Pokémon: The First Movie

• 1. Introduction

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  Pokémon: The First Movie opened on a Wednesday in November 1999, and so many children skipped school to see it that the day earned its own nickname: the Pokéflu. Educators were not pleased. The film earned $10.1 million on that single Wednesday alone, the biggest animated film opening in Warner Bros. history. By the end of its first weekend, it had grossed $31 million and topped the U.S. box office charts.

  Behind that commercial roar, however, was a far more complicated story. The movie had already been released in Japan a full year earlier, in July 1998, to largely positive reviews that praised its emotional depth and its willingness to wrestle with cloning, genetic modification, and existentialism. What arrived in North American theaters in November 1999 was a noticeably different film. The philosophical heart had been trimmed away. The villain had been sharpened into something simpler and angrier. And a new anti-violence message had been stitched onto a franchise built around Pokémon battling.

  How a Japanese animated film about a cloned psychic creature asking whether its life has meaning became one of the biggest box-office events of 1999 is a story about Pokémon mania, about translation as transformation, about gold-plated trading cards sold in Burger King kids' meals, and about a soundtrack album that went double platinum before the end of January 2000.

• 2. The Making of Mewtwo

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  Director Kunihiko Yuyama led the original Japanese production, with Takeshi Shudo serving as scriptwriter and Choji Yoshikawa as producer. Unlike the Pokémon films that followed it, this one was not produced by the Pikachu Project. Shudo had planned certain anime episodes to run before the Japanese release and set up the film's story, but a crisis intervened. On the 16th of December 1997, the broadcast of the episode "Dennō Senshi Porygon" triggered seizures in viewers, and the resulting fallout delayed those tie-in episodes. Shudo responded by expanding the film's beginning and increasing its overall length.

  The story at the center of the film is the origin of Mewtwo, a creature cloned from a single eyelash belonging to the Mythical Pokémon Mew. The scientist Dr. Fuji agreed to participate in the experiment not for Giovanni and Team Rocket, who wanted a supersoldier, but for a private reason: he hoped the cloning research would allow him to bring back his deceased daughter, Amber. In the laboratory, the newly formed Mewtwo befriended the salvaged consciousness of Amber, as well as clones of other Pokémon. All of those companions decomposed and died, leaving Mewtwo traumatized before he was tranquilized and placed in suspended animation.

  Shudo explained in his blog that Mewtwo's torn sense of purpose was meant to embody the film's existentialist theme. In the Japanese script, the character Amber is called Ai, a name chosen because it is a homonym of the English word "I", reinforcing the film's central message about self-existence and the right to exist. That layering of meaning would not survive the translation process intact.

• 3. Lost in Translation

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  Norman J. Grossfeld, former president of 4Kids Productions, produced the North American English-language version. He wrote the English adaptation alongside Michael Haigney and John Touhey, with Haigney also directing the voice cast. Grossfeld made a deliberate editorial choice: he felt American audiences needed a villain who was clearly evil rather than morally ambiguous. Mewtwo's existential complexity was accordingly stripped back, and the tone of the character shifted toward menace.

  The original Japanese production crew did not receive these changes warmly. Executive producer Masakazu Kubo described Warner Bros.' proposed alterations as "a hassle". In the English dub, three Pokémon were also referred to by incorrect names: Pidgeot was called "Pidgeotto", Scyther was called "Alakazam", and Sandslash was called "Sandshrew". 4Kids later said the latter two errors were spotted but left in, on the reasoning that Team Rocket could plausibly make a mistake and that it gave children something to notice.

  For music, Grossfeld commissioned an entirely new score, arguing it would better reflect what American children would respond to. John Loeffler of Rave Music produced the English-language music and co-composed the film score with Ralph Schuckett. Loeffler also collaborated with John Lissauer and Manny Corallo on the "Pikachu's Vacation" segment score. Grossfeld described the resulting film as combining the visual sense of the best Japanese animation with the musical sensibility of Western pop culture. In a 2022 interview, he revealed that one studio had suggested Leonardo DiCaprio dub over Ash's lines during the distribution shopping process, a proposal Grossfeld found "weird". He eventually closed a deal with Warner Bros., who reportedly paid less than $10 million for the distribution rights outside Asia.

• 4. Gold Cards and a Recall

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  Burger King tied a promotion to the film's North American release, offering a limited series of kids' meal toys and six 23-karat gold Pokémon cards, each sealed inside a large plastic Poké Ball. The cards were gold-plated slabs of metal in clear protective cases, each accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln. The first run came packaged in a limited blue box and sold out immediately; a larger second print followed in a red box and ran until the promotion ended.

  On the 11th of December 1999, a 13-month-old child named Kira Murphy from California suffocated when half of the Poké Ball toy lodged over her mouth and nose. She was found deceased in her playpen. Twelve days later, a second child in Kansas survived a similar incident. On the 28th of December 1999, Burger King issued a full recall of the toys and urged adults to discard or return both halves. Customers who returned the toy received a small order of French fries in exchange. Nearly a month after the recall, another child suffocated from the same toy. The families of the dead children settled their lawsuits on undisclosed terms.

• 5. Box Office and the Pokéflu

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  In Japan, the film was the second-highest-grossing domestic film of 1998. Its path to the United States required a deal negotiated on the 9th of March 1999, when Warner Bros. Pictures reached an agreement with 4Kids Entertainment and The Summit Media Group for worldwide distribution rights outside Asia. The deal was verified on the 24th of June, with a planned November 12 release date. Days before the U.S. opening, the date was moved up to November 10. The film had its premiere on the 6th of November at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

  The opening Wednesday gross of $10.1 million was the biggest ever for a Warner Bros. animated film. During its first weekend, it earned $31 million across 3,043 theaters, averaging approximately $10,199 per venue over the three-day span. The film held records for the highest animated opening weekend in November outside of the Thanksgiving holiday, and for the highest opening for a non-Disney animated film, both previously held by The Rugrats Movie. Despite a drop of 59.72% in its second weekend, to $12.5 million, it generated $67.4 million within 12 days of its Wednesday launch.

  The film closed on the 27th of February 2000, earning $85.7 million in North America and $77.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $172,744,662. In the United Kingdom, it grossed £10.8 million. It remains the highest-grossing anime film in the United States and, as of September 2025, its North American total is estimated at $190.7 million when adjusted for inflation. Scriptwriter Takeshi Shudo himself acknowledged that the film fared better commercially in the United States than it did in Japan.

• 6. Soundtrack and Spin-offs

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  The American soundtrack album, Pokémon: The First Movie - Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture, was released by Atlantic Records on the 9th of November 1999, one day before the film's opening. On the 11th of January 2000, the Recording Industry Association of America certified it double platinum, confirming sales of 2,000,000 copies. The album's single "Don't Say You Love Me" by M2M was later included on the duo's debut studio album, Shades of Purple, released on the 7th of March 2000. The film's opening track was a new arrangement of the original English Pokémon theme, originally composed by John Loeffler and John Siegler and originally performed by Jason Paige, rerecorded here by Filipino actor and singer Billy Crawford.

  The first trailers in the United States were attached to The Iron Giant and Mystery Men when released in August 1999. A second trailer ran with The Bachelor in late 1999. Select theaters distributed exclusive Pokémon trading cards featuring Electabuzz, Pikachu, Mewtwo, and Dragonite, dispensed in random order each week. The home video release in March 2000 arrived with advertising from Clorox, Kraft, and Zenith Electronics, a contest to win a trip to Japan, and a limited edition Mewtwo card packaged with the video.

  Toshihiro Ono, the author of Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu, created a manga version of the film. He received the source material in April 1998 and completed the manga in May. In July 1998, a five-episode radio drama titled The Birth of Mewtwo was broadcast on the five Sundays leading up to the film's premiere in Japan. Written by Shudo, it explored Mewtwo's origins, the leadership of Team Rocket under Madame Boss, and the last known whereabouts of Miyamoto, Jessie's mother. Due to its mature themes, the radio drama was never dubbed in English. Ono later noted that "there's not much connection between the manga and the movie", since the drama was conceived after the manga and the timelines do not align.

• 7. Critical Reception and Legacy

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  The English-language version earned a 16% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 91 reviews, with an average score of 3.57/10. On Metacritic, it scored 35 out of 100 from 25 critics, indicating generally unfavorable reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore were more generous, giving the film an average grade of "A-". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it two stars out of four, describing it as "a sound-and-light show, linked to the marketing push for Pokémon in general" and arguing it had "no level at which it enriches a young viewer, by encouraging thinking or observation." Common Sense Media awarded it one star out of five.

  Retrospective criticism has focused heavily on the localization process. Reviewer Ryan Lambie of Den of Geek called the decision to cut Mewtwo's origin prologue "a highly unfortunate move", while acknowledging that the edits "probably didn't mean much" to younger fans at the time, since the film was ultimately made for children. At the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film won Worst Achievement in Animation and Most Unwelcome Direct-to-Video Release for all nine Pokémon videos released in 1999; it lost the Worst Screenplay nomination to Wild Wild West.

  Mewtwo's portrayal in the film became the foundation for the character's appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series. When Mewtwo made his playable debut in Super Smash Bros. Melee, voice actor Masachika Ichimura reprised his role from the film. The character's return as downloadable content in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U was promoted with the tagline "Mewtwo Strikes Back!" In 2019, a full CGI remake, Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution, was released, directed again by Kunihiko Yuyama alongside Motonori Sakakibara, with the English-dubbed version arriving on Netflix on the 27th of February 2020.