Pokémon 3: The Movie - Spell of the Unown: Entei — a little girl's grief and the last French screening

The third Pokémon film is the most intimate of the entire saga: no world domination, no megalomaniac collector, just a little girl whose father has disappeared. Released in Japan on July 8, 2000, and in French theaters on June 13, 2001, Pokémon 3: Spell of the Unown tells how a child's grief, amplified by Pokémon able to make wishes real, turns a house into a crystal fortress. It is also, and this is no small detail, the last film in the franchise to have had a proper theatrical run in French cinemas.

Contents

• A Film That Breaks with Its Predecessor
• The plot, without spoiling the ending
• Unown and Entei: Two Stars That Aren't What They Seem
• Molly, Ash, and a Mother Taken Hostage
• What this movie brings to the series
• Production and music
• Reception and results
• June 13, 2001: The Last Screening
• The Legacy of the Third Film
• Pokémon 3: Spell of the Unown at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Film That Breaks with Its Predecessor

After the oceanic spectacle of the second film, the saga makes a 180-degree turn. Spell of the Unown brings the action back to a single town and a single family, and its stakes are neither the global climate nor the survival of humankind but a child's grief. The film was released in Japan on July 8, 2000, in the July slot that had become the franchise's hard-and-fast rule.

The crew remains that of the first two films: Kunihiko Yuyama directs, studio OLM animates, Toho distributes in Japan and Shinji Miyazaki composes. The screenplay, however, is co-written for the first time, by Takeshi Shudō and Hideki Sonoda. It was the last major contribution to a film in the saga from Shudō, the man who had given the first film its darkness.

It is the shortest of the first four films, at 74 minutes, and the most tightly constructed. It was screened with a short film as the opening act, Pikachu & Pichu, following the now-established formula. The release context and this film's exact place in the saga are covered in detail in our overview of the 23 feature films.

Unlike the two previous films, this one came out when the second generation of games was already in players' hands. Entei is part of the legendary trio of Pokémon Gold and Silver, released in Japan in November 1999, and Unown can be caught in them too. The second film had done the opposite, revealing Lugia before its first game cartridge; here, the film's stars were already waiting for players in their games.

The plot, without spoiling the ending

Molly Hale lives in Greenfield with her father, a passionate archaeologist. He tells her the legend of the twenty-six Unown, Pokémon whose shapes reproduce the letters of the alphabet. Called away to a nearby dig site, he discovers a strange puzzle decorated with their silhouettes — and vanishes while handling it, swept away into another dimension.

A colleague brings the news to Molly and leaves her the puzzle. Alone, the child starts moving its pieces and spells out the words she is missing: papa, mama, me. The Unown answer this call and create an illusion of Entei to take the place of her absent father. It is the film's founding act, and everything else flows from it.

💡 Molly, alone with the puzzle, spells out "papa, mama, me" and the Unown answer with an illusion of Entei to take the place of her absent father; in your home, a Pokémon night light lights up the bedroom without conjuring up anything at all.

Molly eventually solves the puzzle completely, opening a door between dimensions. The Unown pour through and begin encasing the house, then the entire town, in a shell of crystal. No one understands where the phenomenon comes from. Meanwhile, Ash and his friends, joined by a Trainer they met along the way, arrive in Greenfield and find a petrified town.

The story takes a turn when Entei kidnaps Ash's mom to give her to Molly as a substitute mother. The film then takes the shape of a climb: Ash must scale the crystal tower to rescue his own, while Brock and then Misty each agree to battle Molly to clear the way for him. The final battle pits Ash's Charizard against Entei, and it doesn't end the way you'd expect — we won't say more.

Unown and Entei: Two Stars That Aren't What They Seem

Unown hold a unique place in the saga: they are Pokémon with almost no personality, no Trainer and no dialogue. The film turns them into a collective, impersonal force that literally obeys the wishes spoken in front of it, without ever weighing the consequences. They aren't evil; they grant wishes, that's all, and that is exactly what makes them dangerous.

The case of Entei is trickier still, and it's the point that summaries most often get wrong. The film's Entei is not the real Legendary Pokémon: it is an illusion created by the Unown from Molly's wish. It has the look and the power of one, but its entire existence rests on a child's need for a father. This nuance completely changes how you read the film.

Entei belongs to Johto's trio of Legendary Beasts, alongside Raikou and Suicune. The other two don't appear in this film, contrary to what you sometimes read: Suicune has to wait for the fourth film to make its entrance. How these groups work is explained in detail in our feature on legendary trios and duos.

Finally, the film plays on the alphabetical nature of the Unown in a very concrete way. The puzzle Molly handles is a writing device: spelling a word amounts to creating a reality, and the child uses it without understanding what she is setting in motion. It's a rare storytelling idea in a franchise used to head-on battles, and it carries the whole film.

🔤 In the film, spelling a word with the shapes of the Unown is enough to create a reality; our Pokémon patches only change the look of your jacket, which is already much safer.

Molly, Ash, and a Mother Taken Hostage

Molly Hale is the film's true main character, even more than Ash. The story follows her point of view as a grieving child and never treats her as an antagonist, even when she battles the group in the guise of a young woman created by the Unown. Few films in the saga give such a central role to a brand-new character: the twenty-third and most recent, Secrets of the Jungle, would do the same with young Koko, raised by a Zarude deep in the jungle.

Here Ash travels with Misty and Brock, the classic lineup, which clearly sets this film apart from the previous one, where Tracey had replaced Brock. A Trainer they meet at the start, Lisa, temporarily joins the group. At this point Ash's journey is in its Johto period, as covered in our feature Ash and the Pokémon anime.

Ash's team reflects this period: you can see his Johto Pokémon, including Cyndaquil, Chikorita and Totodile, as well as Noctowl. His Charizard, which he had released into the wild, comes back of its own accord to help him — it's one of the film's great emotional moments, and it only works if you know that Ash didn't call it back.

The film takes a considerable narrative risk by going after Ash's mother, Delia. Having her kidnapped and hypnotized into believing she is Molly's mother is the cruelest move the saga ever makes against its hero, and it gives the rescue a personal weight missing from the two previous films. Brock and Misty, by agreeing to lose time for his sake, play a rare and very concrete supporting role here.

The film also holds a battle distinction that fans are quick to point out: it is the only film in the saga to feature a full six-on-six battle, and the first time Ash faces a female Trainer in this format.

What this movie brings to the series

The third film proves that a Pokémon feature can work without a villain. There is no one to defeat in Spell of the Unown: there is a child to convince to give up what she has created. It is a bold writing choice the franchise would rarely repeat, and it earned the film its reputation as the emotional high point of the classic era.

It also brings a lasting variation on the role of Legendaries. Until then, these creatures were either victims to protect or forces to appease. Here, one of them simply doesn't exist: it is a mental projection, which shifts the question of the Legendary toward the question of belief. Our feature on regional legends and mythologies shows just how fundamental this ambiguity is to the universe.

Finally, the film strengthens the link between the movies and the games of the day. The Unown and Entei had only just arrived in the second-generation cartridges, and the film gave them a showcase at a time when French players were only just discovering Gold and Silver.

On a more practical note, it is also the last of the saga's animated films distributed in the United States by Warner Bros., which would not return to the franchise until 2019, with the live-action film Pokémon Detective Pikachu. This departure would have direct and brutal consequences for the fate of the fourth film, and by extension for the entire timeline of French releases.

Production and music

The film keeps the production setup of the previous two. Directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, animated by OLM, distributed in Japan by Toho, with an original score by Shinji Miyazaki, for a running time of 74 minutes. The screenplay pairs Takeshi Shudō with Hideki Sonoda, the latter gradually taking over.

Visually, the film stakes everything on a single motif: crystal. The way it spreads over the house, then over the town, serves as both a countdown and an emotional barometer: the further Molly's grief spreads, the more ground the crystal gains. It's a simple idea, perfectly sustained throughout the film.

For the international release, the score was reworked once again, this time under Ralph Schuckett, with John Loeffler as executive music producer. The Western end credits are set to the song To Know the Unknown, continuing the music strategy established on the two previous films.

In the United States, the release came with a promotion very typical of the era: some theaters handed out exclusive trading cards to moviegoers, to capitalize on the success of the card game. The film and the cards sold each other.

Reception and results

In Japan, the film remains a safe bet. It ranked as the top Japanese film of the year and third overall at the Japanese box office, behind two American productions, with a gross of 4.85 billion yen. The annual July event still works, even if the novelty has worn off.

In North America, the film was released on April 6, 2001 and opened in fourth place with $8.2 million from 2,675 theaters, less than half of that week's leader. The contrast with the $19.6 million of the second film, eight months earlier, is striking.

The worldwide total came to $68.4 million according to Box Office Mojo. The trend is clear, measured the same way: $163.6 million for the first film, $133.9 million for the second, $68.4 million for the third. In three years, the saga lost nearly sixty percent of its international box office, which explains the pullback by distributors that followed.

The critical response, on the other hand, remained harsh: 20% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and 22 out of 100 on Metacritic, the lowest score of the first three films. Critics did, however, credit it with a stronger screenplay than its two predecessors, and the film has since enjoyed a lasting reputation among fans, often cited as the best-written story of the era.

This commercial slide was no accident; it was structural. One film a year on the same model inevitably ends up exhausting the general public's curiosity, especially when the TV series airs dozens of episodes for free every season. The core fan base stayed; it was the casual audience, the one that had made the first film a hit, that stopped showing up. This shift from a mass phenomenon to a loyal following is exactly what led Western distributors to scale back their ambitions starting with the next film.

June 13, 2001: The Last Screening

In France, the film hit theaters on June 13, 2001. It is an important date to remember, because it marks an ending: it is the last Pokémon film to have had a proper theatrical run in French cinemas. Along with the first film on April 5, 2000 and the second on December 20, 2000, it completes the opening trio of the saga's films shown in French theaters.

From the fourth film onward, France switched to DVD, then television, then streaming, and the order of French releases became completely disconnected from the Japanese order. The fifth film came out in France in 2005, almost two years before the fourth, which only arrived in 2007. This jumble is laid out in detail in our guide to all the movies.

☕ From the fourth film onward, France switched to DVD, then television, then streaming, and the fifth film reached French audiences in 2005, almost two years before the fourth. Pokémon movie night left the dark theater for your living room, and that's where a Pokémon mug takes the place of the cup you used to hold at the movies.

Consider what that means: in fourteen months, between April 2000 and June 2001, French audiences saw three Pokémon films in theaters, then nothing for sixteen years, until I Choose You! in November 2017. This concentration explains why these three titles hold a special place in the memory of French-speaking audiences, far above the rest of the saga.

The French home video release arrived on December 13, 2001, on DVD and VHS, along with a promotional Unown J card. It was the third time in a row that a French home video release of a Pokémon film came with an exclusive promotional card, after the first film's Mewtwo and the second film's Surfing Pikachu.

The Legacy of the Third Film

Spell of the Unown permanently changed how the Unown are perceived. An obscure and unpopular species in the games, where it is useless in battle, it became an unsettling and memorable force on the big screen. It is probably the best example in the entire franchise of a film rehabilitating a Pokémon that the games had neglected.

The film also proved that a Pokémon story could speak to adults without resorting to the darkness of the first film. Where Pokémon: The First Movie dealt with death and cloning, this one deals with grief and the refusal to accept reality, with far gentler means and an infinitely less brutal ending. Two opposite ways of being a serious film.

Finally, its place in French memory is unique. Many French-speaking viewers associate it, often without realizing it, with the end of an era: the era when Pokémon packed movie theaters. After June 2001, the franchise stayed everywhere in France through the games, the cards and television, but it left the big screen, returning only twice: a twelve-day limited run for I Choose You!, from November 5 to 17, 2017, then two days of special event screenings devoted to Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel, on November 22 and 23, 2025.

For anyone who wants to discover the classic era, this third film remains the best entry point after the first: shorter, more moving, and completely self-contained. It assumes no prior knowledge of the series, which is far from true of every film in the saga.

Pokémon 3: Spell of the Unown at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the exact French title of the third Pokémon film?
  Its official French title is Pokémon 3: Le sort des Zarbi. The Japanese title translates as The Emperor of the Crystal Tower: Entei, and the American title adds Spell of the Unown: Entei. The French version keeps only the reference to the Unown (Zarbi in French).
• Is the Entei in the third film the real Legendary Pokémon?
  No. The Entei you see in the film is an illusion created by the Unown from the wish of Molly Hale, who wants her missing father back. It has the look and the power of the real one, but its existence depends entirely on the child's wish.
• Do Raikou and Suicune appear in this film?
  No. Although Entei is part of Johto's trio of Legendary Beasts, its two companions Raikou and Suicune are absent from the third film. Suicune only appears starting with the saga's fourth film, alongside Celebi.
• When was the third Pokémon film released in France?
  It was released in French theaters on June 13, 2001, then on DVD and VHS on December 13, 2001. Its Japanese release was on July 8, 2000.
• Why is it called the last Pokémon film released in theaters in France?
  Because only three of the saga's films had a proper theatrical run in France: the first on April 5, 2000, the second on December 20, 2000 and the third on June 13, 2001. From the fourth film onward, France switched to direct-to-DVD releases, then television and streaming. French theaters have nonetheless shown the saga twice since: I Choose You! from November 5 to 17, 2017, then Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel in special event screenings on November 22 and 23, 2025.
• Is this film connected to the Pokémon Gold and Silver games?
  Yes. The Unown and Entei were introduced in the video games with the second generation, released in Japan in November 1999, before the film. Unlike the second film, whose star Lugia didn't exist in any game at the time, this one features creatures that players could already encounter in their cartridges.

In short