Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in theaters in 1999 courtesy of Warner Bros. and Nintendo, riding the crest of a cultural wave that had swept from Japan into American living rooms in barely a year's time. Built around the Pokémon anime's expanding mythology, the film introduced Mewtwo's origin story to a mass audience and became a genuine box office event, pulling families and young collectors into theaters in numbers that surprised the industry. It remains a touchstone of late nineties animation licensing and the moment Pokémon proved itself a durable American franchise rather than a passing fad.
This cell carries Mew and Mewtwo together, pairing the franchise's rarest, most mythologized creature with its darkest and most philosophically weighted invention. Mew's scarcity within the Pokémon universe has always made any physical artifact bearing its likeness desirable among collectors, and its appearance alongside Mewtwo speaks to the film's central tension between origin and echo, natural and engineered. A 35mm cell from this pairing preserves a piece of the movie's emotional core, the meeting point of the original and the copy that the entire story turns on.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm theatrical release print of Pokémon: The First Movie (1999/1999).
Gauge
35mm, confirmed by four perforations per frame on both edges; the strip holds three frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges; spacing appears even and the punched edges look clean with no torn or missing perforations visible.
Soundtrack
A variable-area optical track runs along one edge beside the picture area, appearing as a dual-track stereo variable-area format; a blue dotted line is also present, consistent with a Dolby Digital or SR optical print of the era.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture at sufficient resolution to read manufacturer codes or key numbers clearly.
Base & colour
The base appears with a slight cool-neutral tint; the dye image shows strong magenta-purple saturation in the picture area with no obvious fading or red shift.
Projection history
Faint vertical lines are visible running through the frame area, consistent with light projection wear; no splices or cue marks are visible in this strip.
Picture
Positive image; the three frames appear to be consecutive frames from a single continuous shot, and the vivid magenta-toned imagery is consistent with the animated content of the film on record.
Era check
The dual variable-area optical track, positive release print format, and film stock base appearance are all consistent with a 1999 North American theatrical release print of an animated feature.
Read from the original intake capture shown below. Observations only — film is authenticated, not graded.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading, 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.
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
