The Team I Built, and the Film I Didn’t Ask For

I had the best Generation One Pokémon team, and I will die on this hill. Mew and Mewtwo, obviously—the nuclear option, both of them. Charizard, raised from a Charmander I’d been attached to since the opening screen. Articuno for the ice storms. Gyarados because somewhere inside was still a Magikarp that had earned the transformation. And Dragonite at the end, because as much as I wanted Pikachu or Eevee on that roster, let’s be honest about what happens when life and death and honor are actually on the line: you can’t go into that with an Eevee, no matter how much you love it.

That history with the games—and with the first seasons of the anime, with Ash’s permanent underdog energy and Misty’s temper and Brock’s hopelessly public girl-chasing—made the live-action announcement feel wrong at every level. A detective film. A CGI Pikachu with texture and fur and Ryan Reynolds’ voice, solving crimes in a city where humans and Pokémon coexist. Who asked for this? When I could stay home and rewatch the original run?

Then the new trailer for Detective Pikachu dropped, and I had to revise my position. The world they’ve built is genuinely interesting—not the cartoon flattened into live-action but something that found its own logic and texture. The Pikachu is, against all expectation, likeable. Justice Smith, playing a kid searching for his missing father, comes across as an actual person. The film is based on the spin-off game of the same name. And Mewtwo is apparently in it, which is the correct move.

Not fully converted. If my team doesn’t get at least one cameo, I’m noting it as a significant flaw. But "might actually be decent" is further than I thought I’d get from this premise.