"Agree completely with this review's statements.
I thought Kodai was a decent villain up until his backstory was revealed. Then for the whole remainder of the movie, he was just a stock psychopath out to show off how horrifically evil he could get away with being and not even a cool one like the Iron Mask Marauder or Hunter J. And I also agree that he was way too Obviously Evil to be all that interesting to begin with.
To the above comment:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way. Regarding the Iron Masked Marauder, I actually don't remember him as being a particularly great villain either; looking back, he seemed like a fairly stereotypical and forgettable violent brute, honestly. But the thing is, for him, that actually worked because the setting and his overall plan (use Celebi to cause a ton of destruction) made sense in light of how he was presented. I guess I feel let down by Kodai because I tend to like scheming manipulative villains, regardless of their "evilness" quotient, as it were, and in Kodai's case, I feel like he was, at bottom, a villain like that who got treated as an Iron Masked Marauder 2.0, essentially— lots of scenes designed to showcase how violent and evil he could be, but not enough about his thought processes or just what makes him able to pass for a good guy. It just irritates me because it feels like he had so much potential to be genuinely compelling, even complex, without damaging his ability to be evil; but they squandered it by making him way too Obviously Evil and by having him make mistakes where he really should have known better (see, for instance, the password thing again).
^ The Iron Mask Marauder was an elite Team Rocket agent, had a cool outfit, cool weapons, was the first to create Shadow Pokemon, and was voiced by Dan Green in the dub. He was a brute and a Complete Monster, but a pretty Bad Ass one. Whereas Kodai...yeah, it's exactly as you said. He could've been a Dewey Novak type villain (a Villain With Good Publicity who is compelling and complex but no less a Complete Monster, if not more of one for it), but instead he was a shoddy imitation of what the Marauder was better.
Leave a Comment:
Pretty cool, but not necessarily great
I haven't followed the Pokemon movies for years, but I decided to give this one a watch (granted, I only saw the English dub, so it's possible that my viewpoint toward certain aspects of the story are skewed). I have to say, the story as a whole was quite interesting. Zorua was really cute, and his determination to find his mother was admirable and touching- though admittedly Zoroark herself is probably the more badass of the two. But either one was certainly a Pokemon I could follow and root for.
The main trio were mostly their bland-protagonist selves, but since this is just one movie in a long-standing series I can more-or-less let them slide. The movie-only characters served their purposes but were largely forgettable for the most part, with the possible exception of Rowena, who was fairly cool.
I have to say that Kodai was probably the strongest and the weakest point of the movie all in one. I'd heard rumors about how evil he was before checking the movie out for myself; to be honest, I was fairly underwhelmed. Although I can't deny that he was very evil, and that certainly, I cheered on the heroes to beat him, I never really felt emotionally invested in how evil he was- he seemed just like another stock psychopath (though maybe I've just seen far too many worse villains). He also didn't seem quite as cunning or manipulative as I would have liked (it doesn't help that he makes the STUPID mistake of using the most obvious password to hide his personal information), but I think what most crippled his role in the story was how obvious it was from the beginning that he was a villain. We know that he presents as an honest, reasonable man to the public, but I found that very hard to buy since all the viewer ever sees is his evil deeds; I think it would have been more interesting if the fact that he was a villain was a plot twist (as it is, I was kind-of drumming my fingers on the desk waiting for the heroes to figure out that he was the villain). To his credit, he did seem to be one of the more intelligent characters in the movie, but considering he was up against the usual Idiot Hero kids and a few Pokemon, that's hardly surprising. I actually would say he was probably the most interesting character- but considering most of the other characters (except for Zoroark) are largely bland but cute that's not hard either.