Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in the fall of 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo's gamble on a Saturday morning phenomenon translating to the big screen, and it paid off with one of the largest opening weekends of the year. Produced in Japan and adapted for American audiences, the film introduced Mewtwo, a genetically engineered Pokémon wrestling with questions of purpose and identity, opposite Mew, the rare and elusive original from which he was cloned. Their pairing became the emotional core of the franchise's first cinematic outing.
This cell brings together the two Pokémon whose shared origin drives the entire story, Mewtwo the created and Mew the source. Collectors prize this pairing because it represents the movie's central philosophical conflict distilled into a single frame of film, the clash and connection between artificial and natural life. Owning a 35MM cell of these two together is owning a physical fragment of the moment the franchise first asked what it means to be real.
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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