Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution (2019)
My kids are going through a full-on Pokémon phase at the moment, which means every spare evening involves trading cards, video games, and, apparently, me sitting down to rewatch things I probably should have left well alone. That's how I ended up revisiting Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution with them, and I'll be honest: it was a mistake.
I knew exactly what I was walking into. This is a shot-for-shot, 3D animated remake of the beloved 1998 original, directed by Motonori Sakakibara and Kunihiko Yuyama. And I want to give credit where it's due: the sheer ambition of the thing is not nothing. Translating the vibrant, hand-drawn magic of the original into modern CGI is a proper challenge, and there's a certain novelty in seeing these iconic pocket monsters rendered in high-definition three-dimensional detail. Mewtwo in particular looks genuinely imposing, all realistic textures and brooding physical presence. The psychic battle sequences have real scale to them. For a moment or two, you can see what they were going for.
The novelty wears off fast, though.
The problem is the human characters. The animation, whatever its technical credentials, produces people who look and move like they've had the life quietly drained out of them. There's a slightly uncanny, dead-eyed quality to the heavier emotional moments that makes it genuinely difficult to feel anything. The original had a bouncy, expressive warmth to its character animation that papered over a lot of melodrama. Strip that away and replace it with something this stiff, and the melodrama just sits there, unearned.
The voice acting doesn't help. Flat, oddly paced, lacking the raw emotional urgency that the original cast brought, it compounds the feeling that nobody quite believed in what they were making. Which gets to the heart of my real issue with this film: it feels like a corporate exercise rather than a genuine labour of love. Copying a film like for like is not the same as honouring it. It's closer to tracing over a painting and wondering why it doesn't have the same life.
If you're coming to this completely blind, with no knowledge of the 1998 film, it's perfectly serviceable. A slightly overwrought fantasy adventure with impressive action set-pieces and enough nostalgic Pokémon energy to keep younger viewers happy. My kids enjoyed it, so it did its job on that front. But I can't review this in a vacuum, and neither, I suspect, can most people who'd seek it out.
Because I reviewed Pokémon: The First Movie separately, and that film is a genuine artefact of its era. Imperfect, absolutely, but alive in a way this remake simply isn't. The moment you hold the two side by side, the 2019 version collapses. It's visually shinier and emotionally hollower in almost equal measure, which is a pretty damning combination when the whole point is to make you feel something.
There's a lesson here about why lightning in a bottle can't be manufactured. The original worked because of when it was made, who made it, and what it meant to a generation of kids experiencing it for the first time. You can't reconstruct that by retracing the same steps with better rendering software. All you get is a reminder of what you've lost.
Two stars. Let the original be the original.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2019 | Watched: 2026-07-07
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
