The idea of a Pokemon live-action movie has been in the minds of both fans and movie makers for nearly two decades. The only question was…”can it actually look good?” And that’s what held it back for some time. But now, with the adaptation of Detective Pikachu, we’re getting a chance to see if it could work. And the jury…is still out to be honest. Because these photorealistic Pokemon look good at times, but don’t in others.
So why go this route at all if it might no be received well by viewers? Well according to Co-Producer Ali Mendes, it was a challenge that they needed to overcome:
“The biggest thing was of course seeing Pikachu in live action, figuring out how these characters are going to come into our world–‘What does a live Pokemon, a realistic, 3D Pokemon look like?’ That was a really exciting challenge for us.”
As you can see from the pictures of the movie and the Detective Pikachu game, the live-action version has a lot of fur. But it wasn’t just their interpretations of the characters, but also, the team at the Pokemon Company who helped out:
“We thought about Fantastic Beasts a lot just in terms of the quality of that animation and how life-like [the creatures] were. But it was interesting; we worked very closely with The Pokemon Company. They’ve been wonderful collaborators through this, and we’ve really let them guide us, because they know their brand better than we ever will, and we want to make sure that we’re giving fans exactly what they want, and they know that better than anyone.”
We’ll just have to wait and see how it all works out. Again, some of the Pokemon look great, while others look a bit TOO realistic for their own good. But whether this’ll help or hurt the movie will depend on its release on May 10th.
