SB Nation reviews: Mewtwo

Team Rocket aren't known for their insight. But halfway through Pokemon: The First Movie, the notoriously inept criminal gang are the ones who shed light on the story of the world's most powerful Pokémon. The trio of Jessy, James, and Meowth, sneak into Mewtwo's fortress, and after accidentally activating a video of Mewtwo's creation inside the building's replication center, Jessy says, "Oh, a real Pokenstein."

Mewtwo is a legendary Pokémon introduced in the first generation of the games. He's appeared in many different forms in the Pokémon universe, but his first major appearance, in Pokemon: The First Movie, is by far the most interesting. In what is ostensibly a children's movie of love and belonging, Mewtwo grapples with themes of creation, grace and belonging, situating itself clearly alongside Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. But Mewtwo's story, while derivative, adds to Shelley's, moving beyond it in fascinating ways.

Both Mewtwo and Dr. Frankenstein's infamous Creature are science experiments whose rage is fueled by rejection. The world around them sees them as monsters. Dr. Frankenstein flees from his firstborn; The scientists that cloned Mewtwo, and Giovanni, the leader of team Rocket who funded the program, reduced him to an object to be used, rather than a sentient being to be respected and cared for. Both Mewtwo and the Creature are pained by unimaginable loneliness.

Just before the Creature disappears for the last time, he says: "But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone." The Creature, abandoned and denied companionship by his own creator, and shunned by the human world, is condemned to isolation forever.

Mewtwo, after destroying Giovanni's lab when Giovanni claimed that the purpose of the Pokemon was simply to serve those who created him, stood over the rubble of the building and declared: "I was not born a Pokémon, I was created. And my creators have used and betrayed me. So, I stand alone."

By the nature of their birth and being, both Mewtwo and the Creature are utterly forsaken.

Shelly referred to the Creature in Frankenstein as "Adam", created and then shunned by his Maker. Mewtwo is not quite Adam. When Team Rocket watches the video of Mewtwo's creation, Mew, the Pokémon that Mewtwo is cloned from, floats placidly behind them.

Unlike Mewtwo, the Creature is an original. There is none like him. Frankenstein, coerced, agreed to make a bride for him, but then destroyed the second creature before completion, which exacerbated the Creature's loneliness and anger still further.

Mewtwo is a copy. The first thing he learns is that he is a clone of Mew. This knowledge, the fact that he is naught but 'Mew's shadow,' enrages him.

He learns at the moment of birth the lesson what the Creature learned at the edge of death: he is the desolate result of an experiment, and no more. At least the Creature has the consolation of being singular, where Mewtwo was made from DNA extracted from Mew's metaphorical rib.

Mewtwo is Eve to the creature's Adam. He doesn't fall from grace: he's "born" already outside the gates of Eden. Adam is brought to life by Frankenstein, while Mewtwo willed himself to awareness, his first thought being, "I am ready to be." And when his eyes opened, he spoke as if he was lost. He didn't ask "who am I?", but instead, where.

The rebuilt replication center is Mewtwo womb, allowing him to create life. Immediately after Team Rocket watched the video, a machine grabbed Meowth and plucked three of his hairs out. In a few seconds, it cloned the Pokemon and sent the clone Meowth into an incubation tube. The center had several Pokemon in such tubes already. There they slumbered, waiting for Mewtwo to awaken them with his psychic powers. He would will them to life, as he did for himself.

In Readings, the French poet and philosopher Hélène Cixous, writes that after the initial fall from grace, when the forbidden fruit has been consumed, "We can no longer be innocent innocents, since we belong to the world of the afterward ... We have left paradise or the space of the nonfault. We are now on the path between nonfault and the limit, rather than the effacement, of the fault."

That first innocence of the garden can never be regained. "But all hope is not lost. A second innocence is not necessarily impure. It can be found again if ... following the loss of a first innocence, we go around the earth to arrive at the other side. "

Mewtwo never went around the Earth. He never actually left the scene of his birth. He centers his story right outside the womb. He destroyed the lab which birthed him twice, once after his initial contact with the scientists who cloned him, and then after his time with Giovanni, only to rebuild it. Cast out of Eden, he constructed the walls anew. He hadn't found a suitable reason to move forward.

The first time Mewtwo asked about his true purpose, Giovanni didn't answer. He suggested instead that it would become clear in time. After Giovanni used Mewtwo to defeat Pokemon trainers for some time, Mewtwo returned to the question. What is my purpose? Giovanni responded by saying that Mewtwo was made to be a slave. He was created to serve his master.

Then Mewtwo said, "This cannot be." He might have been created as an experiment and expected to serve, but the brute fact of creation cannot trespass within the vaults of one's soul. Mewtwo knew innately that as a living thing, a sentient being, servitude could not possibly be his purpose of existence. Freedom was his natural right. And with that freedom came also the obligation to revolt against anyone who threatened to deny it.

Mewtwo then built his fortress, sent a message to Pokemon trainers around the world, and invited them to travel to his island to face the best Pokemon master. When he showed himself to the trainers, he said he was the strongest Pokemon in the world and explained his plan to rule it. Both ambitions were patched together from his birth and early days. Mewtwo was a child trying on the cruel skin of his parents.

In order for Mewtwo to leave his desolation, for him to begin that journey to the other side of paradise, he needed to know there was a possibility for a renewal of innocence.

The events that would open up that chance needed to be as jarring as his initial fall from grace. It had to reflect and describe the same force that closed him off to begin with. Three encounters pry open his heart and show him the path to salvation. The first was with Ash Ketchum's Pikachu. After the trainers arrived in his fortress, he introduced himself and detailed that his plan was to take over the world. He denounced humans as cruel and their Pokémon as slaves for following them. Pikachu rebutted that he was wrong about the relationship between Pokémon and humans and that Ash was a friend, not a master.

Mewtwo called Pikachu pathetic, but his contempt arose from painful memory. Pikachu's friendship with Ash, that equality and love, was what Mewtwo had sought in Giovanni. It was through that weakness he was first exploited.

Pikachu is what Mewtwo had hoped to become before his experiences closed him off to the possibility of such a relationship. When he called Pikachu pathetic, he was also condemning his younger self's naiveté, in the same way that Frankenstein's Creature looked back in pity and anger at how he had once "falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding." But unlike the Creature, there was still a chance for Mewtwo, who hadn't truly begun his journey.

The first event shook Mewtwo, but not forcefully enough. Nor did the second, his encounter with Mew. When Mew appeared, it had no intention of fighting Mewtwo, and casually ignored its clone. Mewtwo wasn't a threat. But for Mewtwo, Mew's existence was a reminder of his own contemptible nature. Mew was singular. It had the consolation of possessing a life that wasn't merely the dim, somber reflection of another's light. But Mewtwo, the Eve, didn't have that solace. In his pain he reasoned that by killing Mew, by surpassing his original, he would be free from being a mere shadow.

After Mewtwo challenged Mew to fight, Mew told him that true power comes only from the heart, not special powers. But the nature of the messenger annihilated the message. Mewtwo would not be moved by that which he hated so much. Of course Mew had the privilege to spew such sentimental li(n)es: it never had to question the worth of its existence in the same way that Mewtwo did. What did Adam know about the griefs of Eve?

Mewtwo rebuked Mew's sentiment and the two began to fight. Mewtwo's clone Pokemon also fought their originals. As this fight was happening, Ash was climbing down the fortress. He had been launched into the air by Mewtwo after declaring he wouldn't let Mewtwo set the Pokemon and their clones against each other. He wanted all of them to live peacefully together. He made it back to the ground at the same time that Mewtwo and Mew were about to launch their strongest attacks against each other.

Ash ran between them and screamed for them to stop. His words didn't stop them. Instead, he was hit by both attacks, which turned him to stone, essentially killing him. Mewtwo was shocked. He softly called Ash's action foolish, not in condemnation but in surprise that someone would make such a sacrifice. At last, Mewtwo was moved.

Ash was the anti-Giovanni. He was a symbol of innocence, grace, and selfless love. Where Giovanni was manipulative, domineering, and selfish, Ash was so driven by his own selflessness that he put his own life on the line to put an end to the violence. It was only such a grand act of sacrifice, by someone who represented the innocence that Mewtwo had almost given up on, which could shake him out of his despair and pain.

Ash's death was moving not just Mewtwo but for all the Pokemon in the fortress. Pikachu grieved for him and the others, clones and originals, joined in crying. Their tears and combined sorrow brought him back to life. Mewtwo, finally seeing Cixous's bright path, gathered up his clone Pokémon and readied to leave the scene of birth. Ash asked him where he was going, and as he flew away, he responded: "To where my heart can learn what yours knows so well." His journey towards his second innocence may not bear fruit, but the important thing is that it was underway. Unlike Frankenstein's Creature, his story didn't end. His conclusion was instead a new beginning.

He was reborn.