It’s still hard to know what to make of Detective Pikachu, which is surely looking like one of the weirdest franchise films of 2019, but as the trailer released back in November amply demonstrated, the technology is very much there to pull off a live-action Pokémon movie, making the portrayal of a crime-fighting Pikachu voiced by Ryan Reynolds a lot less awkward than many of us were anticipating.
If you’d like a brief glimpse of the flesh-and-blood face behind the furry CGI façade, the Deadpool star has taken to Instagram with a photo of himself looking reading for his motion capture performance alongside his cute little alter ego. The caption, meanwhile, simply reads:
“Pika-dots. #DetectivePikachu.”
When the first Detective Pikachu teaser dropped last month, viewers seemed divided on the project, though most agreed that the film came across as far from the disaster it could’ve been, with Reynolds’ Wade Wilson charm likely going some way to winning over converts. As a video game adaptation, the movie certainly has history against it, but it’s clear that a lot of filmgoers are starting to surprise themselves in just how curious they are about the flick.
Plot-wise, we so far know that the film sees 21-year-old Tim (Justice Smith) team up with Reynolds’ character while he attempts to track down his detective father. As the pair search the streets of Ryme City for clues, the two of them uncover a plot that threatens to disrupt the harmony established between humans and Pokémon. Time will tell whether this a story worth getting invested in, but from the look of things, there’ll be a fair few fans approaching the cinema with cautious optimism when Detective Pikachu hits theaters on May 10th, 2019.
