DETECT I VE P I KACHU | DRAMA
Why does conventional wisdom demand that a film with digital characters has to be captured digitally? Pokémon Detective Pikachu blows that theory out of the water FILMING IN RYME CITY
WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL / PICTURES WARNER BROS / MPC
I f you’re a new convert to Pokémon or still a fan from your childhood, it will only take a few seconds for you to believe the fantasy world that Pokémon Detective Pikachu presents to you. The VFX embedded in John Mathieson’s cinematography really is that good. Mathieson is a true artist, but he wouldn’t thank you for calling him that. His skills are finely hewn from his early days on films like Gladiator and Hannibal , working with directors like Ridley Scott (he also shot Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood with Scott). He recently shot Mary Queen of Scots on digital, but thought there was a bigger movie to be made, perhaps with a bigger cinematic directorial vision. He may or may not have his pick of interesting feature products, but a CG-heavy pre-teen origins tale might not have been on the top of his list. So, what made this movie rise above the others? Mathieson’s agent mentioned it to him, insisting: “It’s a great ‘fun film’ and tracks from kids to grandparents.” Mathieson adds: “I liked the director and he promised it would be stupid in this quirky Japanese way. There is a certain amount of honesty that comes through with this film. It doesn’t pretend to be morally superior or anything that it isn’t; this is purely a romp.”
Pokémon Detective Pikachu could be the start of a series of movies for the heavily invested among us. It had plenty of things going for it: Ryan Reynolds doing a de-tuned Deadpool for one, and a huge gallery of Pokémon characters to (literally) draw on for two. But cinema audiences can smell a rat when CG and the real world have a disconnect. The virtual world has to resemble the real world shortly after the lights go down or you’ve lost the mood. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION When Mathieson came on-board, the director, Rob Letterman, promised him the use of film, less use of green screen and real locations – not just sound stages. This was music to his ears (and eyes). “Now, producers are so lazy, they want to shoot the outdoor scenes inside. It makes the budget so much simpler: if you have so many days on stages, you can work out that budget pretty quickly. If you have to go to a jungle in Thailand, for instance, or a desert beyond the Atlas Mountains and you have to build a road, stable some horses, dig for water and build a bridge, that all gets a bit tricky and there are a lot of unknowns. The laziness of studios who then say, ‘Just shove it against a green screen’ and it doesn’t match up,” Mathieson explains.
There is a certain amount of honesty that comes through with this film
LEFT Detective Pikachu, Tim and Lucy inhabit a world that feels real through the use of film
JULY 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 21
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