Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages — the film where the saga summons its entire pantheon

July 2015: Pokémon cinema opens its rings wide. The series' eighteenth feature film puts Hoopa on the poster, a Mythical Pokémon able to make anything appear — Legendary Pokémon included — through portals. The result is the movie most packed with rare creatures in the entire series, and also one of the loudest. Here's what you need to know about Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages, from its Japanese release to its run in France.

Contents

• July 2015: The Second Movie of the Kalos Era
• The Plot: A Hundred Years of Rage Sealed in a Bottle
• Hoopa, the Mythical Pokémon with Two Faces
• A Clash of Legends: The Biggest Lineup in the Series
• Ash, the Kalos Trio and the Siblings of Dahara City
• Dahara City, Dubai and Behind the Scenes
• Reception, Box Office and Critical Response
• The French Release: iTunes, Then Gulli, Then DVD
• In the Games: Hoopa, Shiny Rayquaza and a Never-Before-Seen Arceus
• What the Movie Leaves Behind for the Series
• Hoopa and the Clash of Ages at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

July 2015: The Second Movie of the Kalos Era

The movie hit Japanese theaters on July 18, 2015, distributed by Toho, almost exactly one year to the day after Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction. The summer release has been a Japanese ritual since 1998, and the series has only missed it once in twenty-three films, as covered in our complete overview of the Pokémon movies.

Kunihiko Yuyama directed, Atsuhiro Tomioka wrote the screenplay and Shinji Miyazaki composed the score, for a 78-minute feature produced by studio OLM. The Japanese title, 光輪の超魔神 フーパ, roughly translates as "Archdjinni of the Rings: Hoopa": the Arabian Nights angle and the genie-in-the-lamp theme were in place from the very first announcement.

It's the second movie of the XY cycle, the one tied to the Kalos region and the games Pokémon X and Y. But the movie looks elsewhere: it draws on every previous generation, and above all on Hoenn, whose remakes had come out on 3DS just a few months earlier.

A useful clarification so you don't mix up the eras: this movie has no alternate version. It was the fourteenth movie, the one from the Unova generation, that came in two versions released on the same day, Black - Victini and Reshiram and White - Victini and Zekrom. The eighteenth is a single, standalone movie.

The Plot: A Hundred Years of Rage Sealed in a Bottle

The movie opens a century before the main story, in the desert around Dahara City. An unknown Pokémon bursts out of a ring there, devours the villagers' supplies, then pays them back by making gold rain from the sky. The village prospers, grows attached to it, and asks more and more of it: first objects, then opponents, then outright Legendaries to fight for their entertainment.

The show turns into a disaster and the city is destroyed. A lone traveler eventually traps the creature in a vessel, the Prison Bottle, which at the same time sends all the summoned Legendaries back home. A hundred years later, the bottle is found deep in the desert — and anyone who touches it is instantly possessed by the rage it holds.

Ash and his friends arrive in Dahara City through one of Hoopa's rings, Hoopa now living with Baraz and his sister Meray, descendants of the man who had sealed it away. Releasing what's in the bottle gives birth to a separate entity: a shadow of Hoopa, born from a hundred years of rage, with only one thing on its mind — taking back the original's body.

What follows is a race to reforge the Prison Bottle while the two Hoopa battle for the skies over Dahara City, hurling Legendaries at each other. As for the ending, you'll have to discover it on screen: we stop at the moment the city starts paying dearly for all this accumulated power.

Hoopa, the Mythical Pokémon with Two Faces

Hoopa is a Mythical Pokémon introduced in Generation VI, and it exists in two forms. Its Confined Form — tiny, mischievous and Psychic/Ghost type — is the one that travels with the group for most of the movie. Its Unbound Form is a six-armed colossus, far more menacing, that handles its rings like so many doorways.

🔗 Hoopa's Unbound Form has six arms to wield its rings like so many doorways; your two wrists will have to make do with our Pokémon bracelets, which don't open onto anything at all.

In the games, switching from one form to the other takes a specific item, the Prison Bottle — the very one from the movie. Introduced in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, it unbinds Hoopa, which reverts to its Confined Form after three days or as soon as it's deposited in the PC. So the movie doesn't just showcase a creature: it stages a game mechanic.

Its most remarkable trait on screen is that it talks, and without relying on telepathy. The series had already let Pokémon speak in its movies, but almost always through thought. Here, Hoopa chatters, taunts and mocks, which gives the movie a much more comedic tone than its predecessor.

The parallel with Diancie jumps out when you watch the two movies back to back: in both cases, the star Mythical Pokémon is a character who hasn't yet mastered its own power. Diancie couldn't create its diamond, and Hoopa can't pass through its own rings.

A Clash of Legends: The Biggest Lineup in the Series

The French title, which translates to "the clash of legends," doesn't lie. The movie lines up, in no particular order: Lugia, Latias and Latios with their Mega Evolutions, Rayquaza as Shiny Mega Rayquaza, Groudon and Kyogre in Primal Reversion, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Regigigas, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem and its fusions, plus Arceus.

It's also the first movie in the series to show Primal Reversion, the mechanic introduced by the Hoenn remakes a few months earlier. Seeing Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre summoned side by side, in a sky already crowded with dragons, gives you a sense of the movie's visual ambition: it's no longer a story, it's a catalog in motion.

All that accumulation comes at a narrative cost, and the movie owns it: too many Legendaries in one place ends up tearing space-time apart around Dahara City's tower. The script thus turns its own excess into dramatic stakes, which is rather clever. To place each of these creatures in the series' own hierarchy, our guide to Legendary and Mythical Pokémon explains what sets a Legendary apart from a Mythical.

📌 Primal Groudon, Primal Kyogre and Shiny Mega Rayquaza share the same sky until space-time tears apart around Dahara City's tower; our Pokémon pins let you line up your own pantheon on the flap of your bag, with far less damage.

A note for continuity buffs: the opening sequence featuring Latios and Latias offers a glimpse of Alto Mare, the setting of the fifth movie, Pokémon Heroes. It's a nod, not a sequel: the two movies share no plot.

Ash, the Kalos Trio and the Siblings of Dahara City

Here, Ash travels with Serena, Clemont and Bonnie, the trio from the XY series. This lineup is your best compass for telling neighboring movies apart: neither Brock, nor Misty, nor Dawn sets foot in this movie. The full rundown of Ash's companions, region by region, is laid out in our feature on his journey as a Trainer.

The teams have also changed since the previous movie, which makes a good marker of the era: Ash now has Frogadier, Fletchinder, Hawlucha and a Noibat, Serena has her Braixen and her Pancham, and Clemont has added a Luxray to his Chespin, his Bunnelby and the Dedenne he carries for Bonnie.

On the guest side, everything revolves around a brother and sister. Baraz and Meray are descendants of Ghris, the man who sealed Hoopa's power a century earlier, and they watch over the Mythical Pokémon like a member of the family. It's the emotional heart of the movie: the question isn't how to defeat Hoopa, but whether they can give back what was taken from it without destroying the city in the process.

Team Rocket plays a more decisive role than usual: it's while trying to steal the Prison Bottle that Meowth sets off the disaster. A rare case where the trio's blunders are more than just comic relief.

Dahara City, Dubai and Behind the Scenes

Dahara City is openly inspired by Dubai, with its towers rising out of the desert, its canals and its blazing light. After the Canadian setting of the previous movie, the OLM team thus continues its world tour of real-life settings, a habit that gives the XY cycle a more exotic visual identity than the series average.

The Japanese score is by Shinji Miyazaki, with an ending theme performed by Rei Yasuda. The international version, from which the French version is derived, relies on Ed Goldfarb's arrangements; in France, the movie closes with the song Tu connais tous mes chagrins. The French-language dub, recorded in Belgium, brings back Aurélien Ringelheim as Ash, Sophie Frison as Serena, Fabian Finkels as Baraz and Marie du Bled as Meray.

A detail that says a lot about the movie's standing in Japan: a charity auction accompanied its release, from July 18 to 24, 2015, benefiting the Pokémon with You program set up after the 2011 earthquake. Posters and T-shirts signed by the celebrities who lent their voices to the movie, including actor Tatsuya Fujiwara and singer Shōko Nakagawa, went under the hammer.

Casting celebrity voices in guest roles is a well-established tradition of Japanese Pokémon cinema, and this movie turns it into a full-fledged marketing pitch — going as far as bringing five names together in the same campaign.

Reception, Box Office and Critical Response

In Japan, the movie grossed 2.61 billion yen at the box office, according to Eiren's annual statistics. The $22 million figure you often see doesn't come from any named conversion: what Box Office Mojo publishes is $21.8 million across all territories, including $20.0 million for Japan alone, $1.76 million for South Korea and $56,000 for Thailand. That's down from the seventeenth movie, and the trend would continue the following year: the XY cycle traces a clear downward slope at the Japanese box office.

English-language critics were decidedly lukewarm, faulting the movie for a muddled plot and a pile-up of creatures at the expense of the story. Common Sense Media, a go-to reference for American parents, gives it just two stars out of five and recommends it only for die-hard fans.

The criticism is understandable, but it misses what the movie is trying to do. It's not an intimate story like the Sinnoh trilogy: it's a fireworks display, designed so that kids can recognize on screen the creatures they collect. Seen from that angle, it delivers better than any other movie in the series.

🎆 Two stars out of five from Common Sense Media, and yet the movie delivers the moment a kid recognizes on screen the creatures they collect: our Pokémon toys take over on your play mat once the credits roll.

The French Release: iTunes, Then Gulli, Then DVD

This movie's path in France is one of the most unusual in the series. It was first offered as a paid early release on iTunes on January 19, 2016, before any TV broadcast at all. It's the only Pokémon movie to have followed that order in France.

Its first French TV broadcast came on May 27, 2016, on Gulli, ten months after Japan. The DVD followed on the 1^st of June 2016, along with a mini-manga devoted to the XY series. To date, it's the last movie in the series to get a French DVD release: the movies that followed went through TV, then streaming.

Elsewhere, the schedule varied even more: Australian theaters on November 5, 2015, Teletoon in Canada on November 14, CITV in the United Kingdom on December 12 and Cartoon Network in the United States on December 19, 2015. One movie, four release patterns — the series' usual headache outside Japan.

In the Games: Hoopa, Shiny Rayquaza and a Never-Before-Seen Arceus

The distribution campaign tied to this movie is one of the most generous in the series. In Japan, a Shiny Rayquaza was given away from January 18 to February 8, 2015 at the World Hobby Fair, echoing the movie's Shiny Mega Rayquaza. Hoopa itself was distributed from July 18 to September 30, 2015 via wireless connection, right inside the theaters showing the movie.

The most remarkable, though, is the pre-sale Arceus. Every advance ticket bought between March 7 and July 17, 2015 came with a code for one of the Pokémon's nineteen variants, including a Shiny one — a first, since Arceus had until then been shiny-locked and impossible to obtain in that form.

France wasn't left out. Hoopa was distributed via code from November 2 to 22, 2015 at Micromania stores, for Pokémon X and Y as well as Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, with a logistical twist: the codes were printed directly on the store receipt rather than on a scratch card. The same Hoopa came back from April 6 to 30, 2016 via a universal code available to everyone.

A Shiny Rayquaza was also offered in France at Paris Games Week, from October 28 to the 1^st of November 2015. These distributions aren't side attractions: they're the movie's commercial reason for being, since it serves as a showcase for creatures that are otherwise unobtainable.

What the Movie Leaves Behind for the Series

This eighteenth movie is the high point of a logic pushed to its limit: showing as many rare creatures as possible in 78 minutes. The next movie, Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel, would go the opposite way, narrowing the story down to two creatures and a kingdom.

It also marks the series' last big showcase of Legendaries before the 2017 turning point. Two years later, I Choose You! would start over from scratch in an alternate continuity, with new companions and a reimagining of Ash's first meeting with Pikachu. In hindsight, the XY cycle is the final stretch of classic Pokémon cinema.

For viewers, the movie remains an excellent entry point if you're after spectacle more than emotion, and a geography lesson in the Pokémon pantheon. It works perfectly on its own, without knowing either the XY series or the previous movies.

Hoopa and the Clash of Ages at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the exact French title of the eighteenth Pokémon movie?
  Its French title is "Pokémon, le film: Hoopa et le choc des légendes"; in English, it's Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages. The Japanese title, 光輪の超魔神 フーパ, means something closer to "Archdjinni of the Rings: Hoopa": as often in the series, the French version isn't a literal translation but a title reworked for the local release.
• Which Legendary Pokémon appear in the movie?
  The movie brings together Lugia, Latias and Latios with their Mega Evolutions, a Shiny Mega Rayquaza, Groudon and Kyogre in Primal Reversion, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Regigigas, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem and its fusions, as well as Arceus, among others. It's the largest gathering of Legendary creatures in the entire Pokémon movie series.
• Was the movie released in theaters in France?
  No. In France, it was first offered for purchase on iTunes on January 19, 2016, then broadcast on TV on Gulli on May 27, 2016, before a DVD release on June 1, 2016. Only the first three movies in the series got a regular theatrical run in France, between April 2000 and June 2001; two others only returned to French theaters for special event screenings, I Choose You! in November 2017 and Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel in November 2025.
• What is the Prison Bottle?
  It's the vessel in which Hoopa's power was sealed a hundred years before the events of the movie. It also exists in the video games, since Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire: it lets Hoopa change from its Confined Form to its Unbound Form, with the effect wearing off after three days or as soon as the Pokémon is deposited in the PC.
• Who travels with Ash in this movie?
  Ash travels with Serena, Clemont and Bonnie, the trio of companions from the XY series, as well as Pikachu. Brock, Misty and Dawn don't appear: they belong to other periods of the anime. Team Rocket is there and plays a decisive role in setting off the disaster.
• How could you get Hoopa in the games when the movie came out?
  In Japan, Hoopa was distributed from July 18 to September 30, 2015 via wireless connection in the theaters showing the movie. In France, it was offered via code at Micromania stores from November 2 to 22, 2015 for Pokémon X and Y as well as Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, then again from April 6 to 30, 2016 via a universal code open to everyone.
• Does this movie have two different versions like the one from the Unova generation?
  No. The only movie in the series released in two versions is the fourteenth, which came out in Japan in 2011 as Black - Victini and Reshiram and White - Victini and Zekrom: same plot, different dragon. Hoopa and the Clash of Ages is a single movie.

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