Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in 1999 as Warner Bros. and Nintendo's bid to carry the franchise's television and card-game momentum onto the big screen, backed by a promotional campaign that saturated American youth culture that summer. The trailer itself became a cultural touchstone in its own right, teasing audiences with the film's darker, more ambitious premise built around a genetically engineered Pokémon wrestling with questions of identity and purpose. For collectors, trailer material from this era captures the marketing apparatus that turned a video game into a global phenomenon, preserving a moment before the feature itself defined expectations.
This cell centers on Mewtwo, the film's central figure and one of the franchise's most enduring creations, prized by collectors for its singular design and its role as the emotional core of the movie's narrative. An invitation, as a dramatic beat, signals the character's intent to summon others into its orbit, a gesture central to the plot's unfolding conflict. As a trailer cell rather than a finished-film frame, it belongs to the promotional run meant to draw audiences in before release, making it a artifact of anticipation itself, a fragment of the campaign rather than the story's resolution.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm Dolby Digital release-print trailer strip for Pokémon: The Movie (1999).
Gauge
Four perforations per frame along both edges, the 35mm layout; the strip holds one complete frame with a sliver of the next frame's soundtrack visible at the edge.
Perforations
Four perforations span the frame on the top edge and four on the bottom, evenly spaced, rounded-rectangle, cleanly punched, with no tears or missing holes.
Soundtrack
Two variable-area optical tracks run beside the picture, with a dashed line above them, and speckled Dolby Digital data blocks sit in the gaps between the lower perforations.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
Light blue-tinted clear base at the edge margins; the dye image looks saturated and neutral, with no obvious fading or red shift.
Projection history
No lines, scratches, cue marks or splices seen at this size.
Picture
Positive colour image, single frame so no run of consecutive frames to compare; the animated art style is plausible for the film on record.
Era check
Optical tracks plus Dolby Digital blocks on a clear base are typical of late-1990s 35mm release prints, which 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 000070156
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
