Pokemon M16 Review: Genesect and the Legend Reawakened

Pokemon Movie 16: Genesect and the Legend Reawakened

(Alternately, Pokemon the Movie: Extremespeed Genesect: Mewtwo Awakens)

I've watched every Pokemon movie I can get my hands on except for this one. And there are definitely some that are better than the others -- Pokemon Heroes, Jirachi the Wish-Maker, Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, The Rise of Darkrai being stand-out ones that I particularly like, and the rest being, well, at least decent for a bored hour or two. The plot in the other movies are generally the same... Ash and company befriend the legendary Pokemon of the week (or Lucario and Zoroark, who get their own movies) and fight against a villain. Power of friendship is often used. Sometimes other legendary Pokemon make a cameo. Action scenes! Beautiful scenery based on real-world places! Some weird non-Pokemon gimmick that may take place! Team Rocket being irrelevant and being happy at the end of the movie!

And, well, most of the time these movies are enjoyable. I reviewed the Hoopa movie (M18) a while back in this blog, so I decided, yeah, let's finally break down and watch the most controversial Pokemon movie of all time... Genesect and the Legend Reawakened. 

Even without all the controversy surrounding the random inclusion of a new Mewtwo (more on that later on) it's... it's honestly messy, even for Pokemon standards. There's a bit of a vibe of Destiny Deoxys's plot being thrown in, with Deoxys and the Genesects just being lost (Deoxys looking for his friend, the Genesects looking for a home) while unaware that they are being destructive to people around them, and thus incurring the wrath of other legendary Pokemon (Rayquaza in that movie, Mewtwo in this one). Except... well, it's really hard to relate to the Genesects. Other than the brief 'yeah, humans revived them from fossils' backstory introdump, and the short surfing game with the Douse Drive Genesect, their personalities basically boil down to the shiny red Genesect going "ELIMINATE THE ENEMY" and the nice Genesect going all "I wanna go home" and the three other Genesects just hanging around blasting bug lasers at people. Even with Pokemon's aimed-for-children tone, other movies generally do a decent job of exploring a very basic level of character development for the Pokemon of the week. This movie... doesn't exactly do that. 

There's no real reason that Mewtwo randomly bringing the shiny Genesect all the way to the sky and telling him that the world is beautiful should work, when he's been hellbent on murdering anything that is not a Genesect (and even fired at his own forces at one point). It's a very messy movie even without the Mewtwo controversy, really, and all throughout this movie I'm just confused what the motivations of these Genesect are.

Which is a shame, really. These movies should make you get interested in the Pokemon they star, at least, and it certainly has done wonders with how I feel about some of the newer legendary Pokemon I was initially different with -- Victini, Hoopa and Diancie have definitely graduated from 'Pixie #5, Pixie #7, Pixie #8 into something more distinct that that -- but Genesect was already an awesome concept. An ancient extinct monster bug, revived as a terminator cyborg by humans? And he also has a laser beam attached to his back and he can transform into a flying bug UFO? It takes Mewtwo's backstory (which is lampshaded here as a parallel) and puts a cooler spin on it. Robots are cool. Bugs are cool. Prehistoric animals are cool. Genesect borrows Mewtwo's backstory while replacing the genetic weapon thing with the prehistoric bug with cyborg implants thing... and, man, other than Mewtwo going "we have the same backstory" like twice in the movie, none of this is ever lampshaded. The movie sets it up somewhat decently, but it does nothing to explore the ramifications of being born and finding a place for themselves in a world when they are built as weapons. I'm not expecting something huge that's like self-introspective or shit, but a simple moral like what we got in, hell, the other Pokemon movies would work. Not this... absolutely messy shit.

Yeah, the nice Genesect spends 90% of the movie moping about how she wants to go home and flowers, then takes a hit and apparently dies, except he doesn't because flower. Or something. And then Mewtwo and Genesect flies around the city in the worst zippy-Tron-line action sequence I've ever seen, then the friendship speech happens. There is some background 'oh no the Genesect's nest will blow up the city if left unchecked' subplot, and at one point the random Pokemon had to save the Genesect from burning to death because their nest catches on fire, but it's so devoid of tension and emotion that I'm surprised the script even got approved.

The action scenes are just bad, really. I'm not expecting some live-action level thing from Pokemon, but holy shit, I'd rather watch the movies from a decade ago than this really boring fight. The laser-shooting thing is okay enough, but never has a battle between two legendary Pokemon been so mind-numbingly boring. And the Tron speed-chase throughout the city? Horribly animated and completely pointless. Mega evolution? Completely meaningless. Genesect and Mewtwo just do like a dozen variations of 'let me shoot my beam at you', with no real consequence. With Mewtwo and Mew in the first movie, at least they are having an ideological battle while fighting.

Though kudos on the animation team for making the most badass depiction of String Shot ever, being used to create these gigantic termite mound things. 

Speaking of Mewtwo... even as a brand-new iteration of the character, which we'll swallow for the purpose of this paragraph... she's very bland, isn't she? She comes in, like this Pokemon warrior of justice, a weapon who's found a home, but she ends up just fighting the Genesects anyway. She starts off disliking humans and only helping Pokemon... but ends up being a friend to all humanity for no good reason. No witnessing of Pikachu crying for a dead Ash, just... yeah. That literally just happened. Her motivations is muddy, she's wholly uninteresting, and her way of resolving the fight ends up being very boring. Add that to her super mega evolution form just being super-fast and nothing else -- it's obvious that the Mega Evolution mechanic from the games hasn't been finalized at this point, and the movie's just using the form as a random 'hey look at this new thing' gimmick that none of the characters even bother to lampshade. I dunno. The original Mewtwo wasn't exactly the pinnacle of characterization, but he at least had more personality than this one.

Ash's sidekicks generally get the shaft in this movies -- Max in Jirachi the Wishmaker and May in Temple of the Sea are really the only ones that their appearances haven't been just background fodder -- because the focus is always on Ash and the guest stars, but the movies generally throw them a bone or two, give them a couple of short action scenes in the background or whatever. I don't think Iris even gets a line in this one, and Cilan disappears for half of the movie... it's worse than Hoopa and the Clash of Ages, where the B-team were at least relevant to the plot despite only getting like two minutes of screentime total, doing the ritual while Ash and Hoopa distracted Shadow Hoopa. And you'd think with so much time stolen away from the primary cast, you'd think they can manage a half-decent script with Genesect and Mewtwo.

There was some focus with a Sableye... who ends up being entirely irrelevant to the movie after the 'let's play with Pokemon' sequence, and for whatever reason near the climax there were a couple of scenes devoted to an Eevee? And Eric is kinda there throughout the movie but doesn't do jack shit. Man, this movie's so unfocused, isn't it?

And Ash (or Satoshi, take your pick) is very dumb, yeah? I mean, you can kinda sorta relate to the Genesect for wanting a home, but they did violently drive out the Pokemon living in the Poke-Hill with bug lasers and created this weird giant cocoon nest that suck out the electricity from the city (huh?)... of course the local Pokemon will be angry. It's hard to sympathize with the Genesects at this point. Ash himself doesn't get much to do... again, in these movies we generally get some time devoted to showing Ash befriending the legendary of the week, but other than the short surfing moment, we didn't really get that. Ash himself is very flat in this movie, going all 'you shouldn't fight' half the time, and being ignored by Genesect and Mewtwo... who continue to be absolute bores.

Mad respect to that Persian that almost took down one of the lesser Genesect on its own, and that awesome Feraligatr.... too bad Ash had to ruin everything by going 'durr hurr fighting is bad' and running in the way of the attacks to stop both sides from attacking... yeah, like the three psychotic Genesects would stop You'd think the dude would learn, because the last time he did that he was turned into stone.

Which brings me to the point of Mewtwo. The Pokemon anime kind of works in negative continuity, where continuity is ignored if it's inconvenient for storytelling. Especially in the movies. Which is fine -- but of all this that they have to fuck up, does it have to be Mewtwo? I can buy multiple copies of legendary Pokemon existing, but Mewtwo... like, he's an imperfect clone created in a lab by scientists trying to clone Mew. He is like the only Pokemon that it doesn't really make sense to have two copies of due to his origin, and with the original Mewtwo being such an iconic and beloved character in the franchise, reinventing him as a new character is a very risky gambit...

Especially if you're going to turn up with this half-assed copy of the original. Wow, what a bland character. Maybe if she's a standalone character without being compared to one of the most iconic Pokemon characters... nah, she's still bland. I went into this movie going all 'yeah, let me ignore the fact that Original Mewtwo exists'. But at this point I'm just wondering why they didn't use the original Mewtwo instead. I mean, gender swapping aside, NewMewtwo has exactly the same backstory as the original Mewtwo -- created by humans, looking for purpose, found purpose... except it's so truncated and barely explored -- so why the hell did they change him into a new character? Having the old Mewtwo back and giving him a fine-tuned script would make his speech about how the world is awesome and how he and his little family of clones found a place in the world despite being created in a world that didn't want them would have an actual emotional impact, even if the Genesects themselves as flat as cardboards character-wise.

And honestly, while I wouldn't go on the internet and start going all 'HERESY' and shit, I can't fault the fandom on hating on this new Mewtwo. It's not even a different, fresh take on the character... it's an inferior copy. 

And add that inferior copy of Mewtwo into a script with zero tension, the flattest of supporting characters (why is Eric in the movie?), very bad Ash scenes, very lazy action scenes and making something as interesting as Genesect into a very monotonic and boring plot devices... yeah, no wonder people hate this movie. Without the Mewtwo controversy, this one is easily one of the worst Pokemon movies out there. With it? Man. I really get why people hate this movie.