Yesterday Warner Bros. and The Pokemon Company revealed the first trailer for the upcoming Detective Pikachu movie. I was already curious about this. Mostly skeptical. Live action film adaptations of video games and anime often fail to represent the source material with the quality and dignity owed to it. And by that I mean they’re usually just awful. And then any sort of adaptation of video games, be it live action or animated, tends to be pretty bad. One notable exception would be Netflix’s Castlevania animated series.
Detective Pikachu, on the other hand, seems to have a lot going for it that raises my expectations pretty significantly. Especially if the trailer is any indication.
This isn’t really surprising. Pokemon was a multimedia franchise from the very beginning, having an anime series that launched alongside the games as well as several feature-length films and books of manga. Detective Pikachu was conceived to be a multi-media franchise as well. The game came out earlier this year with immediate plans to do a film from the beginning.
The people who make Pokemon know what they’re doing and they have consistently done adaptations well. But this is a live action film, something they’ve not yet attempted.
The first thing that strikes me about this trailer is the set design. Ryme City, the location that the story presumably takes place in, looks particularly intriguing. Being someone who loves cyberpunk imagery, I instantly connected with the high-tech, futuristic looking landscape.
The movie poster doubles down on the cyberpunk style, too.
If you head over to the official website for the film, you can see this poster with cool animations and the ability to use Pikachu’s magnifying glass to zoom in on the scene and take a look at all the neat little tidbits.
I don’t know if this film is going to be good or not, but based on the trailer it looks fantastic. I have a lot of high hopes for this. The story is interesting, the dialogue appears well written so far, and the cool cyberpunk-looking Ryme City is just a nice little bonus. The film comes out sometime in Summer of 2019. I’ll be going to see it, if for no other reason than to experience the fantastic looking sets.
But I honestly think this is going to be great.
