Film Theory: Did Detective Pikachu Prove Pokemon's Greatest Fan Theory?

Alright, Pokémon Headquarters! Let's take our most popular character, recreate him in great detail, cast the Internet's favorite snarky voice, adhere to established canon, and offer plenty of Easter eggs to fans of this series. Movie, I choose you!! Meanwhile, over at Sonic HQ! Yeah guys, let's do what they did, but let's change everything about the character, remove any ties to established lore, and set everything to classic gangster rap. Come on money... Hello internet! Welcome to Film Theory! The show that's a little embarrassing when it's trying to be funny, but is still endearing in the end. Like "Detective Pikachu"!

Hey, based on the internet's collective reaction, it looks like we finally have the first great video game movie of all time. "Don't overcook it. It's fun. It's good. It's nice." "It's as good as a live-action Pokémon movie could be." "I would probably say it's the first video game movie you can watch." Okay, back to the praise here, the first watchable video game movie of all time. Now, in all honesty, I watched it last night and I agree. It was fun. Nothing groundbreaking, but it was a really enjoyable movie to watch. And, as an experience, it confirmed many things for me...

Ryan Reynolds? It's still fun. Pikachu? Still adorable. Mr. Mime? He probably still harasses the kids at night. But more than any of that, "Detective Pikachu" seems to have provided the final evidence needed to confirm one of the oldest and coolest Pokémon theories that's been circulating since the first generation of games back in the '90s. In the process of solving mystery of what happened to Tim Goodman's father, Detective Pikachu may also have solved a much bigger mystery... a case that's been open for over 20 years. A case whose solution has enormous implications for the true nature of Pokémon.

So get out your magnifying glasses and put on that deer hunter hat, because we have a case to solve. Our case begins with video games. Back in 1998, the year when everyone thought they were king of the world and the heyday of mobile gaming was an 8-bit egg in your pocket called Tamagotchi. Little did we know then that we were in the middle of a revolution. The Pokémon revolution. Generation 1: 150 cute little pocket monsters that would give rise to the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. Eat your heart out, Hello Kitty! Two years earlier, in 1996, the world had encountered Pokémon "Red", "Green" and "Blue", but then came "Pokémon Yellow" in 1998, which contained a major change: Pikachu was now your starter Pokémon, and I simply followed you around the world.

That was it. Other minor changes were to make it feel closer to the popular anime series at the time. Gym Leader Giovanni using a Persian, or characters like Jessie and James replacing Team Rocket's generic appearances. But other than that, it was just the original games again. Or was it? You see, there was another very subtle change in "Pokémon Yellow." Over the course of your journey through the Kanto region, you visit a place called the Pokémon Mansion on Cinnabar Island, a huge building filled with rubble. Scattered throughout are journal entries referencing the discovery of Mew in the jungles of Guyana and the subsequent creation of the ultra-powerful, ultra-violent Mewtwo.

The rubble around the mansion is the game's way of telling us that he was created here and then escaped. Something that later games, particularly the recent "Let's Go Pikachu!" and the "Eevee" series makes it much more explicit. You finally find Mewtwo in the Cerulean cave, where they can finally catch him. But here is the important change. In "Pokémon Yellow", a new wild Pokémon can be found wandering the halls of the mansion: Ditto, the transformed Pokémon. A small purple slimy mass, unique for its ability to change shape using DNA, as its Pokédex entry says: "Able to copy the genetic code of an enemy, to instantly transform into a duplicate of the enemy." It seems like it's just a minor change to spawn locations, right?

Maybe. It seemed to many more than a simple coincidence that a genetically based Pokémon appeared in an area where Mewtwo was being created through genetic experimentation. Maybe there was a way Ditto was connected to both Mew and Mewtwo. Maybe, just maybe, Dittos were Mew's failed clones. The experiments that didn't work, until science was finally able to create the perfect clone of Mew in Mewtwo. Seems like it's a bit of an exaggeration, right? Theorists like me are grasping at straws. All they did was change a spawn location. But the more this was analyzed, the more details began to line up.

The connection between the two only grew stronger when players noticed that (again, in "Amarillo") Ditto's only other spawn location was the Cerulean Cave, where Mewtwo ends up hiding after escaping the mansion. So wherever Mewtwo was, Dittos seemed to follow him. It was enough for theorists like me to start looking closer and, boy, did we ever find a treasure trove of evidence. The similarities between Mew and Ditto are undeniable in the games. They are the exact same weight at 8.8 pounds, they are the only two Pokémon that can learn the transformation move simply by leveling up, even their color seems to match.

I mean, sure, Ditto is usually purple and Mew is usually pink, but sometimes, in some iterations of the games, Mew is purple. And sometimes, in some iterations of the games, Ditto is pink. And in "Detective Pikachu," Ditto was definitely much more on the pink spectrum. But it cannot be denied that all the time both Ditto and Mew have bright forms, and both have the same shade of light blue. And all this is just superficial. If you dig deeper into the game data, even the numbers tell the story of how they are connected. Each Pokémon has base stats that govern its basic attributes such as HP, attack, defense, speed, etc.

Mu is a jack of all trades when it comes to his base stats. He has equal base stats across the board. If you look at Ditto's base stats, you'll find the exact same thing; identical distribution of base statistics across the board. Now all of Ditto's are 52% lower than Mew's, but it's exactly 52% for all six main stats. The distribution of those statistics is identical. It's almost as if Ditto is a weaker copy of the original Mew, and that's the point. The same is not Mew, it is an imperfect copy. It's the result of failed cloning experiments, cloning experiments that eventually give rise to Mewtwo, and leave Ditto's little pile of sticky DNA there in the corner, wandering around, looking for things to do.

A somewhat rare Pokémon. All of this adds up to a very convincing amount of circumstantial evidence. But in the two decades since Yellow's release, that's all it's been. Circumstantial. A lot of similarities never outright confirmed by any single Pokémon media. And then Detective Pikachu arrived. Let's share what we learned from the movie. And yes, we'll have to have some minor spoilers here. Not the big twist of what happened to Tim's father or anything like that, but the smaller mysteries that are discovered along the way. I'll give you three seconds, so you can use that time to click and/or hit the subscribe button to get notified whenever we have an interesting

theory

, like this one.

Help this channel reach 10 million subscribers please. It would be great to get that glorified paperweight. Alright, are we all okay? All those who have landed on land? Fantastic. Within the

film

, it is mentioned that Mewtwo is a genetically altered clone of the ancient Pokémon Mew, confirming everything we just talked about. But the

film

goes one step further. They explicitly say that Mewtwo disappeared from the Kanto region 20 years ago. Now the Kanto region is where the first games took place and where the anime began. Interesting coincidence, but nothing earth-shattering. It's that "20 years" detail that really matters.

You see, "Detective Pikachu" comes out just over 20 years after the release of the Generation 1 games, and exactly 20 years after the release of "Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back," the first Pokémon movie, which was about you. I guessed it, Mewtwo's escape. It's all connected. And that's not even speculation, it's something resoundingly confirmed by the scriptwriters, in an interview they did with Polygon. "The implication, which the writers confirm to Polygon, is that this is the same Mewtwo from the canon universe." I mean, I have to object to them saying "the canon universe," because it's like, "What canon universe are you talking about?" But hey, I'll accept it.

So we have an established and confirmed canon connection between "Detective Pikachu" and the broader "Pokémon" franchise, great! But the writers went on in another interview, this time with ScreenRant, to confirm that they were aware of the Ditto/Mew theories when working on the project. "So we went into the Ditto story, we looked at all that stuff," "and we wanted to leave it in the hands of the audience of people who are more familiar." "We didn't necessarily feel like we wanted to delve too deeply into that." "But all of those things are a factor," "and I think the deep origin of Ditto is a provocative question that we wanted to hint at." "Due to the interaction with Mewtwo's genetic material, there seemed to be a sensible connection between Mewtwo and Ditto." So, we have writers who have been ap

prove

d to work within the official canon, who were also aware of the possible connection between Ditto and Mew, so now the question is: how does that actually translate into what we see on screen?

Well, in the movie, we see Ditto playing a pivotal role. At the end of the movie, it is revealed that Howard Clifford , the founder of Ryme City, is our real villain. A man who wants to hijack Mewtwo's mind so he can gain the Pokémon's psychic powers for himself. To achieve this, he uses his Pokémon partner, Ditto. But this is not the case He's not just any ordinary Ditto. You see, Howard's Ditto has the ability to transform at will, and at the climax of the film, we see him do exactly that. He transforms into a Machamp to hit Tim, then transforms into a Cubone to give it some Knuckle Blows to knock it off a building and then transform into an angry Charizard.

Heck, his Ditto can even transform into humans, which is another discussion for another day. However, all of these behaviors directly conflict with what we know about a normal Ditto's abilities. Throughout the animes and video games we are repeatedly told that Ditto can only copy the things he sees. In gameplay terms, this means that Ditto can't simply transform into any random Pokémon, he always has to copy any enemy he faces. But this is not just a game mechanic. It's something that's part of the canon of this broader franchise, as established through several Pokédex entries; Ruby and Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond and Pearl, Black and White. "Ditto reorganizes its cellular structure to transform into other forms." "However, if you try to transform into something by relying on your memory, this Pokémon manages to get the details wrong." "A Ditto reorganizes its cellular structure to transform itself." "However, if you try to change based on your memory, you will get incorrect details." "It has the ability to reconstitute its entire cellular structure to transform into anything it sees." This is supported by what we see in the anime.

The first Ditto we meet in the anime are those belonging to the imitator Duplica, and in its episodes we learned that Ditto is only capable of transforming into Pokémon that are physically present, and that this is a limitation of the species as a whole. . Likewise, all other episodes that have Ditto only show Ditto transforming into Pokémon that are present for him to copy. Throughout all of our research, there were no canon cases where Ditto would randomly change shape at will, without having a Pokémon nearby to copy. So for Howard's Ditto in "Detective Pikachu" to switch between forms so quickly and accurately, forms it doesn't see and is still able to replicate without issue, it must be some kind of Super-Ditto.

Something we haven't seen before in this series. Something that was born artificially in a laboratory from Mewtwo's genetics. Remember, all this time, the working

theory

we've been trying to

prove

is the connection between Mewtwo and Ditto. That, like Mewtwo, Ditto was also born from the same genetic testing. Now, in "Detective Pikachu", twenty years later, we see Ditto and Mewtwo connected once again. Howard Clifford is conducting genetic experiments on Mewtwo outside Ryme City and, in the process, produces a Ditto with powers that surpass other members of his species. Tim says, "What kind of Ditto was that?" "That was one of my father's genetic experiments." If you were looking for final confirmation of the link between Mew, Mewtwo and Ditto, here it is.And probably as explicit as we can get.

Ditto is made of genetic material that Mew and Mewtwo are also made of. It's more possible now than ever that Ditto is just a bunch of failed protoplasm emerging from Mew's cloning experiments. In 1998, it was about creating the first forms of Mewtwo and the random regular Dittos that emerged from that process. Now twenty years later, in 2019 with "Detective Pikachu", Mewtwo's personality is elevated and exploited. Powers for Howard Clifford's next level of evolution and in the process, he is creating a stronger and more advanced form of Ditto. In the end, it took a movie theory to confirm one of the most famous game theories of all time.

But hey, that's just a theory! A multiplatform multimedia theory! Aaaaand... if you want to see more about "Detective Pikachu", check out my Movie Theory on why Detective Pikachu himself might actually be Ash's Pikachu. The movie doesn't completely disprove it, and hell, he really likes riding on Tim's shoulders all the time! Or check out my other channel, Game Theory, for more Pokémon excitement. I have over twenty episodes theorizing everything from "How Geography Affects Evolution in the "Pokémon" Series" to "Dead Pokémon and What Happened to Them." Heck, this last weekend I did one exposing the real story behind from one of the mysterious ghost girls that haunts the "Pokémon" games!

In fact, I'm going to link the entire Pokémon playlist right here, so you can watch Pokémon theories at your leisure. So now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go catch them all! Look at all the other wide release movies that came out in a span of a month, there's a lot to watch and have to get through. So, I need to run back to the theater now that this episode is over. Hopefully it produces some good theories!