Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo's bid to turn a television and trading-card phenomenon into a theatrical event, pairing the feature with the Pikachu's Vacation short. Its marketing push was relentless, with trailers circulating through theaters and television well ahead of release to prime a young audience already saturated in Pokémon mania. The film became a box office success and a cultural marker of the franchise's peak American popularity, making its promotional ephemera, including 35mm trailer material, a genuine artifact of that moment.
This cell preserves a strip from that trailer campaign, built around Mewtwo, the film's central figure and one of the most sought-after Pokémon among collectors for its origin as a laboratory creation and its outsized role in the story's conflict. The presence of Clone Pokémon alongside it points to the film's premise of duplication and identity, themes the trailer used to hook audiences before release. As a promotional reel fragment rather than a finished-film frame, it represents the advertising apparatus that introduced Mewtwo to American theaters.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm release print of Pokémon the Movie 2000, based on gauge, soundtrack and animated picture.
Gauge
35mm: four perforations per frame along both edges, and the strip holds four frames, three of them whole and a fourth cut off at the right edge.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced, with rounded-rectangle holes that look cleanly punched and uniform from frame to frame.
Soundtrack
Two parallel variable-area optical tracks run beside the picture, with a dotted band of Dolby Digital data blocks in the gaps between the lower perforations.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
Light blue clear base, with the dye image looking saturated and neutral rather than faded or red-shifted.
Projection history
No lines, scratches, cue marks or splices seen at this size.
Picture
Positive image; the frames run consecutively as one shot of cartoon creatures, and the animated look is plausible for Pokémon the Movie 2000, though nothing on the strip names the film.
Era check
Consistent with a late-1990s release print: analogue optical tracks plus Dolby Digital blocks in the perforation gaps fit a 1999-2000 theatrical print on 35mm stock.
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
