The enormous Pokemon franchise got off to a pretty mediocre start with this first movie (proudly naming itself as such too), at least in English territories. Despite being one of the biggest cash cows on Earth for nearly two decades there has never been a definitive edition of this movie in English. Arriving in theatres here in the UK almost 2 full years after its debut in Japan the translation completely changes the plot to something that goes against the very nature of the Pokemon concept.
Unless you were a hardcore fan of the TV show there was simply no way you could have understood what was going on and I can only imagine that there were scores of frustrated parents sitting in theatres, scratching their heads, wondering what sort of culture their sprogs were going to unleash on the world when they came of age.
Evil scientists have produced a clone of Mew, dubbed MewTwo, who revolts against his creators and attempts to take over the world with his superpowers. Coincidentally, the first Mew to be born in many hundreds of years, suddenly rises out of the water and begins exploring the strange, new world he finds himself in (this is merely guesswork as absolutely none of this is explicitly explained). Ash, Misty, and Brock are lured by MewTwo to a secret island lair where he attempts to steal all of their Pokemon. By sheer luck, or bad writing, Mew is also on the island and prevents MewTwo from his global domination.
The English version tries, and horribly fails, to make it hip and fashionable (by 1999 tastes) but the supervising producers obviously did not understand the franchise that they were messing with and totally flubbed it.
I am sure that the Japanese dub is a better movie. The series improved after this, but it truly is a bad start.
Unless you were a hardcore fan of the TV show there was simply no way you could have understood what was going on and I can only imagine that there were scores of frustrated parents sitting in theatres, scratching their heads, wondering what sort of culture their sprogs were going to unleash on the world when they came of age.
Evil scientists have produced a clone of Mew, dubbed MewTwo, who revolts against his creators and attempts to take over the world with his superpowers. Coincidentally, the first Mew to be born in many hundreds of years, suddenly rises out of the water and begins exploring the strange, new world he finds himself in (this is merely guesswork as absolutely none of this is explicitly explained). Ash, Misty, and Brock are lured by MewTwo to a secret island lair where he attempts to steal all of their Pokemon. By sheer luck, or bad writing, Mew is also on the island and prevents MewTwo from his global domination.
The English version tries, and horribly fails, to make it hip and fashionable (by 1999 tastes) but the supervising producers obviously did not understand the franchise that they were messing with and totally flubbed it.
I am sure that the Japanese dub is a better movie. The series improved after this, but it truly is a bad start.