IMAGINARY PAL
‘Pokémon’ stars often had to act with air
Get ready to feel electrified by “Pokémon Detective Pikachu.”
The highly anticipated movie introduces beloved Pokémon characters in a way audiences have never seen before: as computer-generated creatures in a live-action setting.
Depicting a world where lifelike Pokémon with scales and fur walk among humans was a complicated task for the movie’s stars, who had to pretend they were interacting with characters who weren’t really there. Justice Smith, who plays Tim Goodman, recalls a particularly tough scene involving his character, Pikachu and Mr. Mime.
“Because Mr. Mime and Pikachu don t actually exist, I’m having to track where they are in the room at both times and make sure that when I’m looking at Mr. Mime, I know in the back of my head that Pikachu is walking across the room,” Smith tells the Daily News. “So when I turn back to Pikachu, he’s not going to be in the same spot that I saw him in before. “Doing all that and then also acting on top of that, that was challenging,” he said. “But it was fun. It’s just fun. It’s like playing pretend.” Smith, 23, had experience shooting scenes with imaginary characters, having starred in last year’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.” But that movie generally required him to just “run away screaming,” he explains, while “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” had him engaging with Pikachu and others, requiring him to look at a tennis ball, pupet or sometimes othing at all. Pikachu is porrayed by Ryan Reynolds, who oiced the characer and wore a acial capture rig to onvey the lovable lectric rodent’s motions as he delivered lines.
The movie, which hits theaters Friday, centers on Pikachu’s detective partner Harry Goodman — Tim’s father — going missing, causing Tim and the yellow Pokémon to team up to solve the mystery. Tim is the only human who can understand Pikachu, and director Rob Letterman says Reynolds really made the quick-witted character his own.
“We needed to get a big personality for this little adorable character,” Letterman told The News. “That contrast was a lot of fun. And then, someone who can be incredibly funny but also have a dramatic, grounded performance. … Not everyone can pull that off.
“We were already kind of zeroing in on Ryan, but we did this test,” he said. “We took a clip from ‘The Change Up,’ one of his movies from way back. Just randomly took a clip, and the animation team animated Pikachu to that clip just as a test. We didn’t approach Ryan
at that point. Once I saw that, it was perfect.”
Nostalgia plays a key role in the film, as Letterman, 48, made it a point to include numerous first-generation Pokémon that would appeal to people who grew up with the franchise in the 1990s.
Included in that age demographic is Smith, who collected Pokémon trading cards, watched the anime and played the video games as a kid. His love of Pokémon during his youth is part of the reason he jumped at the chance to join the movie, and he appreciates the way the series continues to resonate with a younger generation.
“It’s definitely the magic and the fantasy of it, but its also the sense of community,” Smith said. “When you played the original games on Game Boy Color, you had to link up to another kid’s Game Boy in order to transfer a Pokémon. You had to meet other kids to trade cards. It was a social thing. And even ‘Pokémon Go,’ you can’t play it sitting in your house. You have to go outside and play. I think the Pokémon Co., what they do so beautifully, is bring people together. … I’m bonding with young kids over something that we both have grown up with, which is rare.”