We wouldn’t blame you for feeling unsure about the upcoming Detective Pikachu (this is a video game movie, after all), but we’ve gotta say, that first trailer certainly has us thinking that the franchise’s long-awaited jump to live-action cinema will turn out to be a lot less awkward than most probably expected, with the titular creature and his buddies actually looking pretty well-rendered.
Is that enough to get people into cinemas to sit down and watch the Ryan Reynolds-led flick? Maybe not, but it’s clear that there’s already a good deal of buzz surrounding the pic. True, a lot of Pokémon fans are still on the fence, but the majority of the online response seems to be positive, with most people at least curious to see what the studio’s cooked up for us. And if this first reaction to Detective Pikachu is any indication of how things turned out, then it certainly sounds like we’re in for a treat.
A source close to We Got This Covered recently caught a test screening of the film and had mostly good things to say. While there were some elements that needed work – like the villain – overall it sounds like an enjoyable watch, especially for longtime fans.
Here’s what our source had to say:
I went and saw Pokémon: Detective Pikachu with no expectation. I was never a fan of the franchise, and was not impressed with the little I had seen of it. So I was shocked at how much I loved this film.
The VFX work is phenomenal. The Pokémon look and feel like real creatures in a real world. The cinematography and sets are beautiful to look at with a lot of diversity. At times, the movie looks and feels like a Nature Documentary and at times like Blade Runner. The world feels alive with many little details.
Continuing on, they said:
The story is simple, but has some great surprises for fans of the franchise. The main characters are charming. Justice Smith is very good and reliable as the human lead Tim Goodman. Ryan Reynolds is great as Pikachu, but out of all the Pokémon in the film, Psyduck is the one to steal the show. The jokes are well written and are often hilarious. The action scenes are spectacular, especially the final battle.
If I had to point at the movie’s weaker elements, the human villain could’ve been better, and the story is a bit generic. There’s also a twist near the end of the film that doesn’t really work and unintentionally funny. But other than that it’s a pretty damn good movie, and a great time at the cinema. It made me a Pokémon fan. That should tell you all you need about how much I loved it.
So, it’s not a perfect movie then, but it still sounds like there’s a lot to enjoy in Detective Pikachu and with several months to go until it releases, there’s a lot of time to make some additional tweaks and edits in response to the various reactions that the studio’s been receiving from test screenings.
In any case, it certainly seems like they’re confident in what they have, as we already know that a spinoff’s in the works, with rumors that they’re planning to spawn a whole cinematic universe from Detective Pikachu. Whether that’ll actually end up happening remains to be seen, but we’ll be able to lay eyes on these creatures for ourselves later this year, when the pic hits theaters on May 10th.
