…Ooh boy…
To get this out of the way immediately: I don’t object to there being more than one Mewtwo. I don’t object to the second Mewtwo being female. I don’t object to Mewtwo having a Mega evolution.
I object to doing all these things poorly.
There’s a second Mewtwo? Fine. Explain this! This isn’t like Ash meeting other Lucario after Movie 8, or even meeting other Legendary Birds after Movie 2. Mewtwo is a genetic experiment, with a fairly detailed back story. Even playing by the logic of the sci-fi/fantasy world of loose continuity that is Pokemon, the idea that another team of scientists would come up with a clone of Mew with the exact same genetic deviations as the clone paid for by Team Rocket is a stretch at best. And why does Ash seem to not know what Mewtwo is? Sure, he wouldn’t know this individual Mewtwo, but he would know the species! BW is the series that mentioned Butterfree and brought back Charizard - continuity still counted for something then.
The second Mewtwo is female? Great. Get a good VA! I’ll have more to say about TCPi’s dub in a minute, but Mewtwo’s is the only voice that I would fault on the actual performance. The VA seemed to aim for a stoic and thoughtful voice, but more often than not, came off as stiff and cold. It reminded me of a lot of acting you see in those sword-and-sandal B-movies from the 50s and 60s, where everyone in the cast takes the script way too seriously.
Mewtwo has a Mega evolution? Fantastic. Put effort into the design! Seriously, why does the Mega form look less powerful and intimidating than the base form?
But setting aside the big returning star, Genesect has a lot of problems. Chief among them is a major miscalculation in story. Only one of the Genesects is given a real personality and sympathetic characteristics. The red Genesect is a one-note jerk, and the other three are just members of a hive. Because there’s so little to them as characters, you can’t claim that their eventual turn to Good is out-of-character…but it’s not an earned development either. It’s just arbitrary, and it holds no weight, because there’s been no reason given to care about any of them save one. And, if I’m being honest, that one got kind of annoying, with his “I want to go home” catchphrase repeated with the same intonation so many times.
And, to get back to Mewtwo - once you get over the initial appeal of seeing one of the most iconic of the original Pokemon back in action , Mewtwo’s kind of…there. She’s involved in the action, and the effort to make her sympathetic to the Genesect’s cause while wanting to protect the other Pokemon was a noble one, but between her poor casting and the weaknesses in the Genesects’ characters, it just doesn’t gel. And Mewtwo’s actions don’t really drive the change of heart for the Genesects, other than the red one. But his turn would have had more impact IMO had his hive been responsible for it. So, at the end of the day, Mewtwo just doesn’t need to be there.
When it comes to the main cast, the movies by this point had developed a strong pattern, with the odd deviation: they’d stumble into a mess they had no connection with, the male travelling companion would be sidelined with nothing to do, the female travelling companion would get no meaningful story or arc of her own but would play back-up to Ash, and Ash would serve as a deus ex machina for the big conflict. I was fully expecting the same basic scenario here. I got two surprises: Cilan was given a “bring the cavalry” moment, and Iris didn’t really back Ash up the way Dawn did, so she was the one who ultimately had nothing to do. Ash’s part was about what I expected it to be, which is to say, underwhelming.
And now we’ll come back to the TCPi dub. I’ve mentioned before that the big issue with TCPi isn’t necessarily that the performances are bad, but that they’re miscast. BW offers a perfect example for me to explain my meaning: Cilan. Out of all the post-OS travelling companions, he’s the one I’m most interested in. And his personality and physical acting in the animation are very appealing. But his voice in the dub is just wrong. There’s nothing wrong with Jason Griffith’s performance; he makes a fine go of it as an actor. But a character like Cilan, looking like he does, speaking in the sort of flowery language that he uses, should have a more elegant and flamboyant voice, perhaps with a Mid-Atlantic accent. The very American voice - which sounds much older than a teenager, BTW - does not fit IMO. I have similar issues with Iris - in her case, the voice sounds too young, and too sweet, for the personality she’s meant to possess.
I’ll give this film credit for not having as many pacing issues as some of the others. The TRio’s “why are we even here” antics slow things down, as does lingering for too long on those construction workers, but the movie doesn’t really have any dead spots and moves along at a brisk pace. There was some nice animation too. But there was some dodgy animation as well, the first time I’ve felt that about one of the Pokefilms. A certain laziness dogs this movie. It’s most notable in the lack of character for the Genesects and any explanation for a second Mewtwo, but the whole idea of two groups of Pokemon coming to blows, with Ash and (a) Mewtwo being in the middle, is recycled. To be fair, it shares only the most bare of bones with the first Pokefilm, and those bones come to an incomplete skeleton at that. But when combined with the other flaws of this film, that borrowing of plot grows more noticeable.
I’ll say this: I was more attentive watching Genesect than I was, say, Pokemon Heroes, which left me bored more than once. But I was so attentive here because there was so much that seemed off. While I personally think Deoxys was worse, I'm not surprised that this one is at the bottom of so many lists.
(And it has the most forgettable CotD to date. Seriously, all I remember about that guy is that he was on-screen for some of the running time.)
