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OFFICIAL MOTION PICTURE FILM AUTHENTICATION
A
AUTHENTIC
CROWN CERTIFIED
Film cell 000069087 Tap to enlarge
MOVIEPokémon: The First Movie Trailer
SCENEGyarados
FILM FORMAT35mm
YEAR1999
CERTIFICATE ID000069087

FILM NOTES

Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in 1999 courtesy of Warner Bros. and Nintendo's licensing muscle, riding the crest of a cultural wave that had already conquered Game Boy screens, trading cards, and Saturday morning television. The trailer reel circulated in theaters ahead of the feature, built to stoke anticipation among a fanbase still new to seeing these creatures rendered at feature-film scale. It stands as a marker of Pokémon's crossover from handheld franchise to cinematic event, a moment when the brand proved it could fill multiplexes rather than just living rooms.

This cell preserves a glimpse of Gyarados from that promotional reel, one of the franchise's most imposing early Pokémon and a longtime favorite among collectors for its serpentine design and reputation as a powerhouse battler. A trailer cell like this one captures the film mid-pitch, chosen footage meant to signal scale and spectacle to audiences deciding whether to buy a ticket. Having Gyarados represented here speaks to the creature's drawing power even in brief promotional glimpses, a single frame standing in for the larger world the movie promised to deliver.

Authentication Findings 8 checks

Consistent with a 35mm Dolby Digital release-print trailer strip of Pokémon: The First Movie (1999).

Gauge
35mm: four perforations per frame along both edges, and the strip holds four frames, two of them cut off at the left and right ends.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced and cleanly punched with rounded-rectangle holes and no visible tearing or missing perforations.
Soundtrack
A band of grainy, speckled blocks sits in the gaps between the lower perforations, consistent with Dolby Digital data; no optical track lines appear beside the picture.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
Clear base with a light cyan-blue tint along the edges; the dye image looks saturated and neutral, with no fading or colour shift.
Projection history
None seen at this size; the frames show no scratches, splices or cue marks, apart from the camera reflection ring on one frame, which is ignored.
Picture
Positive image; the four frames show the same shot repeated with little change between them, and a blue-and-white animated creature matches the animated film on record.
Era check
Dolby Digital data between the perforations on a clear-based positive print fits a 1999 35mm release print, and the animated picture fits the film on record.
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 Capture As received
The film strip as photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size