Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in 1999 courtesy of Warner Bros., distributing 4Kids Entertainment's adaptation of the Japanese animated feature at the height of Pokémania in North America. Its trailer campaign was engineered to convert television viewers and card collectors into opening weekend audiences, promising a theatrical event built around the franchise's roster of creatures. The release became a cultural marker for a generation, cementing Pokémon's leap from handheld games and trading cards into mainstream cinema, and the promotional material that preceded it remains a touchstone for collectors tracing the brand's earliest cinematic push.
This cell preserves a moment from that trailer centered on Mew, the rare and elusive Pokémon whose mythic status within the games and the film's narrative made it a focal point of pre-release anticipation. Mew Dodging Attack points to a sequence of evasive action, a beat meant to signal the character's agility and importance within the story's central conflict. Trailer cells like this one served as advertising artifacts, cut to entice rather than narrate, and collectors prize them for capturing a character central to the franchise's mythology in a single surviving theatrical frame.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm release-print trailer for Pokémon: The First Movie (1999), though one frame limits confirmation.
Gauge
Four perforations per frame along both edges, the 35mm layout; the strip holds one complete frame with only slivers of neighbours cut off at top and bottom.
Perforations
Four per frame on each edge, rounded-rectangle holes that are evenly spaced and cleanly punched, with no torn or missing holes visible.
Soundtrack
A dashed line sits beside the picture with two white variable-area optical tracks below it, and the gaps between the lower perforations hold speckled blocks consistent with Dolby Digital data.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
The base reads as a cool light-blue tint along both edges; the dye image shows soft blue-violet and neutral whites with no obvious fading or red shift.
Projection history
No lines, scratches, cue marks or splices seen at this size, apart from a few tiny dark specks in the picture area.
Picture
Positive image, a single frame so consecutive running cannot be checked; the animated artwork is not inconsistent with a Pokémon feature trailer, but the frame alone does not confirm the title.
Era check
Combined optical tracks plus Dolby Digital blocks on a 35mm positive are consistent with a late-1990s release print, so this fits a 1999 trailer.
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 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.
CROWN SERIAL 000069863
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
