Pokémon: The Movie Trailer (1999) arrived as Warner Bros. and Nintendo built American anticipation for Mewtwo Strikes Back, the first theatrical Pokémon release to hit U.S. audiences. Riding the franchise's explosive stateside debut, the trailer served as an early promotional artifact, introducing moviegoers to the darker, more conflict driven tone of the feature before its wide release. These 35mm trailer cells are prized today as physical remnants of that marketing push, predating home video and capturing the film's theatrical rollout in its rawest distributed form.
This cell preserves a moment built around command and assembly: Mewtwo presiding over its gathered clones, with Gyarados, Scyther, Nidoqueen, and Ninetales standing among them. Mewtwo remains one of the franchise's most sought after characters, central to the film's narrative of identity and dominance, and its pairing here with cloned creatures speaks directly to the plot's core conflict. As a trailer cell, this frame functioned to tease that dynamic to audiences, offering a glimpse of the assembled forces without revealing the full story.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm release trailer print of Pokémon: The Movie (1999).
Gauge
35mm layout: four perforations per frame along both edges, and the strip holds three complete frames, plus partial frame edges at the left and right ends.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced, rounded-rectangle punches that look clean and uniform, with no torn, stretched or missing holes visible.
Soundtrack
A twin-track variable-area optical soundtrack runs between the picture and the lower perforations, and the gaps between the lower perforations hold speckled Dolby Digital data blocks.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
The clear base has a light blue-teal tint at the edges, and the dye image looks saturated and balanced, with no obvious fading or colour shift.
Projection history
No scratches, splices or cue marks seen at this size; the perforations and edges look clean.
Picture
Positive colour image, three consecutive frames of one continuous shot, and the animated cartoon style is consistent with the Pokémon film on record.
Era check
Dolby Digital blocks plus an optical analogue track on a tinted base is consistent with a late-1990s 35mm release trailer 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 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 000069906
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
