Another day, another interview. The press tour for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is still going strong. Fielding questions from entertainment news outlets and film aficionados, the Pokémon Company is starting to publish their pieces with Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, and Ryan Reynolds.
Interviewing Justice and Kathryn together, the pair were asked a variety of questions — like what Pokémon partner they would love to have onscreen besides Pikachu and Psyduck (Totodile for Justice and Furfrou for Kathryn), how they had to use their imaginations while shooting on set, how they fleshed out their characters, and more.
With Ryan Reynolds though, we were treated to his insight on motion capture technology:
“And in terms of emoting and telling that story, the motion capture technology they have now is—I mean, it’s changed even since I did Deadpool 2. I played Juggernaut in Deadpool 2, which was just a short stint of motion capture, but this is just—they’re not just mapping your face and body movements and putting it into Detective Pikachu. They’re also grabbing my micro facial expressions now, which are some of the hardest stuff to duplicate and map onto a CGI character.
It was super unsettling the first time I saw it. It really did feel like somebody had pulled the soul out of my body and put it into Detective Pikachu. So, I had a kind of uncanny valley situation for a minute where I couldn’t quite stare at it for too long because it was like seeing me. It was a very odd thing, but it made emoting very easy because it’s able to pick up even the finest, tiniest facial expressions as opposed to these grandiose ones which was the way it was even two years ago.”
Even better, it appears that there are plenty of unused ideas left over for the film that can be fully realized in the film’s sequel. As Ryan said, “There are infinite ways that you can tell different stories, the world is so dynamic and intricate. I know that they’ve suggested a couple of things that I thought were really, really interesting. Stuff that was so interesting that I almost wish we had got to do it in the first movie, but we’ll see!”
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu will be in theaters, worldwide, on May 10th.
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Written by Jennifer Burch
Illustrator, designer, writer and big Nintendo geek, you can find Jennifer with an N3DS within reach 24/7. As the oldest of three, she has survived many Mario Party, Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart sessions intact in addition to getting her brothers hooked on some really weird games. (Cubivore anyone?)
