Pokémon: Detective Pikachu

Out of $120 million budget, which places the break even point at $240 million, this movie made $94 million.

Oh yes, the audience loved this movie, all right.

It has however, become a Cult Classic, and several are saying that it deserved to do better with audiences.

No one really cared about the original Speed Racer when it came out. A straightforward happy and fun adventure with Pokemon, on the other hand, would make a shit-load of money. Millennials would have the nostalgia factor, and the games are still huge with kids (and their parents money), there's no doubt it'd be huge even if the film was just okay or better.

edited 16th Apr '16 11:22:04 AM by Ekuran

@dRoy I just do not understand why everyone has come out of the woodwork to defend Speed Racer recently.

Like, for whatever reason a ton of people (Egoraptor for one) have started being all like "Speed Racer was a great movie, the critics are wrong" and honestly I just can't agree with that sentiment at all.

I didn't like it when it came out and STILL don't like it, yet for whatever reason this seems to be the unpopular opinion now a days.

General audiences wouldn't care about Speed Racer either, because by default they wouldn't have any familiarity with such an old anime.

@LD - You know what else are also considered Cult Classic?

The Room. Birdemic. Freddy Got Fingered.

edited 16th Apr '16 11:36:18 AM by dRoy

The Tricky Room.

Birdemic: Rise of Smogonbird.

Freddy Used Follow Me.

edited 16th Apr '16 11:39:54 AM by flameboy21th

Speed Racer had an earnest sense of fun and cheesiness to it that you could respect and find enjoyable even with its issues. It makes it easy to want to defend for largely the same reasons people protect kids and cute shit.

Looks like you and the Nostalgia Critic agree on something.

It also had, well, bad acting, bad dialogues, bad story, bad CGI, bad choreography, which makes it easy to want to hate the movie.

Basically, Speed Racer is a B-movie made with a budget of an A-movie.

edited 16th Apr '16 11:57:25 AM by dRoy

Color me unconvinced by those "realistic pokemons". Many of them are supposed to be adorable, not the stuff of nightmares.

You know, I wouldn't be against the idea of a western Pokémon movie, but only if it was animated. If the Pokémon had models like in Smash Bros or Pokkén, they would look fine in a fully CG movie. But a live-action adaptation is either going to make them look out of place or have them lose the charm that the original designs had.

And you just know they're only going to focus on the original 151.

I'm almost certain the artist traced the general shape of a lot of them from an old illustrated dinosaur encyclopedia. I swear some of them in the big photo are almost copies from a book I had when I was a kid.

@pokemon movie, not gonna happen but I'd personally love for it to turn everything on its head and go the full abusive cockfighting route.

Giovanni played by Christopher Walken.

edited 16th Apr '16 1:50:25 PM by nervmeister

That's one way to divebomb your franchise.

edited 16th Apr '16 1:50:43 PM by flameboy21th

Semi-profile's mainly the standard for theoretical animal illustrations. And he paints dinosaurs too, so there's that.

I won't say all of Arvalis's designs should be used (turning the Gastly family into bats and Lugia into a softshell turtle is pretty odd), but a good majority of them like these starters look just like what a real life one would be.

I kind of like this Charizard one, it feels like it'd be okay for a film.

Speaking of a boy and his fire-breathing dragon, I feel like How To Train Your Dragon is probably a great template to crib off of for this film.

Giovanni played by Christopher Walken.

These Pokemon...are un-fucking-believable!

Speed Racer was decently big on Cartoon Network in the late 90s, so it had some brand-name strength in the US for nostalgia when it landed.

Thing is, his designs might work for badass mons, but he doesn't do cute well at all.

And let's face it, Pokemon is as much about the cute ones than it is about the scary ones. If your live-action Pikachu makes kids cry at night, your movie will bomb.

I think Pokemon movie would only work the best as CGI animated film, by either Dreamworks or Disney.

And in a twist of events, the rights to the Pokemon franchise go to Aardman. Plasticine mons, story that takes place in the Yorkshire, all the trainers are Riches and Socialites.

For any live-action Pokémon, it has to make Pikachu look believable, recognizable, expressive and cute without diving into Uncanny Valley creepiness. And I have yet to see one in animation that fits the criteria. If you can't make Pikachu look good, then it's a lost cause. Might as well make Mickey Mouse look believable.

*googles "realistic Pikachu* How's this one?

Like I have stated, I need to see it animation since a good design could look really bad if poorly animated. And quite frankly, I'm not too keen about that face. It's looks a bit off.