POKÉMON MOVIE REVIEW: THE VICTINI MOVIE

This movie is actually two movies: one is called White - Victini and Zekrom and the other Black - Victini and Reshiram. So, like how there are two versions of each Pokémon game, this time the movie has two versions too. Wow.

At first, we were intrigued. What sort of art piece is this? Do the two movies take place in two different continuities? Do you need to watch both in order to understand the full story? If you watch both movies, does it unlock the true end after the credits?

However, much like the differences between Pokémon video game versions, the differences between the two movies are inconsequential, irrelevant, and pointless. Like, during the opening montage about the world of Pokémon, in one movie there's the pink Jellicent and in the other there's the blue Jellicent. In one movie the Hydreigon is shiny, and in the other it's the Golurk that's shiny. In one movie Pikachu fights Sawk and in the other it fights Throh.

The most major difference is that in one movie Ash allies with Reshiram and in the other he allies with Zekrom, and Reshiram says that Ash is seeking the truth, and Zekrom says that Ash is fighting for his ideals, but none of this actually matters. The resulting plot is the same regardless of which dragon said what to whom.

In other words, there aren't two different movies, there's one movie template that was used to create two slightly different versions just by swapping what goes in the blanks. Which means all these details are perfectly interchangeable. The outcome of Pikachu fighting either Sawk or Throh has to be the same, and the particulars of that battle cannot matter and will never be referred to again.

White - Victini and Zekrom (mirror-flipped for comparison)

Black - Victini and Reshiram

These version differences aren't even limited only to which Pokémon are in the background, but they go all the way to what are allegedly the driving motivations of Ash vs the antagonist. Yet even the driving motivations are devoid of any personal meaning or lasting impact, because they were also made to be interchangeable. So, neither version has anything meaningful to say about its core themes, because actually neither movie has a core theme: the core theme is one of the blanks! So, in this dual movie, nothing is meant, and nothing is said. Nothing matters one way or the other. And not because the message here is nihilism or fatalism, but just as an unintended consequence of this dual-movie gimmick. Why did they even do that?

Okay, so now that we've talked about this stupid gimmick for like five paragraphs, now we can talk about the template plot.

The template plot

A thousand years ago, the People of the Vale, a people who lived in the Vale, lived in the Vale. The people and Pokémon lived in harmony with each other (citation needed) and also in harmony with the raw force of nature. They also had a sword-shaped castle, where their king lived, together with his royal pet Victini.

The twin sons of the king had a feud, because one believed in the power of truth, and the other in the power of ideals, so they had their symbolism dragons fight, and the fight became a war, and the war destroyed the Vale and upset the balance of nature. The dragons went into dormancy in protest against the war, and the king used the secret power of Victini to move the sword-castle through the air and to a new location, a few miles away from the Vale.

After moving the castle, the king died of motion sickness, and with his dying words, he told Victini that the castle's new location is holding the rampaging energies at bay, and if disturbed, they might destroy the world, so make sure no one moves the castle ever again. The king entrusted all of this information to his pet who cannot speak and to nobody else. The king then died before he could set out better accommodations for his pet, and so his pet remains locked forevermore in the vicinity of the castle by the king's magical pet fence that he never got to disable.

Now that the castle has been moved to a better place, the People of the Vale... they all left! They dispersed to the four corners of the earth! What? Why? The war is over, the dragons are dormant, the rampaging energies are calmed, the king moved the castle, and all is good now, right? The plot does not say. Just, they left, okay? And the original Vale remains an uninhabited wasteland to this day.

In the present time, one man has taken it upon himself to reunite the lost People of the Vale and lead a glorious return to their ancestral home in the Vale. This man is named Dread.

Dread goes to the deserts and to the poles and everywhere in between to find the scattered villages where the People of the Vale now live, for some reason, in isolation from each other and in isolation from anyone else.

But Dread goes to them, and tells them of his dream, and his plans, and he helps them with their interchangeable problems, and he is backed by one of the legendary dragons of old! And the people in the tribes tell him, nice! But get lost and fuck off. Why do they reject him? No explanation. We wondered if it was because now they've got their own lives and they've been living for a thousand years in these other places and what's the point of moving again, but they seem pretty miserable wherever they are right now, so, what, why? They treat Dread's idea as being absurd, but they provide no explanation as to why the idea of returning to the Vale is so foolish. Nevertheless, they send him off with an interchangeable keychain memorializing their meeting and, most importantly, their parting. Goodbye.

If you're thinking we're being silly here and surely the story isn't as stupid as we're making it sound, no, we're only lightly hamming this up, and also, the way we're writing this is vastly superior to how it is presented in the movie, in which it is told in the form of out-of-order scattered flashback scenes, tiny shrapnels of shitty plot flung to the four corners of the film, just like the People of the Vale, and equally inexplicably.

And now, to the twerps. Ash and his friends are going to visit the new location of the sword-castle during a festival that features a Pokémon battle competition. On the way to town, Ash notices the native cliff-dwelling wildlife somehow about to fall off the cliff. Ash goes to save them, thereby making the situation worse and putting himself into danger. Classic Ash.

But thankfully, the famous Victini that has been trapped in this area for a thousand years is watching. Besides being able to go invisible, Victini's main power is to grant absurd luck to whomever it chooses. Victini secretly gives Ash the absurd luck, and so, instead of falling, Ash jumps a mile away onto another cliff together with the cliff-dwelling wildlife and Pikachu. This moment also establishes a strange psychic link between Ash and Victini's mind that Ash never really pauses to consider in any way, even though this means he keeps having weird visions for the rest of the movie. Just, this is happening now. Okay, I guess. We mean, this is the fourteenth movie, perhaps, by now, Ash has gained a completely chill attitude about any weird thing that might happen to him.

So, Ash and his friends Iris and Cilan arrive at the festival, and visit a charm booth not run by the charm guy, but rather by two descendants of the People of the Vale: a girl named Carlita and her mother Juanita. Juanita tells the twerps about the legend of Victini, and how it is the Pokémon that lends its power to achieve victory, so that's why it makes a very marketable charm for this festival. Fooled by the marketing, the twerps get a Victini charm, and enjoy the festivities, and they take part in the competition.

Ash finds himself in a battle where he's sending out Tepig against Samurott. Must he do that? That seems irresponsible. But Victini is still hiding around nearby, and it has taken a special interest in Ash because Ash is the main character, so Victini grants power to Ash's Pokémon, and they are able to pull off ridiculously overpowered moves at the last second, and so Ash keeps winning, unaware of any outside intervention.

Carlita has an idea of what's been going on, and they eventually manage to lure Victini out of its invisibility by bribing it with Cilan's macarons, thereby proving that Ash's victory was not really valid. However, everyone is so distracted by Victini that this is never really addressed. Should Ash be disqualified from the tournament? Does the fact that he was chosen by Victini itself during the Victini Festival make him the winner by default? What happens? Who knows! Who cares!

So now the twerps and twerps of the day all play with Victini and give it macarons. During this part, Ash keeps trying to touch and grab and inappropriately handle Victini, despite Victini repeatedly making it super clear that it wants Ash to please respect its personal space. Did Ash learn nothing from his previous friendship with Tooi? At one point, Ash grabs Victini one too many times, and Victini explodes. Literally. Into flames. That's because Ash dragged Victini into the invisible barrier of the magical pet fence, past which Victini cannot go.

It is at this point that Ash learns of Victini's story. Juanita and Carlita use a rad hologram pop-up book to tell the tragic story of the king and the magical pet fence that cannot be disabled, which has caused Victini to be trapped and alone around the sword-castle for these thousand years.

The twerps also meet Dread, who is Juanita's other child. That's right, this family consists of Juanita, Carlita and DREAD.

Remember from the Deoxys movie, Katharine, Audrey, and Ryu? Well, here we go again.

The next day, Dread has decided it's time to move the sword-castle so that the People of the Vale can return to the Vale. Why does he have to move the sword-castle to do this? Couldn't they just simply go to the Vale? Is it because it just wouldn't be the same without the sword-castle in the Vale? Something something the sword-castle will let them revitalize the Vale. Well, whatever.

Anyway, Dread starts the reactor which is powered by a million billion Solosis packed inside the walls of the castle, which have been presumably caged in there for the last thousand years as well. So much for the People of the Vale living in harmony together with Pokémon. They treat the Solosis like insulation, and the mayor keeps Klinks, not as pets, but as simply the motors for his organette ✽︎ and lawn mower ✽︎ and autogyro ✽︎. You should see the People of the Hill, who don't live in harmony with the Pokémon.

And now, Dread is going to get Victini to move the castle, treating it like a battery. It's super weird how Dread is completely indifferent to Victini's suffering. Not even in an emotionally stiff way like Lawrence III, more like he can't even see what's happening. Only much later, and once, does he comment that well, sacrifices must be made to achieve truth/ideals.

At first, everyone is riding on the flying sword-castle all happy to return to the Vale, how exciting, how momentous, whee! They then realize that the castle is flying because Victini is being squeezed for power in the torture machine. Wait, no, don't do that!

The reason why Dread is the villain is not because his motivation is in any way villainous really, it's because he never mentioned that his grand plan to return to the Vale and whatnot would involve torturing and probably killing a cute little critter. Which, if this had in any way been recognized by the writers of this movie as anything, could have been really interesting, to have a villain whose goals are noble but his means are horrible. But obviously no one making this template movie with interchangeable themes recognized fucking anything ever.

But now, the castle is flying by power of Victini torture, and no one can stop Dread because he's got an interchangeable dragon on his side. And also, remember that the sword-castle can never be moved because it's holding back the rampaging energies of the earth? Yeah. That's happening now. The rampaging energies are on the loose again.

In a startling display of writing, the plot even addresses that Dread's dragon is helping move the sword-castle because it is unaware of the castle's purpose to stop the rampaging energies, because it went dormant before the whole thing with the king moving the castle and all that unfolded. This is especially funny in the version in which Dread's ally is Reshiram, because it leads to a hilarious line of dialogue in which the twerps of the day are saying, Reshiram doesn't know the truth! The dragon of truth doesn't know the truth!

The concept of the rampaging energies of the earth, by the way, was dubbed in the US version as "the Dragon Force". We now give you a moment to go put on the appropriate soundtrack. We struggled to watch the US dub with a straight face any time they mentioned the Dragon Force. It is called the Dragon Pulse in the original, but still, in either case, what it has to do with dragons is never explained.

To save Victini, Ash goes to get the support of the other dragon, as only the paired dragons can stop each other. And Ash goes to talk with the dragon of the version and has the interchangeable conversation about truth or ideals.

By the way, the dragons talk. Reshiram in particular talks with, like, a narrator voice. That's weird. About as weird as Lugia, whose speaking capabilities and choice of voice were famously later described as a Big Mistake. Also, when Reshiram is flying around, it just screams. It could speak, but it's just screaming. I guess it makes sense, given that its ass is on fire.

In the meanwhile that Ash is getting his interchangeable dragon, Juanita sends out Golurk to fight Dread's dragon. That poor Golurk is absolutely obliterated. Especially in the version where it fights Reshiram, it catches fire and then sadly falls below the clouds, exit from stage left, bye bye. And the twerp gallery watching this unfold is like, oh. RIP.

By the way, the inciting incident that caused Dread to be so invested in having the People of the Vale return to the Vale?

It was that once, when he was a small child, he said to his mom, wouldn't it be cool if we could live in the Vale again? And she said, oh, that would be a lovely dream. This was said once, in passing, in answer to a child, but this moment has became Dread's whole motivation. And now, while he's doing all of this in the name of this dream, he's fighting against his own mother to make his mother's wish come true. And Dread doesn't even seem to notice this contradiction. Once again, as if he can't see what's happening. Artifacts of the shitty writing.

Ash returns with the other dragon, and the two dragons fight, and we zone out. The second half of the movie is, if possible, even worse than the first. This movie must have been fantastic for sleeping in the theater.

Ash tries to free Victini, but he fails, but then Dread's dragon finally sees the horrors and goes, bro. The dragon turns against Dread and frees Victini, and Dread is informed that Dragonforce are out of control, they are speeding up ever more, and the guitars are catching fire. So now the villain and the heroes and both dragons and Victini and Pikachu are all united on the idea of stopping this nonsense, and putting the sword-castle back where it belongs!

Now that everyone is united in doing the right thing, the movie should be about to end. But no. Why did we expect any better? Instead, now, the castle shoots into space just to spite us. It seems like the castle has now become sentient and malevolent, but why? Something something Dragonforce. Just to prolong the agony. And Ash is now in the troposphere chilling to death and running out of oxygen. Which will kill him first? Dread comes back with the dragons, but their attacks are ineffectual against the malevolent sword-castle.

Ash tearfully dies, and tells Victini, I'm sorry I'll never bring you to the sea. Earlier, Victini had communicated to Ash that it would like to go beyond the boundary of the magical pet fence and see the sea, and Ash made this solemn vow that he will help Victini see the sea and let it have its very own beach episode. This is now being treated as his most touching motivation, but it's so random compared to saving Victini from torture and death. And the sea is in no way plot-relevant, it's not like anything important ever happened to Victini at the sea or there's something at the sea that Victini particularly wants to go to, it could just as much be that Victini wants to see, we dunno, that tree over there. We get it that it's a shorthand for, allow Victini to freely leave and go where it pleases, but maybe they should have just used the longhand.

Touched by this touching plotpoint of nothing, Victini remembers that it is a fire-type and it doesn't have to just watch as they all freeze to death, so it explodes into fire and releases the barrier and now the castle can finally land.

The dragons serve as thrusters to direct the castle to the runway, and while we see that this was trying to make use of the fact that their designs include turbine tails, we still think the turbine tails look incredibly stupid, though that's not the fault of the movie. Golurk helps as a thruster too. Yeah, even after it was previously annihilated, it comes back and does grueling work. This Golurk needs an award for what it accomplished today. It's just a regular Pokémon, and it's keeping up with the legendaries.

And so the castle finally lands and everyone is saved. Except Victini is missing. Ash goes to the sea and cries that Victini is dead. Except it's not dead, it's invisible right there, but it only reveals itself after Ash has given the whole eulogy. How long was it gonna just watch Ash cry? Oooh, interesting, tell me more about how much you love me. More tears!

And in the ending, Victini gives Ash a vision about how it's revitalizing the Vale, and Dread is very sorry for this all, even though he never directly apologizes to Victini and he really should.

In conclusion

This movie is really not good. The dual movie gimmick means that nothing can be substantial because everything needs to be interchangeable.

A great example of the version differences between the movies is a scene during the introduction: Ash and his friends come to a fork in the road and need to pick which path to take. Ah, we know what this means narratively: this is a metaphor as old as balls about making a big life-altering decision - one that makes all the difference. And yes, in one version of the movie, Ash and friends take the left fork, and in the other, they take the right fork.

But you know what? Are you ready for this?! During the credits we see that, it turns out, both forks formed a loop and they both led to the exact same place!!

And because it can't matter which way things go, the movie cannot actually say anything meaningful one way or the other. To say something, you have to choose what you say. We were going to make an analogy here that the movies are talking out of both sides of its mouth, but actually, that's not even it - it's actually not saying anything at all. It's not even the case that one movie shows Truth triumphing over Ideals, and the other shows the opposite - it's actually a complete moot point entirely!

Yet, even the parts that aren't interchangeable aren't good. Overall, the movie has terrible pacing, terrible storytelling, and it's entirely too long: it spends the first 30 minutes introducing the mere existence of Victini, tells its core plot in disconnected bits and pieces, and wastes like 45 minutes on an extended fight scene and Ash dying drama. Calling the characters of the movie flat would imply that they have at least two dimensions, which they don't. For everything that happens, we find ourselves asking, why? And even when we know why, the plot is at best laughable. The only saving grace is Victini, we suppose. Before watching this movie, we didn't like Victini. After watching this movie, sure, why not, it's cute. This movie does not redeem Reshiram or Zekrom for us though.

On the point of the characters, this is the first Pokémon movie with Ash's friends from the Black & White anime series, Cilan and Iris. We haven't seen that part of the show, but this movie is doing nothing to present them to us. They might as well not be there for how much nothing they do. They don't even get throwaway lines, really. We gather that Cilan is an expy for Brock, he's taken over the map-reading and cooking duties and being the team member with the fucked up eyes. Alright, but what makes Cilan different from Brock except for that? Having green hair? Being less horny? And we get even less of a sense of Iris. She doesn't seem to be friends with Ash, and she barely seems like she knows Cilan. The only blip of character was, she was excited to see Hydreigon. She is into dragons, though she had nothing to say about the legendary dragons featured in this movie or the Dragon Force, whatever it has to do with dragons.

Similarly, the Team Rocket trio appear in this movie, but nothing they say or do is worth mentioning in this article at all.

And even the characters of the movie don't matter. In particular, everything about Dread is interchangeable between versions, so, what is his personality? Does he stand for truth or does he stand for ideals? Which dragon goes with him? Is his partner Pokémon Reuniclus or Gothitelle? Why did his plan involve torturing Victini anyway? Why is he unconcerned by the torture? Why is he unconcerned when his own mother turns against him? Why is he sad at the end, but won't actually go apologize to Victini?

We wondered if this movie would be better if you unscrambled the order in which the plot is delivered, and then restitched together the movie-exclusive scenes, or even if you added whole new lines to explain why did Dread find opposition, why did he treat Victini like that… But, even if you did that and made the movie the best it could be, it would still be a completely lackluster movie that doesn't say anything and doesn't do anything. And, yeah, this movie is bad, but we can't even care about it one way or the other. We had fun lampooning it, but honestly, that was more fun than watching it. The only reason we're even talking about it is because we're doing this movie review series. Were it not for that, we'd have nothing important to say about it. We are indifferent to how bad this movie is. We don't actually want anything with it. Which is a fair treatment to a movie that can't even pick its own plot.

If this movie were a drink, it would be warm water - and we would rather drink literally anything else. If this movie were an object, it would be styrofoam packing peanuts - only there to fill space. If this movie were a state of matter, it would be a puddle - shallow and passive. If this movie were a fart, it wouldn't even stink.