The Pokémon Team I Would Have Trusted With My Life

My team was close to perfect. Mew and Mewtwo—obviously. Charizard, raised from a Charmander and never traded away. Articuno for the ice storms. Gyarados, because there’s something quietly poetic about an enraged sea serpent that used to be a helpless Magikarp. And Dragonite rounding out the six, because as much as I wanted Pikachu or Eevee in that last slot, you can’t bring Eevee into a fight where something real is at stake. You know that going in.

So when they announced a live-action Detective Pikachu film—a noir mystery with a CGI Pikachu voiced by Ryan Reynolds, solving crimes in a city where humans and Pokémon share the streets—my resistance was total and immediate. Not Ash, not Misty, not Brock. Not the anime that defined a particular stretch of my childhood. Instead: a fuzzier, snarkier Pikachu helping a teenager find his missing father. The premise of the 2018 game had slipped past me entirely, and the whole thing sounded like IP extraction dressed up as nostalgia.

Then the new trailer arrived, and something shifted. The world they’ve built is genuinely strange in an interesting way—half Tokyo, half Roger Rabbit fever dream, Pokémon going about their business on rain-slicked streets. Pikachu is charming. Justice Smith, playing the kid searching for his dad, has actual warmth rather than just function. It doesn’t look like the film I expected it to be.

Mewtwo is clearly in it, which earns back some goodwill immediately. If there’s room for Gyarados or Articuno, I’ll call it a success. If all I get are Bulbasaurs sitting on park benches, I’ll watch it anyway—probably—but the score will reflect my disappointment.