Pokémon: The Movie 2000 arrived in the wake of Pokémania's first great wave, when Nintendo, Game Freak, and Warner Bros. pushed the franchise from handheld screens and Saturday morning television into wide theatrical release. The trailer campaign that preceded it was part of a larger marketing machine built to keep young audiences and their families primed for a second cinematic outing after the success of the original Pokémon film. These preview reels circulated through theaters as a way of building anticipation, often bundled with other family programming of the period, and they remain a touchstone for collectors tracing the franchise's early theatrical footprint.
This cell preserves a Nintendo logo card, the kind of corporate identifier that opened or punctuated promotional reels of the era. Such cards served a simple purpose: establishing ownership and pedigree before the footage proper began, reassuring exhibitors and audiences alike that what followed carried the full weight of Nintendo's involvement. For collectors, logo cards like this one function as artifacts of process rather than narrative, a physical marker of how the trailer was assembled and distributed, tying the reel directly to the studio system behind the Pokémon phenomenon at its commercial peak.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm release print trailer for Pokémon: The Movie 2000.
Gauge
35mm, with four perforations per frame along both edges; the strip holds about three frames, the right-hand one overexposed to a blue flare.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced, with rounded-rectangle holes that look cleanly punched; the lower edge shows a speckled grey Dolby Digital block in each gap between perforations.
Soundtrack
A variable-area optical track runs beside the picture, with Dolby Digital data blocks in the gaps between the lower-edge perforations; no DTS timecode or SDDS tracks seen.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture
Base & colour
Pale blue-tinted base on the edges; the picture area is dark with a pink Nintendo logo and a blue flare, no obvious fading.
Projection history
No clear scratches, cue marks or splices seen at this size; the dark arc on the middle and right frames is the camera reflection and is ignored.
Picture
Positive image; the three frames run consecutively as one shot, a Nintendo logo flaring to blue, which matches a trailer carrying a Nintendo game promotion.
Era check
Optical track plus Dolby Digital blocks on a 35mm print is consistent with a 2000 release trailer, as digital sound was standard on prints of that year.
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 000071286
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
