Watch Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages For Free

An Exercise In Nonsense

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is easily the worst Pokemon movie to date. I pity everyone who took part in the creation and viewing of this movie, minus the writers because I am personally offended at how they wasted an hour and twenty minutes of my time that I will never get back.The movie breaks every canon they had set up in Pokemon prior to this. It's like they decided to write a movie without watching any of the previous movies or playing the games or knowing what Pokemon were aside from general design for animation purposes. First of all, Hoopa is the most grotesquely annoying character from literally any series I've ever seen. They scream every single line they have except when on the brink of death. The voice eventually felt like someone was putting my ear drums against a cheese grater. Second of all, they added in every legendary Pokemon they could cram into a scene just for a "clash of the titans" type action scene to try to compensate for the movie not really having a coherent story. Or even a story really. It was just legendary Pokemon fan-service and it flopped horribly. Third, it takes place in a fictional version of Dubai named after some variation of the word "Sahara" since Hoopa is based on a Djinn. The city was barren. There was no one there aside from like two scenes where you'd see maybe five other people aside from the main characters. Plus, every single character in this movie was white. In fictional Dubai. At the beginning of the movie the supporting characters and background characters were wearing (though stereotypical and outdated) middle eastern attire, but by the end you'd swear you were looking at a hipster poetry night at a coffee shop in Portland with how white everyone was. I was left with far more questions than answers with this movie. Literally none were remotely close to answered. I get this is a kids movie but kids movies and animation in general has stepped up in the past decade. Pokemon apparently didn't get the memo because this views worse than almost any B movie.

If you've seen any of the other seventeen(!) Pokémon movies (and if you haven't, stop reading this, and get thee to the Mewtwo!), Hoopa and the Clash of Ages won't hold a single surprise. The franchise has its formula of scant story, frantic melodrama, and epic, destructive battles anchored on teasing a new legendary Pokémon pre- international gaming release down to a science, and Hoopa isn't one to rock the Poké- ball. More discerning adult viewers might find this staunch formula irritatingly lazy by this point, but it's hard to overrule the abiding thrill of hearing that theme music kick in once again for fans young and old. Hoopa and the Clash of Ages may be one of the more forgettable entries into the Poké-pantheon, but the fun force is still strong with it, making it a daft but pleasant enough way to while away 70 minutes. Standouts within the past crop of Pokémon films are usually determined by moments that are iconically epic (holla Mewtwo and Lugia, circa-2000), or deliriously surreal ("YOU. ARE. MAMA!"). If anything in Hoopa and the Clash of Ages stands the test of time, it'll be the glut of (almost) every Gen II-V legendary Pokémon it conjures up for its battle royale - which, being a nod to their transportation by Hoopa ring in the ORAS games, doesn't even feel excessively gratuitous. It's wise to share the spotlight, as Hoopa itself is far too irritating, awkwardly voiced, and thinly drawn (in both tiny, impish and massive, sh*t-destroying forms) to anchor and entire movie on otherwise. Still, its teleportation-fuelled mayhem is quite fun to watch, owing a debt to the portal-spamming Blink from X-Men: Days of Future Past (who was probably the highlight of that movie as well). Watching gigantic Hoopa Unbound grappling with its teleporting six arms against a tag-team of Lugia and Mega Rayquaza, smashing across a city skyline? About as awesome as it sounds. As with its predecessors, Hoopa's animation is a step up from the show's calibre, and its realm of pseudo Middle Eastern desert temples turned technological oases are impressively etched with detail. But, with the trumped up production values come storytelling and voice acting several steps below par. Apart from Hoopa's infuriating chirping, the English dub of each of the core humans are dopily flat, especially Ash, who sounds more like a placid middle-aged woman than ever here, and James, whose replacement voice actor is cringeworthy. Mee-ouch. Story-wise, Hoopa's weird, schizophrenic disembodied rage "shadow- self" and dubious, cultist spirituality/magic subplots are treated so disposably, it's hard to imagine even the screenwriters not laughing them off as transparently nonsense. There's little of the show's zany humour, which is a bummer (even Team Rocket's requisite flyby has never been staler). Similarly, the geography is fairly stationary, which restricts the "Who's that Pokémon?" background cameos, though a climactic appearance by an adorably heroic Hippopotas goes a long way. But a final battle against a disembodied rift in space/time (which, lazily, doesn't even seem to have anything to do with Dialga and Palkia, who are right there, nonsensically shooting energy beams into it trying to stop it)? Sure. Whether Hoopa and the Clash of Ages is worth its weight in Pokéblocks will depend on the viewer's tolerance for the unyielding Pokéformula. It's a lot of nostalgic fun for indulgent Pokéfans (though monstrous Hoopa Unbound verges on being too scary for young kids), but liable to the leave the uninitiated wishing they could borrow a Hoopa ring to disappear into a different movie. But, let's be honest: as Hoopa queries ad nauseum, "Were you surprised?" -6/10

**WARNING: This is a review of the English dubbed version of the Hoopa Film that aired on CN and Teletoon**Basically, "Hoopa and the Clash of Ages," is a film that focuses more on random legendary creatures appearing, than any of the main characters' development or goals, relies on conventions previous films handled far better, and overall leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. It's disorganized, rushed, and focuses more on Ash than anyone else by far, as well as legendary Pokemon Hoopa. This film is so awful that there is literally no purpose for having Serena, Clemont, Bonnie, or Team Rocket in it, in fact, they show no personality in this film, and ultimately they were useless- you could take them out of the film, and it would be the same. It also does a cheap cop out towards the end of the film where Hoopa Unbound, who is apparently the antagonist here, takes over Ash and he becomes evil for all of like 30 seconds. One, this evil Ash concept is a copy of an episode of the Anime, Battle Frontier's, "Battling the Enemy Within," that was done better there, and two, Ash's TPCI actress sounded like a straight woman in the whole scene, with disjointed delivery particularly notable when Ash says, "It is over," so the cheapness of the Hoopa Film and its dub are made even more glaring.What makes the film even worse, is its awful English dubbing by The Pokemon Company International (TPCI), though: Ash now sounds like a woman who has a sore throat doing her deepest voice, as opposed to a boy, James now sounds like an old man with a cold, Meowth now sounds like a gristly, raspy gangster, Jessie now sounds like a valley girl, Serena sounds like a woman rather than a girl, Clemont sounds like a man instead of a boy, and to round off Bonnie's actress has a very stilted delivery. Overall, the voice acting in the English dub is horrendous.Almost all the beautiful Japanese OST composed by Shinji Miyazaki, is wiped clean out of existence save 1.5 tracks, something I should add 4Kids, who once had the license for Pokemon, did not do later in their run. However, TPCI is now, and started doing with the previous Diancie film. The Japanese OST is mainly replaced with Ed Goldfarb's poor music composition that never shuts up to allow silence, and fails to shift in tone whatsoever, like one "marshmallow" track.The villains, Team Rocket (Jessie, James, and Meowth) are also given awful rhyming dialogue like, "Slick, that should do the trick," for what little screen time they receive, annoying one more than anything else.Cartoon Network then cut out whole scenes from the TV broadcasts, as did TPCI, of this film, making it even worse and more disjointed.Overall, awful, would not recommend to anyone.

POKÉMON THE MOVIE: HOOPA AND THE CLASH OF AGES (2015) is the 18th Pokémon Movie and the second in the XY series (after last year's POKÉMON THE MOVIE XY: DIANCIE AND THE COCOON OF DESTRUCTION, also reviewed on this site). It offers at its center a mischievous little flying Pokémon named Hoopa, who talks and has a taste for donuts and boasts an extraordinary power found in the three rings it carries on its circular body in which it can teleport living beings and objects (some quite massive) from distant places to wherever it happens to be. Hoopa also has a giant form, with multiple arms and clawed hands, resembling a traditional Arabian Nights genie, as befitting the movie's Middle Eastern setting. The giant form of Hoopa is indeed contained in a bottle like the one that housed the genie in THE THIEF OF BAGDAD and similar tales. Hoopa, in his cute, dimunitive form, becomes the companion of two Arab children, Barza and Meray, who live in a traditional village, and pulls all sorts of pranks on the villagers.A decade later, Barza and Meray enter Dahara City, a modern Middle Eastern megalopolis patterned after Dubai (United Arab Emirates), and encounter our heroes, Ash Ketchum, Serena, Bonnie and Clemont and their various Pokémon. Long story short: Hoopa's giant form, which had wreaked havoc on the village 100 years earlier, is released from its bottle after Team Rocket tries to steal it and begins a new rampage on Dahara City with the help of six Legendary Pokémon it has summoned with its rings (Primal Groudon, Primal Kyogre, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, and Kyurem), while Ash, Pikachu and little Hoopa summon some Legendary Pokémon of their own (Lugia, Latios, Latias, and Rayquaza). The ensuing battle royale in the skies over the sprawling nighttime skyline of high-rise Dahara City takes up much of the film's second half. The battles are spectacularly designed and rendered and would have been much more exciting in the service of a more engaging story.I had two major problems with this scenario. For one thing, I never quite grasped why Hoopa came in two separate forms, with giant Hoopa able to exist outside of little Hoopa. Barza explains the giant form as "the Fury, the true form of the power that's trying to control Hoopa." He goes on to say that it's "a shadow of Hoopa" and that "the anger is trying to become the real Hoopa." So how is it able to take physical form and lift up huge buildings and smash them? Granted, abstract concepts like this are at the heart of the whole Pokémon franchise and it's futile to seek logical explanations, but in order to suspend my disbelief and accept something like this, I needed a more inventive explanation. Also, I found the mischievous little Hoopa extremely annoying and never understood the various characters' attachment to him. He does some pretty nasty things to them, yet they seem to find him endearing. Put the little Hoopa in the bottle also, I say. (I suspect, though, that the film's intended child audience will find Hoopa much more appealing than I did.) As a result, I didn't find a whole lot at stake for the main characters. They just seemed to enter someone else's story and decided to tag along, a not uncommon plot hook in these movies and less interesting for me than the stories where their own fates are directly affected. It doesn't help that Barza and Meray are such lightly-drawn characters who give us little reason to care about them.The movie comes with a supplementary 14-minute short entitled, "Hoopa, The Mischief Pokémon," which offers vignettes of life in the Arab village with Barza and Meray as children and little Hoopa as their trickster companion. This short is featured as an extra on the Japanese DVD. When Cartoon Network premiered POKÉMON THE MOVIE: HOOPA AND THE CLASH OF AGES on December 19, 2015, it ran "Hoopa, The Mischief Pokémon" in the 15-minute time slot preceding the 6:00PM (EST) start time of the movie. Which struck me as odd, considering that it wasn't promoted at all and would probably have been missed by the thousands of Pokémon fans tuning in at 6:00PM. (I only caught it because I was curious as to why so much time had been allotted by CN to the preceding film, POKÉMON: ARCEUS AND THE JEWEL OF LIFE.) Also, CN ran POKÉMON THE MOVIE: HOOPA AND THE CLASH OF AGES in a 90-minute time slot, a short time for a 78-minute movie, given that there were six commercial breaks of four minutes each. (Do the math.) A comparison screening with the Japanese DVD revealed one flashback scene eliminated and lots of individual establishing shots and short bits of action removed throughout the film. (For some reason, Team Rocket suffered the most, with lots of their reaction shots cut from the CN showing.) The Japanese end credit sequence is about four-and-a-half-minutes long and continues the action with scenes of Hoopa making amends for the damage it caused and scenes of Ash & co. continuing their travels, accompanied by an end song sung by Rei Yasuda. None of this was seen (or heard) by the Cartoon Network audience because the end credits were condensed to one minute for the U.S. showing and squeezed in on the side of the frame while a promo for a CN show ran on the other side of the frame. So, by my count, the movie itself was cut to around 70 minutes for the U.S. premiere. I don't understand why the Cartoon Network did this. They could easily have programmed the movie and the short in a two-hour time slot and not had to cut any of the movie OR the end credits.