From the moment Detective Pikachu was unveiled, there were rumors that psychic Pokémon Mewtwo would be the villain of the piece. After all, he played a villainous role in The First Pokémon Movie and is one of the few Pokémon in the franchise to be generally considered evil. Last week, we even got a new poster that was literally crawling with different Pokémon, and if you looked really carefully you could just about make out Mewtwo’s silhouette on top of a skyscraper in the distance.
Well, we’ve now got a much better glimpse at his Detective Pikachu redesign and, well, let’s just say I’ve never seen Mewtwo look quite as scary as this. As you can see below, the quasi-realistic style of the movie has really made him into the monster he’s generally portrayed as. Gone are his anime eyes, being replaced with black slits in one card and madly staring eyes in another. He also appears to be perpetually angry (or perhaps in pain), which is a nice nod to his origins as a genetic experiment in cloning Mew.
If these cards are a true representation of how he’ll appear in the movie, it looks as though his psychic attacks will be particularly dramatic, with dark tendrils of lightning sprouting from his fingers and body. The age-old maxim for Pokémon is that you ‘gotta catch ’em all’ – but in this particular case, it might be best to leave him be.
With the film’s release now just a hair over two months away, expect the hype machine to start up in earnest. After all, it’s already received a rapturous reception from test audiences, with Legendary planning a series of spinoffs, too. We’ll know for sure though if they’ve finally pulled off the first genuinely great video game movie on May 10th, when Detective Pikachu hits theaters.
