Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution Review: Back To The 90s

Fans who saw the original movie back in 1999 shouldn’t expect any drastic differences.

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The first Pokémon movie received a CGI remake in 2019 for the 20th anniversary of its original release. Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution is now available on Netflix as part of the Pokémon Day celebrations, with a full English dub.

Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution uses the same story as the original movie, with a couple of minor changes that don’t change the plot in any meaningful way, so the fans who saw the original back in 1999 shouldn’t expect any drastic differences.

Attack Of The Clones

The story of Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution starts with the creation of Mewtwo by a group of scientists who find a piece of Mew’s DNA. The film skips over the subplot involving the scientist cloning his own daughter, which appeared in certain versions of the original movie. Mewtwo goes on a rampage and briefly works for Giovanni of Team Rocket, before it strikes out on its own as part of a revenge plot against humanity. Ash Ketchum and his friends are invited to Mewtwo’s island, where they soon become involved in a plot that involves cloning Pokémon.

The two most striking aspects of Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution are the visuals and the voices. The movie looks gorgeous, with some incredible landscapes and character work on the Pokémon. The human characters don’t look quite as impressive, but it’s not distracting in an uncanny valley way.

The people who stopped watching the Pokémon anime before the cast changed during the Hoenn season might be distracted by the different voices. Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution has all of the same main characters as the original movie, but there is a different cast voicing them. The cast does a great job (even if Dan Green is clearly using his Yugi voice as Mewtwo), but it might initially seem off to the people who are familiar with the original film.

Training In the 90s

Pokémon: The First Movie and Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution are strange in that they have a message that seems to go against the point of Pokémon, with a lengthy scene explaining why Pokémon shouldn’t be hurting each other, even though fighting is the point of the franchise. There is also the inexplicable scene where Ash is turned to stone and brought back to life through Pokémon tears. The entire message of the movie is also undone by the fact that the cast is mindwiped and doesn’t remember their lesson.

These complaints are hardly new, and it’s clear that the writers never put that much thought into the original movie. It’s a film made for kids and it makes no attempt to transcend its source material. The changes to the movie (like Team Rocket pretending to be sailors instead of Vikings) are minor, so it’s pretty much the same movie from twenty years ago with prettier visuals.

Poké Friends Reunited

Pokémon: The First Movie was made for kids who were into the Pokémon franchise when it first launched at the end of the 90s. Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution is very much made for those same fans who want a nostalgia rush, as there is something genuinely touching about seeing the old cast and their Pokémon again. As a movie on its own, it might be baffling to people who aren’t familiar with the original season of the anime. It’s ironic that Pokémon: The First Movie was seen by a lot of parents who had no idea what was going on, while the kids who watch Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution today might very well feel the same way.

Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution is an unabashed nostalgia rush for old school Pokémon fans and that’s all that people should expect going in. Pokémon: The First Movie wasn’t exactly high art when it was first released and time has done it no favors. This is a movie for people who want to enjoy another adventure with Ash, Brock, and Misty, but it probably won’t be of much interest to anyone else.

Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution is available now on Netflix.

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