News: Newest Pokémon movie tops list in Japan

Taste of Tea said:

It's not as if the 20th Movie would've been redeemed even if it had kept its top position from last week. Judging from the twelve or so summaries that I've read, the movie was horrible regardless of how much its final gross will be IMO.

Click to expand...

Where exactly have you found those twelve or so summaries and who wrote them? Indigo series purists? From a Reddit Q&A page in regards to the movie, the OP who saw the movie said it was pretty good.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

Where exactly have you found those twelve or so summaries and who wrote them? Indigo series purists? From a Reddit Q&A page in regards to the movie, the OP who saw the movie said it was pretty good.

Click to expand...

I can name one: Dogasu's Backpack, and Dogasu is no Indigo Purist by any stretch. And some of the comments regarding the film's release on his facebook page indicated they weren't too happy overall with the film's plotline. There's also Pokebeach's review as well, which generally ignored the overall changes with Season 1. And apparently some Japanese reviewers indicated the film was little more than a cash grab.

I feel vindicated that the new movie seems to be doing poorly. Goes to show that dropping iconic characters for pointless OCs and using nostalgic window dressing to sell what is otherwise another generic advertisement for a new event Pokémon isn't a winning strategy after all. Hopefully this will be a wake up call to TPTB.

Well, the third week's results came in. On the one hand, Pokémon: The Movie: I Choose You dropped down to sixth place, meaning it is definitely not doing too hot regarding placement on the box office.

On the other hand, the money it made has definitely exceeded the Diancie movie by this point, so it might still have the edge. For comparison:

Diancie: 1.4 billion yen
Hoopa: 1.3 billion yen
Volcanion: 123 million yen
I Choose You: 1.7 billion yen

Whether it will retain that money making streak remains to be seen, though, as its run hasn't ended yet.

Hiroshi Sotomura said:

Exceeding it is one thing, though. They'll need to figure out how to make the movies really engaging from here on in — though you wonder if it'd help if they didn't piss off longtime fans.

Click to expand...

Yeah, no kidding. It also doesn't help that the movies themselves weren't engaging as it is as of late. And I suspect the sharp dropoff from the listings suggests the movie failed to engage audiences, even if it DID exceed Diancie (which we don't know because, last week, Diancie performed better, while this week, it performed better, and we won't know until the final box office count is supplied).

This is ridiculous. How did a poorly made movie like I Choose You made that amount of money? I wouldn't spend a dollar on it.

Alexander18 said:

This is ridiculous. How did a poorly made movie like I Choose You made that amount of money? I wouldn't spend a dollar on it.

Click to expand...

Oh, trust me, there have been PLENTY a movie that makes a lot of money despite being poorly made, like the Prequel Trilogy or the Matrix sequels. Heck, the Master actually won a lot of awards and that was despite the fact that the film was obviously poorly made. If it's of any consolation, though, it's rapidly decreasing in the top ten listing.

weedle_mchairybug said:

Oh, trust me, there have been PLENTY a movie that makes a lot of money despite being poorly made, like the Prequel Trilogy or the Matrix sequels. Heck, the Master actually won a lot of awards and that was despite the fact that the film was obviously poorly made. If it's of any consolation, though, it's rapidly decreasing in the top ten listing.

Click to expand...

Like i said, i prefer you didn't reply to me. I am not gonna argue. I stand by my opinion that this movie should not have made that amount of money.

Alexander18 said:

Like i said, i prefer you didn't reply to me. I am not gonna argue. I stand by my opinion that this movie should not have made that amount of money.

Click to expand...

If people want to see it, they'll pay the money to see it and if they enjoyed it, then they'll pay to see it again, regardless of whether or not you think it's a poorly made film.

Whom by the way, I'll assume hasn't seen it as you state you wouldn't spend a dollar on it, which implies you're only going by the summaries of the movie you've read online/heard about which may be influenced by the reviewer and not the film's content itself.

Alexander18 said:

Like i said, i prefer you didn't reply to me. I am not gonna argue. I stand by my opinion that this movie should not have made that amount of money.

Click to expand...

I wasn't even going to disagree with you at all. If anything, I fully agree it should not have made much money opening day.

Frozocrone said:

If people want to see it, they'll pay the money to see it and if they enjoyed it, then they'll pay to see it again, regardless of whether or not you think it's a poorly made film.

Whom by the way, I'll assume hasn't seen it as you state you wouldn't spend a dollar on it, which implies you're only going by the summaries of the movie you've read online/heard about which may be influenced by the reviewer and not the film's content itself.

Click to expand...

Serebii had the whole movie content posted. Reading it and seeing it is only leading to same disappointment.

Alexander18 said:

Serebii had the whole movie content posted. Reading it and seeing it is only leading to same disappointment.

Click to expand...

Again - you read about it online. You haven't seen the movie for yourself and how it executes things.

Do try and keep up.

Frozocrone said:

Again - you read about it online. You haven't seen the movie for yourself and how it executes things.

Do try and keep up.

Click to expand...

Based on the reviews I've seen, it didn't seem to execute all that well.

And personally, I find the idea that you need to see the movie for yourself to even have a stock in what you have to say about it is bogus, since as far as I can tell, summaries give the events of the movie all the same, whether you've seen it or not. Heck, if anything, reading about it would actually save you a lot of time if it turns out to be a waste seeing it. And besides, are you going to dismiss historians or people who studied history and gave actual statements on the matter simply because they never even lived through that time period? It's the same deal here.

weedle_mchairybug said:

Based on the reviews I've seen, it didn't seem to execute all that well.

And personally, I find the idea that you need to see the movie for yourself to even have a stock in what you have to say about it is bogus, since as far as I can tell, summaries give the events of the movie all the same, whether you've seen it or not. Heck, if anything, reading about it would actually save you a lot of time if it turns out to be a waste seeing it. And besides, are you going to dismiss historians or people who studied history and gave actual statements on the matter simply because they never even lived through that time period? It's the same deal here.

Click to expand...

You can have an opinion on the movie based on reviews. You can choose not to watch it if it sounds like it won't appeal to you.

You don't get to say it was poorly made if you haven't seen it for yourself. At best you can say it sounds like it wasn't executed well, which is not what this user did.

The difference between historians who study history and this user is that historians actually study the source material whereas said user is taking someone elses views of the film and using that as fact.

No consideration of bias, no chance for critical analysis, no possibility of alternative explanations from the movie that may disprove statements in the review. Just taking it as fact and regurgitating it without considering the source material.

Frozocrone said:

You can have an opinion on the movie based on reviews. You can choose not to watch it if it sounds like it won't appeal to you.

You don't get to say it was poorly made if you haven't seen it for yourself. At best you can say it sounds like it wasn't executed well, which is not what this user did.

The difference between historians who study history and this user is that historians actually study the source material whereas said user is taking someone elses views of the film and using that as fact.

No consideration of bias, no chance for critical analysis, no possibility of alternative explanations from the movie that may disprove statements in the review. Just taking it as fact and regurgitating it without considering the source material.

Click to expand...

Maybe, and I probably can't speak on the animation bits since I'd need to actually see it to be a judge on it, but I can definitely say that at the very least, the actual plot from what I could gather was very poorly done, to such an extent that Misty and Brock probably wouldn't have been able to save the plotline even if they were there (that being said, though, having Misty and Brock on there would have at least attempted to better honor the initial series). And honestly, Pikachu neither speaked before or since, so why have him talk to Ash now? Its characterization of Marshadow didn't even connect with how it was characterized in that tie-in manga, much less the actual Pokedex entry on it. Not even Ho-Oh's connection to Ash was handled all that well, since he literally didn't factor since appearing initially until right near the climax, and then was largely an off-screen battle where Pikachu got its butt handed to it. Probably the only good things are that it's nice to see Charizard and Butterfree being back.

Frozocrone said:

Again - you read about it online. You haven't seen the movie for yourself and how it executes things.

Do try and keep up.

Click to expand...

I don't need to see it. It is a terrible movie. It is you that needs to keep up. Not me.

Alexander18 said:

I don't need to see it. It is a terrible movie. It is you that needs to keep up. Not me.

Click to expand...

If you have nothing to contribute other than it's a terrible movie, you don't need to restate it continuously in this and the other thread - so please refrain from doing so.

A bit of an update: The movie has just made it to the 2.1 billion yen mark, with the last movie to make that much dough being the Kyurem movie. I'd say it definitely seemed to have gone way past Diancie at this point, so we don't need to worry about it doing as badly as Pok?mon Heroes or worse. And it's also holding its ground at sixth place. That last bit I must admit is pretty impressive.

Of course, success or not, we're still in a bit of a dilemma as to how we are to visualize the next movie: They haven't given ANYTHING about the movie, not even an animated teaser, and since they wasted Marshadow's debut for this movie, they are fresh out of Mythical Pok?mon right now. And it also doesn't help that as of now, they haven't even hinted at a Generation 8 (we would have gotten a teaser from E3 by now if a Gen 8 is in the immediate plans).

Not only has the film just surpassed the Genesect movie (and definitely surpasses Volcanion at the very least), but it actually managed to get back up to top four. While bumping back up top isn't necessarily unprecedented (two of the BW movies as well as even the Hoopa movie managed to go up one rank), it managed to go up by two ranks. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if the upsurge had to do with it being a three day weekend as well as a certain Pikachu event going on.

It's doing as well as the Keldeo movie did. On the one hand surpassing the past four movies is notable, but on the other hand, a movie released first in its generation usually has an advantage. So surpassing the Hoopa and Volcanion movies is pretty trivial.

The Diancie movie is an outlier, most likely because Yokai Watch had just become a fad and kids were less interested in Pokemon. Nowadays, Yokai Watch is no longer a fad and Movie 20 at least tries to appeal to adults. Whether or not it succeeded in satisfying the latter is subjective. I suspect that people who like the movie didn't really expect much to begin with.

Personally, I find that the movie has numerous issues, and I'm basing this on a detailed summary posted by someone (sunyshore) who really liked it. The AU angle is rather forced, half-baked and arguably unfitting for the 20th anniversary. Worse still, the encounter with Ho-Oh is reduced to yet another symbolism of Ash and Pikachu's relationship.