Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo's bid to carry the Pokémon television phenomenon onto the big screen, riding a wave of merchandise, card-collecting mania, and playground obsession that had swept through American youth culture. The film's marketing push, including its theatrical trailer, played a crucial role in building anticipation, teasing the origin story of Mewtwo, a genetically engineered Pokémon whose existential struggle gave the franchise an unexpected dose of gravity. For a generation raised on the games and cartoon, this trailer was often a first glimpse of the darker, more ambitious tone the movie promised.
This cell preserves a moment from that trailer centered on Mewtwo, isolated here in a card-style frame announcing the film itself. Mewtwo remains one of the most sought-after figures in Pokémon collecting, prized for its complexity and its break from the series' usual cheerfulness. A trailer cell like this one captures the promotional machinery of the release, the frame built to introduce rather than narrate, pairing character and film name as a single advertising unit. For collectors, it represents the first handshake between audience and movie.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm release print of the Pokémon: The First Movie trailer (1999).
Gauge
35mm: four perforations per frame along both edges, and the strip holds four frames, with a fifth cut off at the right end.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced, rounded-rectangle, cleanly punched, with no torn or missing perforations seen at this size.
Soundtrack
Two parallel variable-area optical tracks run along the bottom edge, with Dolby Digital data blocks in the gaps between the lower perforations; no DTS timecode or SDDS seen.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
Clear base with a light blue-teal tint at the edges; the dye image is saturated with no red shift or visible fading.
Projection history
No scratches, cue marks or splices seen in these four frames.
Picture
Positive colour image; the four frames run consecutively as one shot, and the MEWTWO title text matches the film on record.
Era check
Consistent: a combined optical and Dolby Digital soundtrack on 35mm suits a 1999 release print, and the stock looks like a typical late-1990s print.
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
