Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo's bid to carry the television phenomenon onto the big screen, dubbed and distributed for American audiences at the height of Pokémania. The film introduced Mewtwo, a lab-born Pokémon wrestling with questions of origin and purpose, to a generation already steeped in the franchise's core creatures through cards, games, and the daily cartoon. Its theatrical trailer campaign was a major marketing push, building anticipation through teaser footage well before the film's wide release, making trailer-sourced material a distinct artifact of that promotional moment.
This cell comes from that trailer reel, capturing the arena setting where Mewtwo faces off against assembled Pokémon. A stand-off implies tension and scale, the engineered Pokémon positioned against the natural world it was meant to answer or oppose. Mewtwo remains one of the franchise's most collected figures, prized for its uneasy status as antagonist and tragic figure both. A trailer cell like this preserves not the finished film but the advance cut used to sell it, a separate lineage of footage that collectors value for its promotional origin and its glimpse of the film's central confrontation before audiences ever saw it in full.
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 three frames laid side by side across the panel.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced, rounded-rectangle holes that look cleanly punched with no visible tearing or missing sprocket holes.
Soundtrack
Two variable-area optical tracks run beside the picture, and Dolby Digital data blocks sit in the gaps between the lower-edge perforations, with a dashed line outside the tracks.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
Light blue-tinted clear margins; the dye image looks neutral to slightly warm, with no obvious fading or red shift.
Projection history
None seen at this size; no scratches, splices or cue marks are visible on these three frames.
Picture
Positive image; the three frames run consecutively as one near-identical shot, and the animated style and characters are plausible for the film on record.
Era check
Consistent: optical tracks plus Dolby Digital blocks between perforations fit a late-1990s 35mm release print, and the animated picture fits a 1999 Pokémon 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 000069878
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
