This movie isn’t just bad, it’s lazy. It’s so lazy, it’s clear that they put absolutely no effort into it. The plot makes no sense, Manaphy is stupid and boring, Ash has no characterization beyond “the hero,” Brock, Max, and Lizabeth’s entire family do nothing to affect the plot, and Phantom is a really boring villain.
This movie is guilty of a very rare, very specific flaw, a flaw I call “Inappropriate Villain Syndrome.” It when you have a villain who’s inappropriate. Forget that Phantom has no backstory or motivation beyond obtaining power, forget that he’s just really boring and incompetent. He’s just not a big enough villain for this plot. This plot has consequences can potentially affect the entire world; a pirate captain just isn’t the right villain for that. Individual pirates don’t have global consequences; even the concept of piracy itself barely really affects the world in a tangible way. In the same way that you wouldn’t write a story where Joe Chill tries, through political and marital maneuvering, to become the Emperor of Japan in the 1700s, you wouldn’t write a story where Darth Vader plans an elaborate bank heist with a team of specialists including Nurse Ratched, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Norman Bates. They’re not even bad villains, they’re just not the right size for the plot. Phantom’s only advantage for this plot over any random bad guy is that he’s associated with the ocean.
The movie fails to foreshadow anything it needs to foreshadow (no one ever mentions they have a submarine before they take the submarine, for example, but this happens constantly), and the most obvious example of foreshadowing, Manaphy’s Heart Swap, never comes up after it Heart Swaps Ash and Jackie. You don’t introduce a device like “switching peoples’ bodies” and do nothing with it in the climax. That is against the goddamn rules of storytelling. Imagine if Obi-Wan Kenobi gave Luke Skywalker a lightsaber and then he didn’t use it at all during the climokay that’s a bad example.
There is an incredibly amount of padding in the middle of the movie, and even much of the plot relevant stuff could be cut with no consequences at all.
But worst of all, this movie is called “Pokemon Ranger.” It advertises Jackie heavily, and do you know what? Jackie does almost nothing. Except for stealing the egg at the beginning of the movie, Jackie does not do a single thing that Ash couldn’t have done if given two extra minutes. Jackie isn’t even a bad character, but he’s an utterly insignificant one who serves almost no purpose except to advertise a spinoff game.
The only thing the movie does right is displaying May’s love for Manaphy, but even that’s tainted by the awfulness that is Manaphy itself and the way in which the love is established.
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Started: July 6, 2005