, Misty, Brock and the others are back at the Pokémon Center, when he barely did anything wrong.
Thank you for that 7th point. It's so irritating how so many people misinterpret the "Fighting is wrong" moral because the whole "PoKéMon iS CoCk-FiGhTinG" bullshit.
Fun fact, the pidgeotto line isn't an error per se. Pidgeots japanese name is pidgeotto, while pidgeottos japanese name is pidgeot. Why they switched them, idk, but if you go off original names, what the kid called pidgeot was correct.
I just realized that the scientist in the beginning seems to be modeled after Dr. Tenma of Astro Boy fame. Now that is a modern remake I actually enjoyed.
The forced tears at Pokémon Centers for healing Pokémon you brought up reminded me of Soulstorm Brew being made from Mudokan tears in the old school game Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus. I was almost expecting the reference in the video too
Sorry if I said somenthing wrong, English is not my mother lenguage. In my country dub version, they made the same mistakes because the dub director or whatever took the english version as a base and that viking joke where translate like "some play american football (or just football)" I really love this movie, I have many reasons besides the nostalgia. Also, I don't cry with the "ash's dead" as well, like never, I fealt sad to see the pokemon crying and all but not at the point for drop tears or something. 22:06 It is supose that this movie is not canon but in someway it is, there is a TV special that shows what happend to Mewtwo and the pokemon clones and Ash and his friends meet Mewtwo again and in the end Mewtwo don't erase the memories of the characters, in the last season of Ash's adventure in Japan announce an episode that Ash will meet the same Mewtwo of the first movie.
7:30 Electric can hit Rock. Golem is half _Ground_ which is why Pikachu's electric attacks should have been null and void. But this isn't the first time that's happened, either. I recall Pikachu using electricity against Brock's Onix in the beginning of the series, and much later against a Piloswine, both of which are also half ground.
Nope you definitely aren't alone in enjoying the English OST a bit more. No shade to the original, but there are definitely some tracks that i think just sell the atmosphere and emotion just a bit more. (The Japanese OST that played when the pokèmon we getting chased by pokeballs was......certainly not what i expected....) Birth of Mewtwo and it's reoccurring motifs will live rent free in my head forever along with Lugia's song from Power of One. Now as for which Mew Theme...uh....both....? I like both. Ok maaaaaaaaybe I'm hella nostalgic for the American version.😅 Can you blame me? That flute is just so magical and wonderfully playful. Perfect for my favourite mythical.
I missed the original team rocket, back when they made pitfalls and had more story moments for themselves. And Pikachu's Goodbye "The Time Has Come" is a song that still gets me to this day
if you thought the mindwipe at the end of the movie was a copout, you should've seen the western fandom's reaction to the Genesect movie reveal that revealed Awakened Mewtwo (later named Mega Mewtwo Y). there was a japanese trailer where Ash actually says Mewtwo's name, when everyone else didn't know who it was, which gave the implication that it was the same Mewtwo from the first movie; which would kind of makes sense from the Mewtwo's Returns special where almost everyone got mindwiped again. but the Genesect movie Mewtwo was a entirely separate Mewtwo from M1 Mewtwo. guess at least they remembered that when he battle M1 Mewtwo again in SWSH's anime...but they never followed up on a rematch after that, honestly i wouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of legal wrangling Game Freak did after Takeshi Shudo's death, maybe they gained the rights to writing the character in official media from his estate?
That was actually the case. I was just as surprised learning years later. Had no idea the whole reason that separate Mewtwo thing happened was because of legal stuff from Takeshi Shudo's estate..... Seriously seeing a new Mewtwo was jarring as *HECK.*
@@absolite6 honestly pretty non-consequencial how they even got the rights to that specific mewtwo. the 3D remake is almost pretty much 1:1 with the original, so it's not like they would've been carte blanc on doing any changes. but it's just extremely weird to see that specific Mewtwo within the Journeys anime itself. that's still a year and 4 months after the 3D movie and its anime appearance. it has the same japanese voice actor in all its appearances, though Dan Green fills in from Mewtwo Returns-onwards, which is kind of impressive since he was more of a 4Kids voice actor.👀 If M1 Mewtwo was a ratings stunt for Journeys in japan, i'd definitely believe it.
I remember that as a kid, I was holding back my tears in the theater because I tought it was weird to cry for fictionnal characters. Althho, now I don't give a damn and just open the floodgates and embrace whatever emotions movies are making me feel The first 3 movies are still and will always be my favorites, nostalgia or not, they are special to me and many other kids from the 1990s. We saw the beginnings of the serie and are still here today
Oh yeah Steve... Rock types aren't immune to Electric Attacks, that would be Ground Types which Golem is part of. Good video just figured I'd share this even if chances are someone else has already pointed it out. But as far as memory goes Pokémon Logic in the anime does not follow the games completely early on. Most notably ghost types were intended to be super effective to the Psychic Type however due to a programming error ghost attacks when hitting Psychic types were treated like Normal types instead dealing no damage. Even so there was only 2 Ghost attacks, Lick and Night Shade. This would be remedied in the next generation.
15:56 About that scene, this prologue was NOT in the original Japanese version. It was created for the '99 "Kanzenban" release of the film, specifically made for American audiences. While it didn't show up in American theatres, it released on DVD in Japan in June 2000, containing both the sub and the English dub.
Mewtwo's dub VA Jay Philip Goede (credited as Philip Bartlett) is alive, and not dead like rumors of old because Dan Green plays Mewtwo in the tv movie.
I rented this tape over and over again and of course cried. Mostly because pikachu was so sad. To this day I love the animation during the charizard battle
Nice vid, spot on editing. I wholly agree that the comments during the clones fight scene make absolutely no sense in the English version, that's spot on. I completely disagree with mewtwo being a huge existentialist for the whole movie (JP) is straight up better than his bitter attitude towards humans for their mistreatment and (his imagined) superiority of "real" pokemon (US) Especially during his initial freshly born phase, it would make total sense for him to be confused at first, then sense his powers being fuelled by confusion and frustration, and lash out. Also, the "middle finger" scenarios you present are completely different, and I feel like you're doing the movie wrong by presenting it as the same thing if I'm being honest. The events did happen and are canon regardless of you suggesting they aren't, whereas if writers use the "it was imagination/ a dream", they didn't and wouldn't be. You're right about the experiences the cast went through being wasted, but on THEM, not the viewer. The viewer gets to take all this home; it really happened to Ash & co, and Mew and Mewtwo still had character development. Enjoyed the vid nonetheless!
We NEED a redub of this movie with the original message, the message still gets across, but it a wires-crossed way. Fandub or actual company I don't mind
Yea, I have a question. At 7:25, Steve says that Golem got electrocuted despite being a rock type, when it's actually GROUND type that's immune to electric. Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder
I loved the soundtracks in them too. I always cry during the third one with the instrumental of "I want things to be real again", at least I believe that was the specific one. All I know is, it still makes me cry to this day.
Ok, rewatching the scene with ash trying to fight the cloning machine... Did mewtwo use the scientist's bones to make that machine? I never noticed as a kid, but it seems like mewtwo used the arm and leg bones of the scientists to make his machine. Either that or heavily inspired by himan bones at th very least
Honestly I loved this film as a kid and even now, I can’t see flaws because of heavy nostalgia. I remember playing this yellow tape on my machine and rewinding it at night to watch again I would love to see someone restore the original Japanese version as an English dub, nothing changed but the language. Be really interesting to see how it was ment to pan out Also also, please review the other Pokémon movies when you can, I had all of them on tape (the ones that were released on tape) as a kid and would love to see you review them
14:05 I think what the movie was trying to tell that war isn't right, they're fighting because of trying to proves somthing. Battling is more on the fun side........at least that's what I'm getting from it.
The Minnesota joke everyone - including the adults - loved in the theater. XD I’m from Minnesota so that line is so great to us all. We love it. It’s so dumb. But we still quote it to this day.
Oh this should be a good one, I’m happy to have discovered your reviews, they’re always good. I went to see the movie 3 times in theaters, so I actually really liked it. From time to time I’ll watch a Pokémon movie just because I like them still. I have several of the gold Burger King things lol. Something I never thought about till right now, but did those of you from England, Australia, other English speaking countries, ever wish the characters would have your accent in the dubs? It’s something that seems interesting to me just now bc I’ve never thought about it, but I could see that being something that would aggravate y’all as kids since most everything is dubbed in an American, sore-y also Canadian, accent.
Man, I remember the hype! But I was too poor to actually go see the movie in theaters, so I had to wait for the VHS release. I did manage to get one of those Mew cards in a trade, though, and it's put away safely.
So I always took the message as it's bad to make them fight for bad things such as world domination, war, etc, but regular battles were more like sport fights, like sparring in tournaments or something.
[ 🟪 ] *I'll never forget* the moment I watched The First Pokemon Movie. It was during a time when my friends were in highschool. It's when I discovered that my childhood sweetheart. Yes, we became lovers together when we were children. I've always loved him and that's when it happened. He taught me Pokemon, Mewtwo, etc. I don't remember all the Pokemon but I do remember the great times we had on the couch when the parents weren't home. Good times! He liked my socks a little too much but he told me that it's a Pikachu thing... 😊
I forgot about that at the end. As a kid I remember that pissed me off too. It did the Alice in Wonderland thing but hers is a dream which is kind of lame but it still happened to her and in Through the Looking Glass she goes back; so was it really a dream? Pokemon was like: this never happened, THE END. I completely forgot about that because I only watched it once. I remember being nine years old and being mad about that. Kids aren't stupid.
Now that you've started, I honestly hope you go through some of the other movies. The most memorable one from my childhood was the Celeby one (mostly because I loved Tyranitar to no ends)
That would be awesome if he did the other ones, at least up to 6 and 8. Those were my favorite movies growing up and I still love them to this day! I still wonder what Steve thinks of them though.😄❤
You don't cry for ash's death, more of pikachus sorrow thinking he is dead. The desperation, the denial it has never failed to make me cry. Ik that they wouldn't kill him off but it was more of how Pikachu reacted that got me
What I loved about Detective Pikachu was that it treated Pokémon fights like illegal underground dogfights. Because in Ryme City, Pokémon are treated like service animals. This movie literally contradicts its own franchise for a tacked on 'fighting is bad' message.
I'm not a clone, but I had my first existential crisis when I was about three or so. So when this movie came out, it was a revelation to me. I've never seen anyone bring up such topics in cartoons before. I didn't even know that someone in the world was also experiencing this.
Reading throught the comments, it appears I have made a couple of errors regarding Pokemon facts. (boy I really hope someone got fired for that blunder) So a couple of corrections:
*Electric attacks do actually effect Rock type Pokemon, it is the fact the Golem is also a Ground type means he shouldn't be affected.
*Onix actually has really weak base stats, so maybe he wouldn't be able to pull Charizard out afterall.
Any other corrections, or fun Pokemon facts you have. Please do let me know!
Steve Would You Please Do A Review Of The 2005 Film, Hoodwinked! Please
And The Adult Aardman Show, Angry Kid Please.
Can you do Crisis Jung?
www.youtube.com/@bobbypills.english/videos
Can you give the source for the video at 3:46 please?
Also it wasn't the trading cards, they flopped, it was the battling game cards that people collected.
My Dad had never really cared for Pokemon, even voiced his disapproval of me watching it all the time and spending what little cash I had on the cards. But when my Mom died after a prolonged cancer battle, and I could barely leave my room for weeks afterwards, he saw this was in theaters and took me to see it. I love my Dad.
@@SeaTolli22tf dude
@@SeaTolli22Maybe someday you, too can build meaningful relationships with people who love and respect you.
Until then get fucked nerd
That's so sweet op
Awww
*Wholesome 100*
The Viking joke nailed it out of the park here in Minnesota, the theater was in an uproar in laughter and applause for 5 minutes.
It came out of nowhere.
YEAHHHHHH
still don't get it :/
@@nintony2994Referring to the Minnesota Vikings, the NFL team
The fact they attempted to tie it into the main series was exactly why I was so hyped for this back in 2000. That was definitely a lv. 100 caterpie, btw.
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@@the_real_tabbyThey remember in the sequel though. Mewtwo lets them keep their memories and only erases Giovanni’s.
Its all about dem weedles mang, to hell with the caterpie!
@@chimmichurri6940 The lack of poison-type is exactly why that Caterpie would have destroyed Mewtwo.
@@devonm042690 ill dstroy YOUR Mewtwo XD
I actually did cry at the end of the first movie, and truth be told, it still makes me tear up a little bit, despite knowing that Ash doesn't die. I think what gets me is thinking about it from Pikachu's perspective, as well as the performance of Pikachu's voice actor. When Pikachu thinks Ash is really dead, he sounds so heartbroken.
Especially in the remake. That VA really makes those “pika pi” noises sound so much like Pikachu is utterly heart broken. It’s the only reason why I tolerate the remake and don’t actually hate it.
Oh yeah exactly. Ash turning into stone? Don't care. All the pokémon crying? yawn... but Pikachu desperately trying to revive Ash? Aww men, that choked me up..
You know the Mcs not gonna die but atleast think of the moment as if he was and the perspective of the characters in said moment
Still in my 30s I still tear up.
It still gets me now bro!
So, two things:
- Ash's "death" scene always tears me up, not because of him, but because of pikachu's reaction. I don't know, that desperation of seeing a loved one go and being incapable of doing anything, it gets me on a personal level.
- I have watched the full movie subbed, and although I appreciate Mewtwo's character a lot more, the existential crisis he goes through really hits close to home. I feel like tearing up everytime he speaks, I can feel his pain, and it hurts.
Ash should have stayed dead
aaaa someone gets it when it comes to mewtwo!!!!! i tear up at least a bit everytime i go back to this movie 'cause of what he did and what he had to go through :"((
@@haroldnecmann7040 eh at least he died another 5 times
This and Pokemon 2000 are still my favorite movies of the franchise. Mewtwo's voice gave me chills as a child, both of fear and yet, awe-struck at how awesome it is.
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It's so funny yet oddly adorable that Mewtwo's voice actor had no idea till years later just how impactful his performance was in this movie. Dude literally gained a following from voice acting *once.*
You know you done a darn good job when something like that happens.
@@absolite6
And he was also the voice of Yugi Muto and once again voiced a "villain" Pokémon two movies later. Dan Green is a legend.
@@helixsol7171In the first movie, he was voiced by Philip Bartlett. Dan Green took over the role after that.
@@JustinsEpicVoiceRecordings
My bad, sounds so similar
I’ll never forget watching this movie for the first time in a children’s hospital as a kid.
I wouldn’t even become a Pokémon fan until much later on.
This version of Mewtwo will always be my favorite and I’m actually one of those who doesn’t cry during Ash’s death 😅
Was sad, but never cried either. Now the part with Amber.....
Yeah, that I cried like a baby....... ;-;
@@absolite6Baby Mewtwo’s tear’s always get me. Poor Ai/Amber. Poor Dr. Fuji. Poor baby Mewtwo.
I always assumed he called his Pidgeot "Pidgeotto" because it had just recently evolved and he wasn't used to calling it that yet lmao
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I always thought that the names should've been reversed as a kid. Pidgeotto as a name adds onto Pidgeot, so I always figured it would make sense for Pidgeotto to be the name of the final evolution.
I'm now wondering if this movie had anything to do with it.
@jordankeller4253 That wouldn't make sense since the "Otto" in Pidgeotto is a suffix that is often used to describe a young person or animal.
@@seandewar47 I won't argue against that but I will say, as a five year old in the late 90s, I had zero grasp on the romance languages that utilised such a suffix nor did I know any English loanwords that borrowed it to the extent that I would understand what the suffix means.
We're talking a child's logic, wherein the bigger word might mean the bigger creature. It's not what I think now, just an anecdote from when I was young.
In Japan Pidgeots name is Pidgeotto and Pigeottos name is Pidgeon
To be fair, as a kid I immediately understood that normal Pokémon battles, and the kind of battling the clones were doing, were two very different things. It came up a lot in the show as well. One is for fun and to gain strength and experience, while the other is just outright abuse. Humans fight for fun and competition all the time. There's a big difference between that and fighting for anger or control. (Also they do mention the 'mons are fighting to the death so like...yeah 😅) and the message of "it doesn't matter that you're a clone, you're still worthy/the same" is in the Meowth monologue
yeah exactly, this is what i'm saying. the dub of mewtwo strikes back wasn't saying that pokemon shouldn't fight at all, but rather they shouldn't be fighting like this. we even hear nurse joy directly say that. i will admit that maybe the dub didn't portray that the best way they could, but it's not like they completely changed the themes of the film
That's fair. Regular pokemon battles kind of feel like MMA but with quicker recovery time.
@@gideonparry5684 The difference between controlled matches and all-out war. There, they weren't allowed to stop when they were tired
Whatever helps ye sleep at night,folks.
This is how I read the intention, too. Evidently this sentiment wasn't made clear enough in dialogue for the general audience.
The series would often have scenes with a battle where a Pokemon gets knocked out by one of the proganists', then in the next scene everyone's having sandwiches together or something, because it was clearly a friendly bout. Pretty sure that wasn't going to happen here with the clone battle.
7:27 rock types can still be hit by electric attacks, the problem was that golem is a rock AND a GROUND type because ground types can't get hit by electric attacks
Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder
This happened in the Brock gym battle as well, I can't imagine why they forgot about the type matchups of their own creations
In the remake golem is sobtitute by a Hypno
@@stefanomartini6842 Actually, it’s a Drowzee, but close enough.
@@BuryTheLight-tdsit's not that they forgot it's that they wrote themselves into a corner by giving ash two pokemon that can't handle rock right off the bat.
His team at this point was Pikachu Pidgeotto and Butterfree, he literally had nothing to win unless they use the the "sleep counts as a loss" rule
Man this movie was everything to me growing up. I would get up Saturday mornings with my brother and watch the show religiously. It was such an incredible time. Thank you for reviewing this absolute nostalgia trip and taking us along with you!!
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@@p-__ No their not spammer.
Fun fact Mew was suppose to be a jerk in the movie calling Mewtwo nothing but a clone and pretty much how worthless his existence was. The reason they wanted Mew this way was because it looks cute and innocent so it was like don’t judge a book by it’s cover type thing
Damn, this sounds like a thing you’d hear as a “Fun Fact:” joke…
Pretty sure that's just the Japanese dub
@@DakotaofRaptors Really? No wonder a lot of people love sub more.
If that's the case no wonder Mewtwo was so aggressive lol 😅
Actually the original idea was
Mew hated Mewtwo because he has been cloned without authorization
It was scrapped because It was hard to make mew sound both endearing and threatening
I wonder how much better it would have been if we had gotten the original idea where Mew spoke & we saw how crude he really was, hating Mewtwo for being a copy AND hating humans for making "a copy." Also, it would have been better had we gotten the original idea & seen in the show where Ash had clashed with Mewtwo PRIOR to the events of the movie.
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I feel like kids wouldn't like it as much as the one we got, after all, Mew is supposed to be this cute and powerful legendary
@@BuryTheLight-tdsI kind of have to agree, while not liking the clones is a believable attitude in general, it seems off-brand for how Mew is portrayed in other parts of the series.
@@BuryTheLight-tdsI like to think that Mew didn’t like the specific humans who made a copy and had nothing against Ash and other non scientist humans. I like to believe Mew is smart enough to tell good humans from evil humans. I also have a very dark fan theory that it was Mew who sabotaged the other clones in that cut scene. Including Ai/Amber consciousness. It explains why there were so many failed clones.
@@princesspikachu3915 Ah, that theory could in theory(pun?) be possible
I was sad that the producers removed the scene with the little girl for the english version. Not only it developped Mewtwo's personality but it was very touching and cute. So seeing scientists dies in a fire is fine but a ghost kid explaining what is sadness and joy is not? Yeah that makes sense 😂Characters dying in an explosion is less scary than a kid talking to mewtwo! They keep that and the weird transitions with Bellssprout, Odish and Giglypuff. One horrifying scene and one reallty weird are more important than developping the main character apparently. Wise choice Fox kids!
Jigglypuff one is cute
Don't you mean 4kids?
The ancient mew card was actually given out for the 2nd movie in theaters! Just a little info in case someone didn't know! I love this movie so much!
That's right! The card was also referenced in the movie itself as the first card the antagonist ever got, and the root of his obsession in catching super rare Pokemon irl
Before watching the video I have to say, 4kids did an amazing job at the soundtrack. The orchestrated music is still memorable after all these years
My farts are better than Steve’s farts.
For all of 4kids's many flaws, at least they put out some great theme songs.
Wasn't 4kids the same company that made the English dub of Sonic X, which wasn't as good as the Japanese dub?
@@aaronjohnson4404And? 4Kids wasn't great and censored a lot of things but it pretty much introduced a lot of kids to anime. Yugioh GX literally didn't even have its 4th season localised. For all its flaws its still pretty nostalgic to me and I quite like the voice acting
@@aaronjohnson4404 In Japanese version Sonic cusses in the 2nd episode. He says sh!t clear as day. No wonder they censored.
I remember watching this in the cinema. The rise of Pokémon in the late '90/early 2000's... Great days, they were.
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Remember the amazing merchandising from Burger King?
During the Ash dying part, I never cried until it showed Pikachu crying. That face and his defeated voice killed me!
No one actually cared ash died
4:40 Just so you know, the extended opening sequence was actually added later after the movie had debuted in 1998 in Japan. I pointed Michael Haigney (who adapted the movie) to some footage of the scene and he didn’t recognize it, suggesting it wasn’t available when localization started on the film.
And people hate him for that
I never experienced the first Pokémon movie til January of this year in it’s original language and boy what an experience that was
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@@p-__fax
Whatever you do, don't watch the remake
@@BuryTheLight-tds Why? Is it bad?
@@User_Here414 it's....very different in animation compared to the original, I watched the remake first and liked and then watched the original and felt that it was better
I really like that in the Finnish dub of this film, which was based on the 4Kids version, the lines of how "Pokemon aren't meant to fight like this." was changed into "Pokemon aren't tools for war.".
Do I like this film? Yes, but from the early Pokemovies I prefer the 2000 and the Entei one over this.
I saw this movie either on TV or on VHS as a kid. And even though I can see the hypocrisy of the "Pokemon shouldn't be made to fight" speech, seeing the pokemon crying over Ash was just heartbreaking. Plus the scene of Pikachu slapping his clone until he broke down. Still, I have a soft spot for the third movie; Molly was adorable and should've been used in the series. Though, I do remember being completely confused with her relationship with Ash. I thought they were (half?) siblings due to Molly's dad and Ash looking alike and that picture of a younger Delia too.
Anyway...speaking of film adaptions of an anime, I reccomend the film adaption to "Kimagure Orange Road". I saw it on Tubi yesterday and it's so atmospheric and heartbreaking. And this is coming form someone who hasn't even seen the show!
Surprised you didn't mention that the hands in Mewtwo's cloning machine were the bones of the scientists that originally created Mewtwo
I did not know that. 👀
i the manga i think it was the blaine who helped create mewtwo with his dna, so in some sence mew is mewtwo mother while blaine is his father
I was never really a fan of Pokémon but I respected it and even this made me cry
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You actually don’t have to worry about switching to the original Japanese dialogue in the remake movie, cause the English dub retains the original Japanese dub. I’ve watched the remake in the English dub, and almost all the dialogue is the same as it’s being said in the English subtitles.
I remember watching this movie last year or 2, and despite not really being a big Pokemon fan, it was definitely a decent movie. Also, Ash now finally retiring from Pokemon is definitely shocking when I found out due to how long he was a major part of the Pokemon universe! Dang, have the times changed
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Ehh he'll only retire proper if the new cast is successful.
Ash will be kept in the freezer fresh and ready for when he is needed again.
@@warllockmasterasd9142yeah and also if adults do watch Pokémon I can bet a decent amount of them watch because they want to see what happens to Ash ( because he is from their childhood ) so they will be leaving with the new cast
@@CoolDino8682Nope. I’m 35 and have been watching Ash and Pikachu through all 25 seasons and I also love watching the new cast with Liko and Roy and Freid and Captain Pikachu. My 6 year old daughter is more upset about Ash being replaced.
■ Pokemon will always have a place in my heart. PokemonGO is when many new generations got excited for Pokemon again... I don't believe we will have that same level of hype for Pokemon ever again... However, I do believe that Pokemon: The First Movie was the only movie I was allowed to see as a child. My father was very against Pokemon due to the hidden messages. He told me it was full of violence & I should never ever watch it. My brother on the other hand, he was kind enough to allow me to watch it when the babysitter came round. I'll admit, I didn't see much of my brother during the time with my babysitter but they left me downstairs while they were I assume upstairs. I watched this movie & cried. It was the only movie so far in my whole life that managed to make me cry so hard... I relate to the poor Pikachu 😢
Bit of an explanation for the dub: Pokémon like to battle, testing themselves and stop when one faints. What MewTwo was doing in the dub was forcing them to fight to the death. Either the originals would die, or the clones would. That's why the trainers and Nurse Joy were so appalled.
He never forced them to fight, he wanted to fight Mew and the other clones decided to fight their original forms.
The ancient Mew card was promotional for the second theatrical Pokémon movie. The first movie had exclusive/promotional cards that include Pikachu, Dragonite, Electabuzz, and Mewtwo
I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder
I loved watching the first pokémon movie as a kid and still love it as an adult. I didn't know about the missing scenes about mewtwo's backstory. I have to admit I cried when I first saw Ash died in the scene due to Pikachu's reactions to Ash's death. I knew even as a kid then they were not going to kill the main character off in the movie, but I really felt for Pikachu who in his point of view just witnessed his friend's death.
This is one of the many movies that made my childhood, I especially loved the songs in the film! But I guess I can understand how some people might think that the first Pokemon movie hasn't aged well in retrospect.
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What the heck?
I actually just watched some scenes of the CGI remake for this movie, and the dialogue for the english dub is surprisingly kept the same as in the Japanese. The english subtitles are actually “dubtitles” so changing the language doesn’t really change much as its the exact same dialogue as the English version
Okay so I swear that the first time I saw this movie they put in the deleted scene at the beginning. I’m not sure if some channel aired this movie with this scene included on TV, I’ve been Mandela effected, or if I slipped into an alternate reality at some point in my life where that scene was taken out in the English version. I do know that I have distinct memories of seeing this scene and how I always thought the ending made sense given that it was a callback to the beginning that I remember.
I'll admit, I did cry the first viewing. But it was because I generally cried whenever I saw Pikachu crying. Also, I have to question, did Mewtwo in the original Japanese schedule them a boat ride home to go with his "I don't want to hurt you, so go home"? Because if not, he basically told them to swim home and they were going to die anyway.
Pretty mewtwo could just conjur up some extra powerful ferries that could with stand a powerful storm for them to leave in.
I like the English Voice Actor for Mewtwo. Hope he's getting great voice acting work! :)
I will forever adore this movie. It came out when I was 10, and it was perfect. I will forever love it and all its flaws.
Looking back with spell of the unown I feel the movie was trying to be like the last two movies but with everything that got rushed and what the writer wanted to tell but sadly what we got was a badly plan movie that the writer sadly was ashamed of
@@comicbookreviewer4856 I honestly loved that Unown movie despite it being a complex mess
@@comicbookreviewer4856 I adore that movie too. Honestly, the first three and Mewtwo returns had such a huge impact on my creative development
9:28 That had me laughing pretty darn good. 😂
Still though, I remember me and my sister actually having both those gold cards in the pokeball, and the new card. It’s been over 20 years though, so naturally they were lost with time, but still, such memories.
For what it was, me and my sister both enjoyed it.
You have no idea how hard it was for me not to click on this video the nostalgia is almost instinctual.
7:21 The rude awakening of Optimus Prime is hilarious nostalgia
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I liked how you went and compared both of the original and English dubs. Having watched both versions and including the cgi remake (which was pretty much like The Lion King 2019), I do agree that the og movie had better writing with Mewtwo’s arc and the fighting morals.
I remember seeing this movie in theaters and getting the special Mew mural card. Good times.
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Ancient Mew wasn’t given out until the 2nd movie.
@@princesspikachu3915 Really? I went to see that one too, so maybe I'm mixing up my memories...
@@TayoEXE Yeah. That’s why the bad guy in the 2nd movie has a Ancient Mew card.
i love Pokemon
Same
My farts are better than Steve’s farts 💨
Me too
With that pfp I know you do
Same
*OMG!* LMAO! I don't know why but seeing 15:08 BROCK... I'm not sure what it is about this animation but... 😂
“I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life… that determines who you are.” Such a beautiful line in the movie, & the way Mewtwo’s voice actor reads it sounds so genuine. 🥲
Tell me about it! That line is one I have never forgotten before and I never will!❤
I’ll never forget Herman Cain straight up plagiarizing this speech and acting like he came up with it.
No matter how many time si watch this movie, Ash's death always makes me cry. I think it's the music that does it, plus pikachu's reaction to it. It's especially powerful when you consider that in the beginning of the show, pikachu wouldn't give a single toss about Ash.
As for the music aspect, I only say this because when I listened to the Sountrack for the movie some time ago, the music from this scene came up and reminded me of the context. Which made me cry. I love this movie with all my heart, even with its flaws! ❤
I loved this movie as a child. I actually got to compare the English and Japanese. The English dub soundtrack slaps it was weird to see no music in Japanese.
The pop soundtrack
I doubt anyone thought Ashe was actually gone, I'm sure all of our tears were for Pikachu whose heart was breaking before our eyes.
"I'm sure Onix would've freed Charizard by itself"
Bruh, Onix's base attack is lower than Oddish's 😭
Something about that intro with the glossy pokeball just rockets me back to my childhood, loved this movie as a kid and I don’t think I can ever shake my love for it now at 21.
I watched this movie for the first time last year (I’m 25 lol). Idk why but I found the scene where Jessie and James were saying the wrong Pokémon names funny when James blurts out “It’s Meowth!” The millisecond he pops up on screen😂
I remember being a kid and going to see the movie in theaters. I think Ash dying was the first time that I cried at a movie that I saw in theaters. Still cry during the scene when all the clone and regular Pokemon are fighting.
Very impactful.
1:29 It was not the Trading Cards, they flopped. It was the Battle Game Cards that people collected.
2:04 The Ancient Mew card was actually a promotion for the second film, Pokémon the Movie 2000, in which it was even owned by the main villain, Lawrence III. The promotional card for the first film was a Mewtwo card.
2:51 Onix not being able to pull Charizard out by himself is because he actually has extremely weak statistics and is purely defensive.
3:11 No one was smoking anything when writing and animating this sequence.
4:04-13:00 Mew is actually a Mythical Pokémon, not a Legendary Pokémon.
4:36-15:57 The scene with Doctor Fuji's daughter Amber's clone Ambertwo is actually a ten-minute prologue named The Uncut Story of Mewtwo's Origin (1999), only included in the kanzenban and Japanese television versions of the film and based on The Birth of Mewtwo (1998), a radio drama originally broadcast over the five Sundays leading up to the film's premiere in Japanese theaters, between June 7, 1998 and July 12, 1998.
5:51-6:08-15:39-16:49 In the original Japanese version, Mewtwo is portrayed as a confused being who questions his worth as a clone and wished to have a more direct confrontation with humanity. In the English dub, he is more boastful about his powers and certain about superiority to Mew and wants to destroy the world with a hurricane that he created to get revenge on humanity.
7:25 Rock-types can still be hit by electric attacks. The problem was that Golem is both a Rock-type and a Ground-type, and Ground-types are immune to electric attacks.
8:04 Brock is actually just a 15-year-old who gets all romantic and googly-eyed and flirts with girls, telling them that they are beautiful and asking them to be his girlfriend. He does not say anything that might indicate that he gets some kind of sexual satisfaction out of it.
8:34 This is actually foreshadowing the fact that the mysterious woman in the hologram is Nurse Joy, kidnapped amd hypnotized by Mewtwo.
11:46 Team Rocket is pretty stupid, though I am not sure why Meowth got Sandslash mixed up since he is beyond smarter than Jessie and James. I cannot be too hard on James for not getting it right, since Jessie's stupidity probably does rub off on him.
12:39 To be fair, we have seen Ash Ketchum pick up logs four times the size of him in the future, and withstand things that would definitely kill a normal person. If he actually hit Mewtwo, I think that he could do some damage.
13:04 Mew was originally a jerk in the Japanese version. It is commonly stated that in the Japanese version Mew called Mewtwo nothing but a clone and pretty much told him how worthless his existence was, basically saying how the clones are "inferior and should die". This is either a mistranslation or an outright lie. The actual line is roughly "The real ones are real. If the clones fight only using their bodies and not with skill, the real ones will never lose." The reason that they wanted Mew this way was because he looks cute and innocent, so it was like a "don't judge a book by it's cover" thing. The English dub instead has Mew giving Mewtwo a speech about how real strength comes from the heart. In the end, Mewtwo is not the only one learning a lesson, Mew had to learn about equality between clones and originals as well.
13:32-14:14-14:18 The normal Pokémon battles, and the kind of battling that the clones were doing, were two very different things. It came up a lot in the anime as well. One is for fun and to gain strength and experience, while the other is just outright abuse. Humans fight for fun and competition all the time. There is a big difference between that and fighting for anger or control. The moral is more meant to be "fighting in THIS manner is wrong", because despite the reputation, Pokémon is more sportsmanlike and akin to Japanese beetle fights, which are non-fatal tests of strength. Mewtwo said beforehand that he got rid of all the Pokémon's abilities to use moves, so they are just fighting to the death, which is most likely what the English translators (Norman J. Grossfeld, Michael Haigney and John Touhey) meant by "Pokémon aren't meant to fight... not like this..." Because of that, you should not curse Nurse Joy for saying that line, or even Neesha, who clearly did not say it. There is also the message of "it does not matter that you are a clone, you are still worthy/the same", which Meowth talks with his clone Meowthtwo about.
14:41 Almost all the dialogue for the English dub of the remake, Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution (2019), is surprisingly faithful to the original Japanese script. The English subtitles are actually "dubtitles", so changing the language does not really change much as it is the exact same dialogue as the English version.
20:30 According to Takeshi Shudo's notes on the film, Ash was petrified but not killed when Mewtwo and Mew's Psychic blasts collided with him, and the tears simply restored him. Miranda's tale of "the legend of winds" was added to the English dub to provide an explanation for why Pokémon tears had the power to bring people back from the dead. In the original, she just did not want anyone's lives to be endangered by the storm. This explanation was also mentioned by Ambertwo in The Uncut Story of Mewtwo's Origin's English dub, when she was dying and young Mewtwo began to cry.
22:02-22:09-22:56 Steve, the "middle finger" scenarios that you present are completely different, and I feel like you are doing the film wrong by presenting it as the same thing. Mewtwo wiping everyone's memories of the events does kind of make sense. He says much less at the end of the original version, telling Mew that the events are best forgotten, and only saying to Ash that the clones will live somewhere in the world. He wiped their memories so that no one would look for him and his clones, and even if one person remembers the events somehow, it will slip and then there will be trainers looking to capture Mewtwo, and he does not want that to happen. He just wants to be alone with his clones. The remake's post-credits scene, which was previously a shot of Mew flying off into the mountains, now shows Mewtwo and the clones flying toward Mount Quena, foreshadowing Mewtwo Returns (2000). The events did happen and are canon. You are right about the experiences that the cast (sans Mewtwo, Mew and the clones) went through being wasted, but only on them, not the viewer. The viewer gets to take all this home; it really happened to Ash and company, and Mew and Mewtwo still had character development. It could also be that the English dub was poorly translated and censored to the point of the entire ending being ruined. I also think that it was unneccessary and a little unfair of you to sarcastically curse Ash just for wondering why he, Pikachu, Misty, Brock and the others are back at the Pokémon Center, when he barely did anything wrong.
Thank you for that 7th point. It's so irritating how so many people misinterpret the "Fighting is wrong" moral because the whole "PoKéMon iS CoCk-FiGhTinG" bullshit.
@@seandewar47 this film shoot itself in the foot.
Fun fact, the pidgeotto line isn't an error per se. Pidgeots japanese name is pidgeotto, while pidgeottos japanese name is pidgeot. Why they switched them, idk, but if you go off original names, what the kid called pidgeot was correct.
Huh? Pidgeotto's name is Pigeon, and Pidgeot's name is Pigeot.
@devonm042690 disregard, you right dnt know what I was lookin at lol
7:28
Ground types are immune to electric moves
Boy I hope you got fired for that blunder
I remember this film being my somewhat introduction to Pokemon when I was younger
I just realized that the scientist in the beginning seems to be modeled after Dr. Tenma of Astro Boy fame. Now that is a modern remake I actually enjoyed.
The forced tears at Pokémon Centers for healing Pokémon you brought up reminded me of Soulstorm Brew being made from Mudokan tears in the old school game Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus.
I was almost expecting the reference in the video too
Sorry if I said somenthing wrong, English is not my mother lenguage.
In my country dub version, they made the same mistakes because the dub director or whatever took the english version as a base and that viking joke where translate like "some play american football (or just football)"
I really love this movie, I have many reasons besides the nostalgia. Also, I don't cry with the "ash's dead" as well, like never, I fealt sad to see the pokemon crying and all but not at the point for drop tears or something.
22:06 It is supose that this movie is not canon but in someway it is, there is a TV special that shows what happend to Mewtwo and the pokemon clones and Ash and his friends meet Mewtwo again and in the end Mewtwo don't erase the memories of the characters, in the last season of Ash's adventure in Japan announce an episode that Ash will meet the same Mewtwo of the first movie.
7:30 Electric can hit Rock. Golem is half _Ground_ which is why Pikachu's electric attacks should have been null and void. But this isn't the first time that's happened, either. I recall Pikachu using electricity against Brock's Onix in the beginning of the series, and much later against a Piloswine, both of which are also half ground.
Nope you definitely aren't alone in enjoying the English OST a bit more. No shade to the original, but there are definitely some tracks that i think just sell the atmosphere and emotion just a bit more. (The Japanese OST that played when the pokèmon we getting chased by pokeballs was......certainly not what i expected....) Birth of Mewtwo and it's reoccurring motifs will live rent free in my head forever along with Lugia's song from Power of One. Now as for which Mew Theme...uh....both....? I like both. Ok maaaaaaaaybe I'm hella nostalgic for the American version.😅
Can you blame me? That flute is just so magical and wonderfully playful. Perfect for my favourite mythical.
One thing to say about the Older Pokemon vs the Newer Pokemon is the Older Pokemon had WAY more Emotional and Character moments in it.
I missed the original team rocket, back when they made pitfalls and had more story moments for themselves. And Pikachu's Goodbye "The Time Has Come" is a song that still gets me to this day
This film is the prime example of beautiful craziness. I absolutely love this film, even with all the flaws
if you thought the mindwipe at the end of the movie was a copout, you should've seen the western fandom's reaction to the Genesect movie reveal that revealed Awakened Mewtwo (later named Mega Mewtwo Y). there was a japanese trailer where Ash actually says Mewtwo's name, when everyone else didn't know who it was, which gave the implication that it was the same Mewtwo from the first movie; which would kind of makes sense from the Mewtwo's Returns special where almost everyone got mindwiped again. but the Genesect movie Mewtwo was a entirely separate Mewtwo from M1 Mewtwo. guess at least they remembered that when he battle M1 Mewtwo again in SWSH's anime...but they never followed up on a rematch after that, honestly i wouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of legal wrangling Game Freak did after Takeshi Shudo's death, maybe they gained the rights to writing the character in official media from his estate?
That was actually the case. I was just as surprised learning years later. Had no idea the whole reason that separate Mewtwo thing happened was because of legal stuff from Takeshi Shudo's estate.....
Seriously seeing a new Mewtwo was jarring as *HECK.*
@@absolite6 honestly pretty non-consequencial how they even got the rights to that specific mewtwo. the 3D remake is almost pretty much 1:1 with the original, so it's not like they would've been carte blanc on doing any changes. but it's just extremely weird to see that specific Mewtwo within the Journeys anime itself. that's still a year and 4 months after the 3D movie and its anime appearance. it has the same japanese voice actor in all its appearances, though Dan Green fills in from Mewtwo Returns-onwards, which is kind of impressive since he was more of a 4Kids voice actor.👀
If M1 Mewtwo was a ratings stunt for Journeys in japan, i'd definitely believe it.
I cried at the first pokemon movie (the scene was ash being dead) when i saw it as a young kid.
My farts are better than Steve’s farts 💨
Same
I remember that as a kid, I was holding back my tears in the theater because I tought it was weird to cry for fictionnal characters. Althho, now I don't give a damn and just open the floodgates and embrace whatever emotions movies are making me feel
The first 3 movies are still and will always be my favorites, nostalgia or not, they are special to me and many other kids from the 1990s. We saw the beginnings of the serie and are still here today
Oh yeah Steve... Rock types aren't immune to Electric Attacks, that would be Ground Types which Golem is part of. Good video just figured I'd share this even if chances are someone else has already pointed it out. But as far as memory goes Pokémon Logic in the anime does not follow the games completely early on. Most notably ghost types were intended to be super effective to the Psychic Type however due to a programming error ghost attacks when hitting Psychic types were treated like Normal types instead dealing no damage. Even so there was only 2 Ghost attacks, Lick and Night Shade. This would be remedied in the next generation.
Thank you for your time and work. Always adore your humor and edits.
Yes it does! It broke me as a kid😢 😭😭😭😭😭😭
My farts are better than Steve’s farts 💨
SAME-
15:56 About that scene, this prologue was NOT in the original Japanese version. It was created for the '99 "Kanzenban" release of the film, specifically made for American audiences. While it didn't show up in American theatres, it released on DVD in Japan in June 2000, containing both the sub and the English dub.
Mewtwo's dub VA Jay Philip Goede (credited as Philip Bartlett) is alive, and not dead like rumors of old because Dan Green plays Mewtwo in the tv movie.
I rented this tape over and over again and of course cried. Mostly because pikachu was so sad.
To this day I love the animation during the charizard battle
7:28 that actually happened plenty of times like for example the Brock episode where Pikachu use thunderbolt on a Geodude to defeat it
Nice vid, spot on editing.
I wholly agree that the comments during the clones fight scene make absolutely no sense in the English version, that's spot on.
I completely disagree with mewtwo being a huge existentialist for the whole movie (JP) is straight up better than his bitter attitude towards humans for their mistreatment and (his imagined) superiority of "real" pokemon (US) Especially during his initial freshly born phase, it would make total sense for him to be confused at first, then sense his powers being fuelled by confusion and frustration, and lash out.
Also, the "middle finger" scenarios you present are completely different, and I feel like you're doing the movie wrong by presenting it as the same thing if I'm being honest. The events did happen and are canon regardless of you suggesting they aren't, whereas if writers use the "it was imagination/ a dream", they didn't and wouldn't be. You're right about the experiences the cast went through being wasted, but on THEM, not the viewer. The viewer gets to take all this home; it really happened to Ash & co, and Mew and Mewtwo still had character development.
Enjoyed the vid nonetheless!
We NEED a redub of this movie with the original message, the message still gets across, but it a wires-crossed way.
Fandub or actual company I don't mind
Yea, I have a question. At 7:25, Steve says that Golem got electrocuted despite being a rock type, when it's actually GROUND type that's immune to electric. Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder
The first 3 pokemon movies are amazing.
I loved the soundtracks in them too. I always cry during the third one with the instrumental of "I want things to be real again", at least I believe that was the specific one. All I know is, it still makes me cry to this day.
In Japanese
The second film with Lugia is gold :) I like the aeroblast :p
Ok, rewatching the scene with ash trying to fight the cloning machine... Did mewtwo use the scientist's bones to make that machine? I never noticed as a kid, but it seems like mewtwo used the arm and leg bones of the scientists to make his machine. Either that or heavily inspired by himan bones at th very least
Honestly I loved this film as a kid and even now, I can’t see flaws because of heavy nostalgia. I remember playing this yellow tape on my machine and rewinding it at night to watch again
I would love to see someone restore the original Japanese version as an English dub, nothing changed but the language. Be really interesting to see how it was ment to pan out
Also also, please review the other Pokémon movies when you can, I had all of them on tape (the ones that were released on tape) as a kid and would love to see you review them
Now I need you to revisit all the other movies!!
14:05 I think what the movie was trying to tell that war isn't right, they're fighting because of trying to proves somthing.
Battling is more on the fun side........at least that's what I'm getting from it.
This movie was one of my favorites to watch!
My farts are better than Steve’s farts 💨
@@p-__ what?
The Minnesota joke everyone - including the adults - loved in the theater. XD I’m from Minnesota so that line is so great to us all. We love it. It’s so dumb. But we still quote it to this day.
7:30 electric works on rock. It is ineffective against ground. Pikachu's attack would have still been ineffective but not because Golem is rock
Oh this should be a good one, I’m happy to have discovered your reviews, they’re always good. I went to see the movie 3 times in theaters, so I actually really liked it. From time to time I’ll watch a Pokémon movie just because I like them still. I have several of the gold Burger King things lol.
Something I never thought about till right now, but did those of you from England, Australia, other English speaking countries, ever wish the characters would have your accent in the dubs? It’s something that seems interesting to me just now bc I’ve never thought about it, but I could see that being something that would aggravate y’all as kids since most everything is dubbed in an American, sore-y also Canadian, accent.
Hi Steve! I can tell you that in the german version (I am German) Team Rocket get the names of the clones wrong, too.
Man, I remember the hype! But I was too poor to actually go see the movie in theaters, so I had to wait for the VHS release. I did manage to get one of those Mew cards in a trade, though, and it's put away safely.
So I always took the message as it's bad to make them fight for bad things such as world domination, war, etc, but regular battles were more like sport fights, like sparring in tournaments or something.
That 'british edit' bit had me crying with laughter 🤣
This movie is my childhood! 😅
The Pikachu's vacation short is what solidified Raichu as my favourite pokèmon.
I like his funny irish accent.
[ 🟪 ] *I'll never forget* the moment I watched The First Pokemon Movie. It was during a time when my friends were in highschool. It's when I discovered that my childhood sweetheart. Yes, we became lovers together when we were children. I've always loved him and that's when it happened. He taught me Pokemon, Mewtwo, etc. I don't remember all the Pokemon but I do remember the great times we had on the couch when the parents weren't home. Good times! He liked my socks a little too much but he told me that it's a Pikachu thing... 😊
I forgot about that at the end. As a kid I remember that pissed me off too. It did the Alice in Wonderland thing but hers is a dream which is kind of lame but it still happened to her and in Through the Looking Glass she goes back; so was it really a dream? Pokemon was like: this never happened, THE END. I completely forgot about that because I only watched it once. I remember being nine years old and being mad about that. Kids aren't stupid.
Now that you've started, I honestly hope you go through some of the other movies. The most memorable one from my childhood was the Celeby one (mostly because I loved Tyranitar to no ends)
I loved the Celebi one, but the sound it made when it was in that giant tumbleweed evil version of itself always terrified me as a kid lol
OMG I loved Pokémon 4ever so much! I watched it and Pokémon Heroes all the time as a kid! Both of the movies endings always made me cry :’D
That would be awesome if he did the other ones, at least up to 6 and 8. Those were my favorite movies growing up and I still love them to this day! I still wonder what Steve thinks of them though.😄❤
You don't cry for ash's death, more of pikachus sorrow thinking he is dead. The desperation, the denial it has never failed to make me cry. Ik that they wouldn't kill him off but it was more of how Pikachu reacted that got me
What I loved about Detective Pikachu was that it treated Pokémon fights like illegal underground dogfights. Because in Ryme City, Pokémon are treated like service animals. This movie literally contradicts its own franchise for a tacked on 'fighting is bad' message.
Dude, that gargoyle cosplay at 0:20 was AWESOME!!!! 👏😮
Pikachu was always ugly but this movie changed my mind. Pikachu is my ugly :)
I'm not a clone, but I had my first existential crisis when I was about three or so. So when this movie came out, it was a revelation to me. I've never seen anyone bring up such topics in cartoons before. I didn't even know that someone in the world was also experiencing this.