While Detective Pikachu is planned to launch Legendary Pictures’ live-action Pokémon cinematic universe, The Pokémon Company hasn’t put all its eggs in one basket. That’s because this July will see the premiere of Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution, which is both a sequel to 2018’s Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us and some kind of remake of 1998’s Pokémon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back.
We’ve already seen a teaser trailer that promised that the “The Legend Was Back” and showed a CGI Mewtwo hurtling through the night sky, concluding with a shot of him squaring off against his counterpart Mew (the fabled Pokémon 151). It’s clear then that what we’re getting this July is going to follow the plot of the 1998 movie, but we’ve now got a bit more of a concrete hint of how much it’ll stick to the original thanks to the merchandise seen in the gallery below.
Yes, as you can see, this is a very special Poke Ball with a sinister history. These were designed and used by Mewtwo to capture and clone trainers’ Pokémon, and managed to capture anything that they were used against. They were so powerful, in fact, that they were able to capture Pokémon still in their Poke Balls, as well as being able to hone in on even the fastest escaping targets. They were used in the 1998 film and, if they’re being used in this sequel, it strongly suggests that the company’s following the same plotline.
If this is the case, then be prepared to pack hankies for the film’s final sequences. Here, hero Ash Ketchum is turned to stone and all seems lost, until the tears of his Pokémon revive him, a sequence that caused no end of sniffles in cinemas back in the day.
In the meantime, we’ve also got Detective Pikachu to look forward to on May 10th. It seems that 2019 is going to be a big year for the franchise then, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.