Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution
...oh dear. Ohhhhh dear. I knew I wasn't going to like this, but I didn't anticipate just how...awkward, that watching it was going to be. They made a lot of little changes, and none of them were really for the better. The dialogue is lacking the bite that it had in the original; there's nothing here for an older audience to really smile about, beyond the fact that they kept a lot of it the same. But there are no clever references, no tongue-in-cheek wit, and honestly the movie felt a bit directionless, because Mewtwo isn't really as...menacing, as it was in the original. It was pretty intent on conquering the world in the original, but after going through an existential crisis in this which could have made the movie a lot better if they'd focused on it...what? What was the point of the rest of it? Maybe I'm picking holes for the sake of it, but the dialogue changes they made to make Mewtwo sound less threatening made the movie feel...pointless, honestly.
That said, I think the CGI in Pokemon in this are what they ought to look like in the games if they're going to pursue the 3D models. The Switch is definitely capable of it, and as AWFUL as the human characters look - seriously, they're digusting, hideous, horrifying, etc - the Pokemon don't look too bad. Better than the nightmare fuel that was in Detective Pikachu, at the very least. A happy middle ground between the shitty 3D models they've been recycling since the 3DS games and the nightmare fuel they used in the live action movie.
...and what happened to the music?! They could have at least kept the movie's orchestral score.
This feels very much like the Pokemon equivalent of live action Disney...I mean, it's not live action, but Detective Pikachu was better than this, and it had a much weaker source material. Sigh. I hope they don't remake any other Pokemon movies in this style...more like Devolution, tbh. Hahaha.