Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution: the first movie remade in CGI

The twenty-second Pokémon movie isn't a new story: it's the very first feature film in the series, completely remade in CGI. Released in Japan on July 12, 2019, Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution retells the 1998 story while completely overhauling how it was made. In France, it arrived on February 27, 2020, directly on Netflix, skipping theaters entirely.

Contents

• Background and Release: A Remake Announced in the Wake of the 21st Film
• The French Title: The First Time "Mewtwo contre-attaque" Became Official
• The plot, without spoiling the ending
• What the Remake Changes, and What It Keeps
• The Production: OLM, Sprite Animation Studios and 3D
• Mewtwo and Mew, Twenty Years Later
• Ash, Misty, Brock: The Original Team
• Reception and box office
• The French Release: Netflix, February 27, 2020
• The Legacy: The Film That Moved the Series to Streaming
• Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Background and Release: A Remake Announced in the Wake of the 21st Film

The film's existence was revealed in Japan in a trailer shown right after screenings of the twenty-first feature film, in the summer of 2018: it featured the opening monologue from 1998 and already revealed the title of the upcoming film. The official announcement came on December 14, 2018, along with the Japanese release date and the nature of the project: it would be a remake of the series' first film. The first trailer followed on December 31, 2018, and it wasn't until the February 28, 2019 trailer that the other bold choice was unveiled—the film would be made entirely in CGI.

The world premiere took place on July 4, 2019, at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, in Japanese with subtitles, eight days before the Japanese theatrical release on July 12, 2019. Like its predecessors, the film is distributed in Japan by Toho, and it runs 98 minutes.

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For the series, this was uncharted territory. No Pokémon film had ever been remade before, and none had been produced entirely in 3D. Placing it in the timeline also takes a bit of mental gymnastics: it's the twenty-second film in release order, but it tells the events of the very first one, from the period when Ash is discovering Kanto. The complete guide to the Pokémon movies puts all twenty-three feature films in order.

One clarification is in order, because the mix-up is common: 2019 is also the year of Pokémon Detective Pikachu, released in French theaters on May 8. The latter is a spin-off, shot in live action and adapted from a video game, and it isn't part of the series of twenty-three animated feature films. The two share nothing but their release year and their franchise: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution is the only one of the two that belongs to the movie series proper.

The French Title: The First Time "Mewtwo contre-attaque" Became Official

This is the point that confuses the most people, and it's worth laying out clearly. In France, the 1998 film is simply called Pokémon: Le film (literally "Pokémon: The Movie"): Mewtwo contre-attaque is the translation of the Japanese subtitle and of the American title, but it didn't appear on the posters for the French theatrical release of April 5, 2000.

This 2019 remake is therefore the first film in the series to officially bear the name "Mewtwo contre-attaque" (Mewtwo Strikes Back) in French, in its full form Pokémon: Mewtwo contre-attaque – Évolution. The Japanese title, ミュウツーの逆襲 EVOLUTION (Myūtsū no gyakushū Evolution), reuses the 1998 title and tacks on the word "Evolution"—the same suffix logic as the French title.

The practical upshot is simple: if you search for "Mewtwo contre-attaque" in a French catalog, you'll land on the 2019 film, not the 1998 one. Yet both tell the same story. The word "Evolution" here doesn't refer to any game mechanic: it refers to the technical evolution of the film itself.

The plot, without spoiling the ending

The starting point is the same as in 1998. Scientists funded by Team Rocket create a Pokémon from Mew's genetic material, then try to turn it into a tool. The resulting creature, Mewtwo, rejects that role and leaves the lab.

Some time later, invitations start going around: a mysterious Trainer invites the best of them to a remote island. Ash, Misty and Brock are among them and set sail despite the storm. What awaits them there is nothing like an ordinary tournament, and the film turns into a showdown between the Pokémon and their clones.

✉️ The mysterious Trainer invites the best Trainers to his island without telling them what awaits them; when you invite your friends over, you might as well go all in on the theme with our Pokémon birthday section.

The remake follows this sequence of events from start to finish, without rewriting the plot or changing the ending. If you're discovering the story through this version, you haven't missed anything from the original film; if you know the 1998 film by heart, the interest lies elsewhere—in the way each scene has been rebuilt. The story of the original film is covered in detail in its own dedicated feature.

What the Remake Changes, and What It Keeps

The film openly embraces being a shot-for-shot remake, or nearly so: framing, editing, sequence order and dialogue follow the original very closely. The nod starts with the marketing itself, since the first Japanese poster recreates the composition of the 1998 poster. It's an exercise in reconstruction more than reinterpretation.

What changes is everything else about how it was made. The human characters, the Pokémon, the backgrounds and the effects are all modeled in three dimensions, with a look that tries to imitate the original line work while taking advantage of what 3D can do with water, lightning and explosions. The series' theme music gets the treatment too: the French version opens with a Pokémon theme remixed for the occasion and closes on a song titled "Accepter d'évoluer".

The screenplay, for its part, is still credited to Takeshi Shudō, the series' longtime screenwriter, who passed away in 2010: the remake builds on his 1998 script rather than a new one. It's a choice consistent with the project, but it also explains why the film adds no new story elements to the series' mythology.

The Production: OLM, Sprite Animation Studios and 3D

The film is co-directed by Kunihiko Yuyama and Motonori Sakakibara. The former is the series' longtime director, at the helm since 1998; the latter comes from the world of CGI. That dual credit sums up the nature of the project quite well: one foot in the series' memory, one foot in a technique the franchise had never used on a feature film.

The animation is handled by OLM and OLM Digital, backed by Sprite Animation Studios, a studio specializing in 3D. The film was produced by Satoshi Shimodaira, Ayaka Sekiguchi and Yosuke Nagafuchi, and edited by Ayako Miura. Notably, for such a radical technical overhaul: Shinji Miyazaki, the series' regular composer, stays on to write the music, which preserves the series' signature sound.

⌨️ It took OLM Digital and Sprite Animation Studios for the series to hand an entire feature film over to computers; the one in front of you deserves keys that live up to it, and that's the job of our Pokémon keycaps.

The result is divisive, and it's at the heart of the debate around the film. The 3D shines on natural elements and battles, and is less convincing on human faces, whose rendering some critics found too smooth. The film didn't aim for photorealism: it tries to translate a 1998 drawing into three dimensions, which is a far trickier exercise than it looks.

Mewtwo and Mew, Twenty Years Later

Mewtwo and Mew share top billing, just as in 1998. The former is a Legendary Pokémon created in a lab, the latter the Mythical Pokémon it was derived from; their clash remains the driving force of the film, and the 3D gives it a new physical presence, especially in the telekinesis and storm scenes.

It's Mewtwo's third appearance in a feature film of the series, after the 1998 film and the sixteenth, Genesect and the Legend Awakened, released in 2013. Few creatures have received that kind of follow-up on the big screen, which says a lot about the character's place in the franchise's imagination. The distinction between these two categories of rare creatures is explained in the guide to Legendary and Mythical Pokémon.

The film doesn't change the original characterization. Mewtwo is still a manufactured being trying to understand why it exists, and Mew is still its light, playful counterpart. The remake simply replays that score—which is both its faithfulness and its limitation.

Ash, Misty, Brock: The Original Team

Since the film replays the events of 1998, Ash travels with Misty and Brock, the lineup from the series' very first era—worth keeping in mind when you watch the films back to back, since the hero's companions change from one era to the next. His Pikachu is along for the ride too, together with the Pokémon from his early days.

On the island, you'll find the invited Trainers from the original film, led by Neesha and Fergus, as well as Dr. Fuji and Giovanni, the boss of Team Rocket, both present from the prologue on; Miranda, for her part, never leaves the mainland port she runs. Jessie, James and Meowth are there in the unusual role they already played in 1998: stowaways rather than antagonists.

The French version keeps the series' usual voice cast, which hasn't always been the case in the history of the Pokémon films: Aurélien Ringelheim voices Ash, Fanny Roy voices Misty, Antoni Lo Presti voices Brock, Catherine Conet voices Jessie and David Manet voices James, while Jean-Marc Delhausse lends his voice to Mewtwo. The hero's full journey is traced in our feature on Ash and the Pokémon anime.

Reception and box office

In Japan, the film grossed 2.98 billion yen at the box office according to figures from the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, a solid result for the series at the time. It was the last Pokémon feature film to enjoy a normal theatrical run before the pandemic.

Western critics, meanwhile, focused on the question of the 3D. The Los Angeles Times faulted the film for the overly smooth look of its human characters, which it felt clashed with the hyperrealism of the water, lightning and explosions. Common Sense Media, which gave it three out of five stars, sums up the debate well: how much you enjoy it depends almost entirely on whether you buy into the switch to computer animation.

Its success, however, came from somewhere other than theaters. After arriving on Netflix in February 2020, the film was the platform's most-watched Japanese anime title of the year in India, Malaysia and Singapore, according to figures Netflix provided to Variety — a result that probably weighed in the decision to release the next film directly on the platform.

The debate also played out among longtime viewers, along a fairly clear dividing line. Those who knew the 1998 film by heart mostly noticed the gap between two very different image textures, while younger viewers, discovering the story for the first time, had nothing to compare it to and took the film for what it is: a dark sci-fi tale, unusual for a franchise known for being gentle. That dual audience is exactly what the project was aiming for.

The French Release: Netflix, February 27, 2020

The film never played in French theaters: it arrived directly on Netflix on February 27, 2020, the same day as almost everywhere else in the world, South Korea excepted. It was the first feature film in the series to be released this way internationally, with no prior theatrical run or TV broadcast outside Japan.

The date was no accident. February 27 is Pokémon Day, the anniversary of the Japanese release of the very first games, Pocket Monsters Red and Green, on February 27, 1996—the founding titles covered in our feature on Pokémon Red and Blue. Timing the release of a remake of the first film to coincide with the anniversary of the first games was a statement of intent.

Another first for French audiences: it was the first Pokémon film available in France in Japanese with subtitles, in addition to its dubbed version. The French-language dub was produced by SDI Media, with dialogue adaptation by Sophie Servais and song adaptation by Marie-Line Landerwyn. On home video, the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan on December 18, 2019, then in North America on November 17, 2020.

The Legacy: The Film That Moved the Series to Streaming

This is the film that moved the Pokémon movie series from the big screen to streaming platforms. The twenty-third and final feature film would follow exactly the same path in France, on Netflix, and the tradition of a yearly theatrical release ended there. In hindsight, Evolution marks an industry turning point as much as a technical experiment.

📺 With Evolution, the series left the big screen for streaming: you can now watch Mewtwo's story from your living room, and our Pokémon rugs dress up the patch of floor where you like to watch.

At its core, the film added nothing to the series' mythology, and that was never its goal. Its value is that of a gateway: it lets a child in 2020 discover Mewtwo's founding story without stumbling over 1998 animation, and it gives nostalgic fans a chance to see their film again in a whole new dimension.

One open question remains, which the film raises without answering: should a series remake its classics or write new ones? The franchise effectively settled it, since the experiment was never repeated. No other Pokémon film has been remade since, and the next feature film went back to traditional hand-drawn animation.

Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is the 22nd film the same as the 1998 one?
  It's the same story, but not the same film. Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution, released in Japan on July 12, 2019, is a full remake of the series' first feature film, redone in CGI. It follows the original very closely, without changing the plot or the ending.
• What is the film's exact French title?
  Pokémon: Mewtwo contre-attaque – Évolution (Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution in English). It's the first film in the series to officially bear the name "Mewtwo contre-attaque" in France: the 1998 feature film is simply titled Pokémon: Le film there, and it never carried that subtitle during its French theatrical run.
• Where and when was the film released in France?
  On February 27, 2020, directly on Netflix. It never played in French theaters. It was the first feature film in the series to be released this way internationally, and the first Pokémon film offered in France in Japanese with subtitles in addition to its dubbed version.
• Why was the film released on February 27?
  Because February 27 is Pokémon Day: it's the Japanese release date of the very first games in the series, Pocket Monsters Red and Green, on February 27, 1996. Releasing the remake of the first film on that day was a symbolic choice by The Pokémon Company.
• Is the film entirely CGI?
  Yes. It's the first Pokémon feature film produced entirely in 3D: characters, Pokémon, backgrounds and effects are all modeled. The animation was handled by OLM and OLM Digital, with support from Sprite Animation Studios, a studio specializing in CGI.
• Do you need to see the 1998 film before this one?
  No, the film stands on its own, since it tells exactly the same story. Watching both mainly lets you compare two animation techniques twenty-one years apart. Note that the French version of the 1998 film is a Western cut missing part of the Japanese prologue.
• Who directed Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution?
  The film is co-directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, who has directed the Pokémon film series since 1998, and by Motonori Sakakibara, who comes from a CGI background. The screenplay is still credited to Takeshi Shudō, writer of the original film, who passed away in 2010.

In short