Movie Critics - The Panel: Double Vision

Zoaoark is a master of illusions, so tells us the title of this movie; it's no illusion however that this film is really lame. We start with some sort of soccer meets Quidditch meets Beyblade meets Pokémon sports supreme game. I'd probably be all over this fantasy league if I had any idea what any of this means. It's called Pokémon-boccer, and this is the excuse we have for a feature length merchandise commercial, because you see one team has the legendary dogs, and that means he's really cool!!! Zorua is the requisite cutie of this film and starts off strongly with the most annoying chuckle you will hear; Vigoroth hate this apparently and are ready to toss Zorua off a cliff; by the end of the film you will want to do the same. Piplup saves Zorua through the power of conversation, and then Zorua reveals it too can speak. Well, how about that; I guess someone needs to keep track of a plot if we're just joking around and watching imaginary sport games.

Zoroark is being blackmailed by Chomp-hair, who happens to have aneurysms every time the plot happens, so he works to make sure the plot is as dumb as possible (or something with a time ripple). One of these stupid plot moments is using a Zorua illusion to fool Zoroark, the SUPPOSED MASTER OF ILLUSIONS, and the crazy thing is it works! To fight this, Ash and company, along with a random guy, sneak into the old city. Chomp-hair chases them, and Celebi comes around for a bit to remind us we did have good films before.

The legendary shiny dogs apparently realize Zoroark is infringing on their copyright, and chase momma Zoroark down. There are fantastic giant blasts, and poor Zoroark just cannot handle this in any way. Thus they attack our big black illusionist along with Chomp-hair's ship, while Ash and co chase down Chomp-hair who stole Celebi to stop the aneurysms. Luckily, Ash meets a double agent who betrays Chomp-hair and helps them escape. But because of time-stream, Chomp-hair apparently knew all along, but he sacrifices this knowledge to keep the plot really dumb.

Meanwhile, thousands of Pokémiles away, the shiny dogs decided Zoroark has done enough copyright infringement and begin to entrap her in crystals. To stop this needless violence, all the forest animals come to rescue the Pokémon that was just blackmailed into burning the entire place to the ground. They work together to stop Chomp-hair; at the end, Celebi decides to travel back to that better film it was in, and Zoroark, along with Zorua, decides to travel to Unova SO MAKE SURE TO BUY THOSE GAMES KIDS SO YOU TOO CAN PLAY WITH ZORUA!

These are basically the same film, so I'm going to try reviewing both at the same time. There is one guy who is so guided by truth/ideals that he must be stopped by Ash and his ideals/truth. At the start, Ash rescues Deerling, then manages to get lost in some crystal cave. The film ends up having just about the same level of navigation in its narrative as Ash does. The introduction has a good section of fighting because Ash fights a whole tournament within the time of the introduction theme. In the anime, this might take an entire mini-arc with several Team Rocket interludes in-between. Best of all, Ash manages to completely cheat his way to victory through the secret powers of hax, AKA Victini. This is the hero of this film and the last 13 films, everyone. Even when he finds out his victory was completely out of his ability, he makes no effort to apologize or make amends.

Our enemy is Mr. Chess, who has premature grey hair on one side; he is as close to N as we're going to get until a few more seasons of anime, so deal with it. After our huge history lesson (half the film), he hijacks the Sword of the Vale because the stress of dealing with the Sword of the Vale in the improper location turned his hair that shade of white. Mr. Chess uses his legendary dragon along with Victini and the Sword of the Vale to move the giant castle sword, because moving it down a mountain is a huge deal, apparently.

Ash decides he needs to find the other legendary dragon and goes to the same cave at the start of the film; lo and behold, the other legendary dragon is there, so Ash shows his ideals/truth to it and they ride off to protect the Sword of the Vale. Here is my version of truth and ideals: Ash should have just hopped on the legendary dragon wagon at the start of the film, and instead of chilling with Victini, eating macaroons laced with illegal substances and giving wild Pokémon pink berries, Ash could have gone around and totally abused the privilege of being a legendary hero.

This next part is the only reason to justify making me watch two versions of the same film; for a similarly choreographed, but quite different, battle scene between Reshiram and Zekrom. In one film, Ash rides on Zekrom, and in the other, he rides on Reshiram! Mr. Chess gets tired of his shenanigans, and decides to make the Sword of the Vale a giant spaceship, with a bit of help from the Solosis church opera. Ash decides he's had enough of life, or needs to rescue Victini, and nearly dies. They are seriously running out of ways to nearly kill Ash. With both Reshiram, Zekrom, Victini, Mr. Chess, and the whole gang, they put the Sword of the Vale exactly where it was before and go along their merry way.

This is exactly the problem I have with these films: nothing of consequence ever happens, Ash has not changed fundamentally in any way, and everything in the show goes back to exactly how it was as if this film never happened. It's a weird sort of marketing for films, but I'm not the one with 15 films produced, now, so who am I to judge?