The first trailer for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu has been released, causing a massive rift in the Pokémon fan universe.

If you’re under 35 you probably grew up watching the animated series, collected the Tazos, and played the card game.

In other words, Warner Bros took a risk here when they decided to adapt significant bits of people’s childhoods into a live action film, with a talking Pikachu voiced by Ryan Reynolds.

Needless to say, the response has been mixed. Some people are super amped about the live-action remake, while others want to kill it with fire.

According to The Guardian, the response has been mostly positive, and many fans are looking forward to the film’s release in May 2019.

This is the first ever live-action Pokémon film. The Pokémon movies we saw as kids were all cheap-ish anime jobs (though that didn’t stop us from crying in the cinema when Ash died and his Pokémon pals revived him with their grief-stricken tears).

Detective Pikachu is about a failed Pokémon trainer (Justice Smith) with a missing father, who meets a Pikachu in a deerstalker hat and finds that he can understand the creature, like Kanto’s own Doctor Dolittle.

The weirdest part of the film is that Pikachu deviates from his usual limited vocabulary of “pika pika – chuuuu” to talk in full sentences.

Now he shares a voice with Deadpool himself:

Apparently, the petition to have him voiced by Danny Devito didn’t work out.

Those not in favour of the Pokémon adaptation are really, really upset. Here’s Poppy Noor, a long-time Pokémon fan:

The great Pikachu – the best friend of Pokémon’s main protagonist Ash; the only Pokémon to have starred in every episode, film and special version of the franchise; the Pokémon that brings Ash back from the dead with his tears in the first film – has been reimagined as something resembling a hamster.

A hamster! The lesser of all rodents, with a lifespan of less than five years on average, that commonly meets its fate by being dropped from a height. Truly the worst kind of pet.

She goes on to describe another fan-favourite, Jigglypuff, as “scrappy”.

Like a teddy bear that has been through the wash, or a stressed cat. The filmmakers have managed to take a Pokémon that is literally born from happiness (Jigglypuff evolves from Igglybuff when he becomes happy enough) and turn it into a cross between Pat Butcher and a tired Elvis tribute.

Whether the film will join other Pokémon films in the nostalgia vault, or remain the place where happiness goes to die, will only be fully revealed when it’s released in May.

Buckle in for those film reviews. I’m anticipating some vicious takedowns.

[sources:guardian&guardian]