I really enjoy the opening to this movie. It’s really done with a lot of thought to it, and I anticipate that they could’ve aimed for something higher if not for the tight schedule.
You have the Nintendo logo, still strong despite what happened 6 years ago with Super Mario Bros: The Movie.
You have the Kids WB’ logo representing an era of that brand, much like that of Fox Kids or Disney Afternoon, etc..
You have Disney’s The Little Mermaid-ish water bubbles coming from beneath in homage to 10 years ago.
The intro of the film was like that of a low tech, VHS quality, Terrence Malick documentary, even having a narrator, discussing,
“Life,
The Great Miracle and
The Great Mystery.
Since the beginning,
Pokémon and humans alike have searched for its meaning.”
The scene with the bubbles is homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Star Gate, making one ponder if this is really water or if something else is at hand here.
Also, similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie presents the idea that Mewtwo was given an objective, possibly even genetically, programmed on a microscopic scale like HAL 9000, making him an admirable antihero.
Also similar to Stanley Kubrick themes worth exploring as Stanley Kubrick iconic internet analyst Rob Ager mentioned before in his Shining review is regarding whether what the main character sees a dream, an image that Mewtwo is being force fed?
Sure, it’s not Vladimir Kush or Magritte, but there’s definitely a lot of work done here that is being ignored by most critics, including a younger version of me.
Meanwhile, the water turns brown, and Mewtwo appears in this dirty, electronic test tube thing that’s keeping him- well something. We’re not sure what exactly the tube is for but we can speculate. In contrast to the clean water we had seen earlier with nature, we see dirtier water in a laboratory setting, displaying a darker side to Pokelabs not explored in the show, demonstrating that although science can help nature, it can destroy it as well, creating a being to do so.
In contrast, to Mew’s (psychic) water bubbles, there is Mewtwo, a being of fire and destruction. A being, maybe even a man or some equivalent of one, sentient, who requests for more power based on propaganda given to him by Giovanni as he undergoes some sort of militaristic, animalistic, dehumanizing training.
“Mewtwo, Am I only a copy? Am I only Mew’s shadow?”
The idea of their being cloned Mewtwos could also be possibly be explored with the Nurse Joys and Officer Jennys or possibly be an inspiration based on that.
Mewtwo encounters an epic dilemma that one encounters similar to the Spider-Man the Animated Series chapters and arc, The Sins of the Fathers. Are we really just what our parents or creators define us as? Mewtwo himself not only has 1 father, but multiple scientists, even possibly defined by Giovanni himself. Heck, with programming and training, they may even be considered his god of Poke-evolution.
Mewtwo releases himself from his experiment tube a la Brian De Palma’s Carrie, suffering from an existential crisis.
The rarest of all Pokémon, an endangered species waiting to be captured is the exact contrast to him, something of nature, something few, something rare, by itself, opposed to something artificial cloned by scientists. The scientists themselves are a bit interesting as well. I don’t believe that they were truly evil, at least not by the tone at least. (Maybe in the subtext.)
The movie also presents the theme of trivialization and propaganda regarding people and animal fighting.
A similar war theme was explored in the live action 1994 Street Fighter film.
Mewtwo was Blanka. Watching Mewtwo is like watching Frankenstein and video game figures inspired by him like Sephiroth. There’s an ethical dilemma on if he was programmed to destroy or conquer the world, what can stop him? He’s noticeably unconscious pondering his existence in a sign of the DNA chemistry that the scientists didn’t appropriately study when creating him, a danger in Frankenstein. A cloned Pokémon.
So Giovanni, M. Bison?
Giovanni is Italian, possibly having ties to the Black Market and the Mafia, but also perhaps he is related to Fascist, Benito Mussolini in the role he has in this Pokémon world.
In the words of Raul Julia’s character regarding what you may or may not have observed in this film before, “I guess you didn’t see that, did you?”
Arthouse Anime 