Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in American theaters in November 1999 through Warner Bros., adapting the Japanese feature Mewtwo Strikes Back for a Western audience already gripped by Pokémania. It marked the franchise's leap from television and trading cards to the big screen, introducing Mewtwo as a tragic, engineered counterpart to the more familiar creatures children collected. The film was a commercial phenomenon, cementing Pokémon as a dominant force in late-90s pop culture and giving a generation its first cinematic entry point into the series.
This 35MM cell carries only the designation of the feature itself, a general reel fragment rather than a scene tied to a specific character or line of dialogue. As a piece from the film's original theatrical print, it represents the physical artifact of that 1999 release, the literal celluloid that passed through projectors during Pokémon's peak cultural moment. Collectors value this kind of cell as tangible history, connecting directly to the movie's theatrical run without additional context to narrow its origin further.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
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