Pokémon: Detective Pikachu - What's The Point Of Live-Action?
Thoughts On: Pokémon: Detective Pikachu
A young man investigates the curious death of his estranged father and pikachu.
A live-action Pokémon movie sounds about as good as a live-action Mario, Donkey Kong or Dragon Ball Z movie. It seems we are living through a moment in which the American film industry in particular has found a new way in which to recycle both itself and pop culture. CGI has slowly been woven into the fabric of cinema since the early 90s with landmark movies in the likes of Jurassic Park. For the last decade or so, a blockbuster has not considered complete or true without an abundance of CGI. Marvel movies have done much to cultivate this, as well as a cinematic culture around 'live action'. Cinema has predominantly always been 'live action', but this term has only become relevant as the line between animation and film has been blurred by digital technologies. Marvel movies are epithets of live action; comic books should be drawn, yet on screen they are rendered with digital photo-realism. Something is lost and something is gained in the process of live action adaptation. One could study Avengers alongside Into The Spider-Verse alongside a Marvel comic as a means of exploring this, and furthermore as a means of questioning the legitimacy of adapting comic into live action. In my view, whilst there is something gained from comic book adaptation, the practice of adapting animated classics into live action blockbusters bears next to no legitimacy. Detective Pikachu seems to sit some place between the Disney's live action pillaging and Marvel's cinematic universe under a question of legitimacy. To explore this a little further, two avenues of investigation can be followed. What can be done with Pokémon in a photo-realist realm? What has Pikachu Detective achieved?
We will start with the former question. Put simply, Detective Pikachu is not a very good film. This fails, most broadly, to appeal to a specific audience type. It does not appeal to grown audience members, nor children, and it certainly doesn't feel like a family film. The jokes are awkwardly pubescent and yet the logic of the narrative is childishly lax. One may chalk this up to be a teen film if they wanted to. Alas, as it fails to successfully mediate between narrative and characterlogical complexity and simplicity, Detective Pikachu just feels icky and uncomfortable within itself. There is no cohesive world, no thematic wholeness, that binds together various plot strands and character motivations. And I'm not certain what kind of audience member could do this leg work for the film. Suffice to say that this is rife with serious lapses in logic and bears profoundly unexplored and unexplainable characters/motivations. Such is so jarring as Detective Pikachu clearly aims to generate a character-centric narrative - one most simply about a son connecting with his father. The Pokémon have their place in between this relationship, but it feels stilted. The Pokémon as characters should provide the narrative its bulk of meaning as something equating to thematic agents; Pikachu is just this, he is a device that brings father and son together, and thus encapsulates and motivates this element of the narrative in its basic essence. That said, Pikachu is embroiled in a melodrama that has no draw to its start and end (father and son), and no real punch in the journey in between. This is all a means of saying that you fail to care for the goings on in the narrative. Such is an issue with the script, acting, and other such elements - visual beings a key one.
Above all else, Detective Pikachu feels visually... loose. I think I have a bias against live action adaptations, but what this film fails to do visually is draw the eye and emotions together. The human presence in the cinematic space is then interruptive and jarring - visually and narratively. This is an issue of 'human cinema'. We see this in play in abundance in the world of modern sci-fi. Sci-fi has the ability to tell stories about anyone and anything. But, all too often, it ends up telling stories about humans. This is human cinema. It can be witnessed in Transformers, Godzilla and a litany of superhero films - all of which focus on human characters as opposed to alien figures, or highlight above all else the physical and overt humanity of otherwise alien beings. Detective Pikachu suffers from this defect of modern sci-fi. The main title is Pokémon, and yet the creatures are a mere element of narrative framing and spectacle for the most part of this film. I remember being a kid and watching the first Pokémon movie (which I recently re-watched - something I will return to). There were short films on the VHS version of the Pokémon movies that proceeded the features. They were often about Pikachu wandering away from humans and existing in the world of Pokémon. Though the creators of these films have no real faith in their ability to extract humans from a feature-length film, they do much, and well, in the human-less shorts. What stands out as the main achievement of the Pikachu shorts are their silence, depth of subjective-impressionism and tonal wholeness; with the Pokémon alone, all feels coherent - narratively and visually. In short, the functioning of the characters matches their world and the visuals projecting them. This also translates over to the feature-length films to a good degree as animated humans can carry melodrama of a rather grating kind so much better than real human characters. This is all to do with the logic of a cinematic space. If one considers that they, in an indeterminably significant way, are taught how to watch a film as they watch it. I do not mean this in terms of ideological coding, but conventional logic. An animated film often exudes a logic centred on potential and fantasy; stories told by animated films (the narratives of Studio Ghibli as a wondrous example) often exude logic centred on potential and fantasy. This is witnessed in the first Pokémon movie. The narrative is concerned with the fantastical emergence of a being demanding unlimited power. I don't believe that there is a shred of significant realism about this narrative; the aesthetics concur. The aesthetics and narrative are dictated not by theme as filtered through reality, but impressionistic perception (imagination). This is what makes the first Pokémon work. Though it is cheap and childish, it is whole thanks to logical parallels drawn between visuals and story.
We bridge towards the first question asked of live action films. What can be done with Pokémon in a photo-realist realm? If films teach us how to watch them with their conventional logic (aesthetic, narrative and otherwise), what does a live action Pokémon movie want to teach us? That Pokémon are real? This is certainly the logic of the fantasy in something such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This film uses its aesthetic logic in parallel with its narrative's intent: to explore toons as real, working beings. The effect of this is both comedic and thematically evocative; one could then easily suggest (as some have before) that this has subtext exploring the alienation of minorities. What is the relevance of Pokémon being real in regards to a deteriorating father and son relationship? No strong answer is provided by Detective Pikachu. A film such as Hook uses the idea of a fictitious world separating parent and offspring as a narrative device with the revelation of fantasy as reality being what unifies Peter and his children. (A similar revelation is held in Disney's animated Peter Pan). Detective Pikachu uses the conflict of fantasy and the unreal to be realised without particular effect. So, what does the film achieve? Not much. Did it have much potential? Maybe. If there was a reason for fantasy and reality to be put alongside one another provided in the narrative, Detective Pikachu may have been a more coherent film to experience. Furthermore, if there was a greater focus on the Pokémon themselves, thus the issue of 'human cinema' subverted, this could have been more than it is. Alas, are photo-realistic Pokémon battles a reason to make a live action Pokémon movie?
I'll leave the final question with you having emphasises that the Pokémon battles in Detective Pikachu are minor and unfulfilling. In total, I don't see too much of a point for this film to exist and certainly did not enjoy it. More could be said, but I turn to you. What are your thoughts on Pokémon: Detective Pikachu?
Previous post:
Midnight In Paris - Egoic Film
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
A young man investigates the curious death of his estranged father and pikachu.
A live-action Pokémon movie sounds about as good as a live-action Mario, Donkey Kong or Dragon Ball Z movie. It seems we are living through a moment in which the American film industry in particular has found a new way in which to recycle both itself and pop culture. CGI has slowly been woven into the fabric of cinema since the early 90s with landmark movies in the likes of Jurassic Park. For the last decade or so, a blockbuster has not considered complete or true without an abundance of CGI. Marvel movies have done much to cultivate this, as well as a cinematic culture around 'live action'. Cinema has predominantly always been 'live action', but this term has only become relevant as the line between animation and film has been blurred by digital technologies. Marvel movies are epithets of live action; comic books should be drawn, yet on screen they are rendered with digital photo-realism. Something is lost and something is gained in the process of live action adaptation. One could study Avengers alongside Into The Spider-Verse alongside a Marvel comic as a means of exploring this, and furthermore as a means of questioning the legitimacy of adapting comic into live action. In my view, whilst there is something gained from comic book adaptation, the practice of adapting animated classics into live action blockbusters bears next to no legitimacy. Detective Pikachu seems to sit some place between the Disney's live action pillaging and Marvel's cinematic universe under a question of legitimacy. To explore this a little further, two avenues of investigation can be followed. What can be done with Pokémon in a photo-realist realm? What has Pikachu Detective achieved?
We will start with the former question. Put simply, Detective Pikachu is not a very good film. This fails, most broadly, to appeal to a specific audience type. It does not appeal to grown audience members, nor children, and it certainly doesn't feel like a family film. The jokes are awkwardly pubescent and yet the logic of the narrative is childishly lax. One may chalk this up to be a teen film if they wanted to. Alas, as it fails to successfully mediate between narrative and characterlogical complexity and simplicity, Detective Pikachu just feels icky and uncomfortable within itself. There is no cohesive world, no thematic wholeness, that binds together various plot strands and character motivations. And I'm not certain what kind of audience member could do this leg work for the film. Suffice to say that this is rife with serious lapses in logic and bears profoundly unexplored and unexplainable characters/motivations. Such is so jarring as Detective Pikachu clearly aims to generate a character-centric narrative - one most simply about a son connecting with his father. The Pokémon have their place in between this relationship, but it feels stilted. The Pokémon as characters should provide the narrative its bulk of meaning as something equating to thematic agents; Pikachu is just this, he is a device that brings father and son together, and thus encapsulates and motivates this element of the narrative in its basic essence. That said, Pikachu is embroiled in a melodrama that has no draw to its start and end (father and son), and no real punch in the journey in between. This is all a means of saying that you fail to care for the goings on in the narrative. Such is an issue with the script, acting, and other such elements - visual beings a key one.
Above all else, Detective Pikachu feels visually... loose. I think I have a bias against live action adaptations, but what this film fails to do visually is draw the eye and emotions together. The human presence in the cinematic space is then interruptive and jarring - visually and narratively. This is an issue of 'human cinema'. We see this in play in abundance in the world of modern sci-fi. Sci-fi has the ability to tell stories about anyone and anything. But, all too often, it ends up telling stories about humans. This is human cinema. It can be witnessed in Transformers, Godzilla and a litany of superhero films - all of which focus on human characters as opposed to alien figures, or highlight above all else the physical and overt humanity of otherwise alien beings. Detective Pikachu suffers from this defect of modern sci-fi. The main title is Pokémon, and yet the creatures are a mere element of narrative framing and spectacle for the most part of this film. I remember being a kid and watching the first Pokémon movie (which I recently re-watched - something I will return to). There were short films on the VHS version of the Pokémon movies that proceeded the features. They were often about Pikachu wandering away from humans and existing in the world of Pokémon. Though the creators of these films have no real faith in their ability to extract humans from a feature-length film, they do much, and well, in the human-less shorts. What stands out as the main achievement of the Pikachu shorts are their silence, depth of subjective-impressionism and tonal wholeness; with the Pokémon alone, all feels coherent - narratively and visually. In short, the functioning of the characters matches their world and the visuals projecting them. This also translates over to the feature-length films to a good degree as animated humans can carry melodrama of a rather grating kind so much better than real human characters. This is all to do with the logic of a cinematic space. If one considers that they, in an indeterminably significant way, are taught how to watch a film as they watch it. I do not mean this in terms of ideological coding, but conventional logic. An animated film often exudes a logic centred on potential and fantasy; stories told by animated films (the narratives of Studio Ghibli as a wondrous example) often exude logic centred on potential and fantasy. This is witnessed in the first Pokémon movie. The narrative is concerned with the fantastical emergence of a being demanding unlimited power. I don't believe that there is a shred of significant realism about this narrative; the aesthetics concur. The aesthetics and narrative are dictated not by theme as filtered through reality, but impressionistic perception (imagination). This is what makes the first Pokémon work. Though it is cheap and childish, it is whole thanks to logical parallels drawn between visuals and story.
We bridge towards the first question asked of live action films. What can be done with Pokémon in a photo-realist realm? If films teach us how to watch them with their conventional logic (aesthetic, narrative and otherwise), what does a live action Pokémon movie want to teach us? That Pokémon are real? This is certainly the logic of the fantasy in something such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This film uses its aesthetic logic in parallel with its narrative's intent: to explore toons as real, working beings. The effect of this is both comedic and thematically evocative; one could then easily suggest (as some have before) that this has subtext exploring the alienation of minorities. What is the relevance of Pokémon being real in regards to a deteriorating father and son relationship? No strong answer is provided by Detective Pikachu. A film such as Hook uses the idea of a fictitious world separating parent and offspring as a narrative device with the revelation of fantasy as reality being what unifies Peter and his children. (A similar revelation is held in Disney's animated Peter Pan). Detective Pikachu uses the conflict of fantasy and the unreal to be realised without particular effect. So, what does the film achieve? Not much. Did it have much potential? Maybe. If there was a reason for fantasy and reality to be put alongside one another provided in the narrative, Detective Pikachu may have been a more coherent film to experience. Furthermore, if there was a greater focus on the Pokémon themselves, thus the issue of 'human cinema' subverted, this could have been more than it is. Alas, are photo-realistic Pokémon battles a reason to make a live action Pokémon movie?
I'll leave the final question with you having emphasises that the Pokémon battles in Detective Pikachu are minor and unfulfilling. In total, I don't see too much of a point for this film to exist and certainly did not enjoy it. More could be said, but I turn to you. What are your thoughts on Pokémon: Detective Pikachu?
Previous post:
Midnight In Paris - Egoic Film
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
