Pokémon: The Movie Trailer arrived in 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo's advance promise of Pokémon's first theatrical outing, released into American theaters to prime audiences already swept up by the franchise's television and trading card explosion. Preview reels of this kind were a standard tool of the era, cut and distributed on 35mm to run ahead of other features, building anticipation for a film that would become a cultural landmark of the late nineties Pokémon boom and introduce Mewtwo to a far wider audience than the games or show had reached.
This cell preserves a moment from that promotional reel built around Mewtwo, the engineered Pokémon whose story anchors the feature film and whose mystery was central to the marketing push leading up to release. A card bearing Mewtwo's presence in a trailer context served to announce the character and the stakes of the film before a single frame of the feature played, a common device for building intrigue around a singular, commanding figure. Collectors prize Mewtwo material for its scarcity and its tie to the character's defining early appearance, making a piece from this promotional stage a notable artifact of that introduction.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm release-print trailer strip of Pokémon: The Movie (1999).
Gauge
35mm: four perforations span each frame on both edges, and the strip holds three complete frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced and cleanly punched with rounded-rectangle holes; none look torn or distorted.
Soundtrack
Two variable-area optical tracks run beside the picture, and Dolby Digital data blocks sit in the gaps between the lower-edge perforations; no DTS timecode or SDDS tracks are visible.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
Clear to faintly blue-tinted base with a neutral dye image; the blue frames look saturated, not faded or red-shifted.
Projection history
Faint hairline marks run across the right-hand frame; no cue marks or splices are seen at this size.
Picture
Positive image; the three frames run consecutively as one shot of a title card, and the title wording matches the Pokémon: The Movie trailer on record.
Era check
Dolby Digital blocks plus analogue optical tracks fit a late-1990s release print, which suits 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 000070004
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
