Movie Review: Pokemon - Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel

Pokemon, Movie 19: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel 

So, yeah, over the weekend I watched this movie. It's released in the tail-end of the sixth generation, and serves to intro both the final sixth-generation legendary, Volcanion, and a quick sneak-peek into the seventh generation by giving us Magearna as one of the two main legendary Pokemon of this movie. 

It's... a very average Pokemon movie, to be honest. There wasn't really a huge sense of epic scale of battle, the plot was pretty simple even by Pokemon standards, and there really isn't much to really mix up the formula. There isn't anything in this movie that's flat-out bad, but there really isn't any to raise it and make it a spectacular one either, even by Pokemon-movie standards. Ash and company show up at a locale, befriend a legendary Pokemon that can speak for some reason, try to protect a plot device from the bad guys, there's a huge fight near the end, they win, everyone is happy. Comparing it to Hoopa's movie, there isn't the appeal of a huge spectacle in a large amount of legendaries, or a somewhat-interesting villain in that the main enemy is Hoopa's own evil side. And the movie gets a bit too preachy about the whole 'humans sometimes hurt Pokemon!' and 'some humans are good, don't hate all humans!' argument points without really putting a new twist on them.

Volcanion throughout the whole movie just isn't interesting, he's just this grumpy racist old man who, of course, ends up finding out that Ash and company isn't all bad. But as far as Legendary Pokemon go... he's not that impressive, and I'm still not sold at all on his design. Magearna is even worse, where she literally doesn't have a personality beyond being this sentient robot doll that everyone wants. Ash and Volcanion wants to protect her, while the bad guy, this evil vizier, just wants the Soul-Heart that powers up Magearna to use to pilot the huge CGI rubble-floating-castle-cannon. 

I dunno, the sub-plot of a naive prince being fooled by the evil vizier just seems pointless because neither of them really show up on screen to really leave an impact, and it's just... there. Credit where credit's due, though, Evil Vizier Man actually shows himself to be pretty evil in that his gimmick actually plays into one of Pokemon's core gimmicks of the sixth generation, Mega Evolution. Evil Vizier Man apparently is able to tap into the same 'arcane science' that birthed Magearna to force multiple Pokemon to Mega Evolve at the same time, taking away the requirement of the close trainer-Pokemon bond that Mega Evolution normally requires. It's a bit of a cool thing exclusive to Evil Vizier Man similar to, like, the Dark Pokeballs from the fourth movie that sets him apart, and the movie does address this a bit. Not too much, mind you, because the focus is all on Magearna and Volcanion, but it's a nice little tidbit.

And the sheer amount of Mega Evolutions in this movie! They all end up not being super-impressive because our heroes manage to take down a couple of Mega Evolutions with a freaking Bunnelby at one point, but they are very impressive visually, from the gang of the Shiny Mega Gengar, Mega Glalie and Mega Alakazam in the beginning, to the conscripted Mega Heracross and Mega Pinsir that Team Rocket uses, to the absolutely huge army at the climax... that huge army is pretty cool, admittedly, with Mega Alakazam using his psychic powers to launch like, Mega Swamperts and Mega Sharpedos into the air to fight our heroes, and we get a lot of fighting scenes not only for Ash, but also surprisingly for Serena and Clemont as well. Hell, it's not just the Pikachu-show either, because the rest of Ash's party, like Hawlucha, Noivern, Talonflame and Greninja all get some really cool action scenes against the Mega Evolutions.

Oh, and Zygarde gets in on the action, too! How the hell did Team Ash have a little Zygarde Core hanging around them? Zygarde (or "Squishy", as Bonnie calls him) transforms into 10% form to take down a Mega Banette, before into his full 100% form to block the beam of the Soul Heart weapon.

Team Rocket is... kinda there? They help out the bad guys for a bit with a couple of loaned mega-bugs, and Meowth gets conscripted forcibly to translate Magearna's Soul Heart and to see if it's still sentient, but overall their role in the movie is slightly more than a cameo, but not that much. Very fun to listen to Dub!Meowth's Brooklyn accent once more, though.

Again, the plotline is mostly just there as a formality, because Magearna is more of an object and the truest definition of a damsel in distress, while Volcanion felt two-dimensional and obviously-going-to-be-good. I'm not sure if it's because of the stilted delivery of the English dub -- it's not the worst that I've heard, but it's not good either -- or simply because of poor, lazy dialogue choices... but eh.

It might seem that I'm talking shit about this movie... it's not bad, though, that's my point. Sure it was a bit boring and long-winded in the middle bits with Ash and company trying to befriend the secluded Pokemon in Navel Forest, and I can't give a shit about the very simple politics of Azoth Kingdom, but I really wished they had put in more thought about the backstories of Magearna and Volcanion, is all. I dunno. We get to see Magearna as this little fairy-robot-doll that brings flowers and joy, and we see the devastation she causes as a weapon, but we never really saw how this affected her. She's just an object to be saved, and that, I think, is the weakest part of the movie.

Overall, though, still a fun little simply movie to spend an afternoon watching.