The Mewtwo Conundum
It seems really serendipitous that not only did Suede review "Pokemon: The First Movie" with Linkara again, but I actually saw a recent online post that compared the ending of "The Rise of Skywalker" unfavorably with the ending of "Mewtwo Strikes Back."
This is really giving me a lot of geeky feelings. I don't know if I've stated this here before, but I LOVE Mewtwo. He's my favorite Pokemon as well as my favorite character in the entire Pokemon franchise. When I saw him in the trailer for "Pokemon Detective Pikachu", I went nuts. I loved all of his scenes in the movie (which I've seen and enjoyed several times). Even though I know that "Pokemon: The First Movie" has plenty of flaws, I still like it on a nostalgic basis and it's mostly because of him.
But seeing that post that compared "Mewtwo Strikes Back" to "The Rise of Skywalker" got me thinking, especially when coupled with the knowledge of all of the turmoil that's been going on in the Star Wars fandom. And it made me realize something. Mewtwo is a perfect example of how hollow all of the bullying over fictional villains really is.
The people who mock and harass female fans for liking attractive villains and anti-heroes and denigrate redemption arcs for being fake and harmful? They have no leg to stand on when it comes to Mewtwo. Because everything that they've been shouting about can apply to him.
This villain character has a tragic backstory? So does Mewtwo. This villain character killed people? So did Mewtwo. This villain character did bad things to the hero? So did Mewtwo. This villain character recognizes that he was wrong and tries to be better? So does Mewtwo. This villain goes through a lot of angst? So does Mewtwo. The villain and the hero come to like each other and the two of them end up on good terms? So do Mewtwo and Ash/Satoshi.
And yet despite sharing all of those traits that get ridiculed and/or condemned in other villainous characters, Mewtwo gets a free pass. Fans LOVE him.
Seriously, I'm not projecting here: Mewtwo is an extremely popular character. There have been all of these video reactions online to the "Detective Pikachu" trailers when they were first airing and everyone flipped out with excitement when they saw Mewtwo show up. Yes, a lot of his appeal has to do with how powerful he is. Pokemon fans, gamers in particular, often talk about his powers and abilities, about whether he can beat Lucario or Lugia or whoever the new most powerful Pokemon of the week is.
But in between those arguments about who would win in a fight, you do get comments from fans who like Mewtwo because of his personality. They talk about his character, his struggles, his redemption. They talk about how sad his backstory is, how they're upset that his childhood scenes with Amber/Ai were cut, and how his character has unexpected depth for an animated children's film. In short, they LIKE that Mewtwo isn't a villain who's only evil to be evil. They LIKE that Mewtwo is contemplative and has doubts and learns the error of his ways. In fact, in many ways, Mewtwo can be seen as the most human-like Pokemon, because not only can he understand and communicate with humans in their own language, he struggles with an existential crisis, which is a very human thing to do.
Really, the harshest criticism that I've seen of Mewtwo so far is that he's overrated or that he can't beat this Pokemon. Fans have made fun of his brooding, especially in "Mewtwo Returns," but usually in a light-hearted and teasing way, not in a manner that suggests that there's something wrong with the character because he has angst.
Or, more importantly, that there's something wrong with fans for liking him.
Because that's the key thing to all of this. I can go on a Pokemon forum or comment on a Pokemon video and say that I love Mewtwo, that he's my favorite Pokemon character, that he's awesome, that I want someone to hug him and make him feel better, that I'd enjoy more scenes of him and Ash bonding as friends, etc.
Suede himself flat-out stated in his review of "Mewtwo Returns" that Mewtwo is his favorite Pokemon. And he didn't receive a single word of backlash for it. Nobody screamed at him about how he was a terrible person for liking Mewtwo because Mewtwo is a murderer. Nobody reminded him of the scientists' deaths for the umpteenth time as a reason to hate the character. Nobody told him that he was a stupid, tree-hugging weakling who probably thought that real-life big cats are harmless, fluffy kittens and that's why he deserves to get his face ripped off by one.
Nobody CARED.
Two minutes into his introduction, Mewtwo kills an entire lab full of scientists. And it's animated and framed in such a way that even 4Kids couldn't cover it up. They couldn't gloss over it by saying that he "sent them to the Shadow Realm" or by saying that there were some hidden lifeboats that the scientists escaped with. No. Mewtwo destroys the entire lab. There is nothing left but wreckage when Giovanni/Sakaki arrives. There is no hint of any survivors. Nobody has to say anything for children to get the point that the scientists are all dead.
And as soon as they die, that's it! The only reminder of it is when Team Rocket finds the surviving video of Dr. Fuji's last words. And after that, it is never addressed again. Mewtwo never apologizes for killing the scientists. He never visits their grieving relatives (if they have any). In fact, even Ash never finds out about it, at least not that we see. Mewtwo never comes clean about it to anyone. As soon as the scientists die, they disappear from the narrative, never to be mentioned again.
And, once again, fans don't care. They don't demand that Mewtwo tell Ash about it; they don't say that Mewtwo's redemption is false and cheap because of what happened to the scientists. The movie moves on and so do they. They don't hold it against Mewtwo or against the people who like him.
But say that you like Loki or the Phantom of the Opera or Kylo Ren or Zuko or a flood of other male villains with tragic backstories and all of a sudden, the conversation changes. Suddenly, you're a shallow, stupid fangirl who can't let villains be villains, who romanticizes abuse, who only likes them because you're attracted to them, etc. You have to put out a million disclaimers about how you know that the villain did bad things.
And let me be clear here, I'm not talking about people who argue about whether a character's redemption arc was done well. I'm not talking about people who say that a character wasn't written sympathetically enough.
I'm talking about people who hate the very idea of a redemption arc, who think that the concept itself can't be ever done well, and who don't like sympathetic villains at all and think that there's something wrong with people who do.
Now, of course, those people might say that Mewtwo gets a pass because he's the villain in a children's cartoon, so he can't do anything too horrible. But so was Zuko and yet many Zuko x Katara fans got a lot of backlash just because they shipped the heroine with the villain. As a matter of fact, Mewtwo actually ranks WORSE than Zuko in villainy, based on the sheer fact that Mewtwo has actually killed people. And yet Zuko was the one whose fans were derided for liking him and wanting him to be redeemed before the show itself redeemed him, just like how Kylo Ren, despite having a lower kill count than Darth Vader, has faced so much more backlash from fandom.
As a matter of fact, Mewtwo shares many similarities with Darth Vader in terms of how the two have been viewed by fandom. Both of them have tragic backstories while being extremely popular and powerful. They're both eventually redeemed, but fans can still enjoy them as the powerhouses that they are while they're on the wrong side. Fans talk about how their sympathetic pasts make them more interesting characters while still gushing about how powerful they are in a fight.
But I think that there's something else that affects how they're perceived and how their fans have been treated. And I think that it may come down to their differences from other sympathetic villains.
Because consider this for a moment. Suppose that Mewtwo wasn't a Pokemon, but a handsome young man. Suppose that Ash wasn't a ten-year-old boy who was only interested in being friends, but a young woman who was in love with Mewtwo. And suppose that everything else stayed the same: Mewtwo's past, his actions, the writing of his redemption arc, everything. The only things that changed were the identities of Mewtwo and Ash and the nature of their relationship.
Oh, and just to add a further spin on it, suppose that "Mewtwo Strikes Back" and "Mewtwo Returns" came out NOW.
Call me crazy, call me cynical, but...based on what I've seen in other fandoms, I doubt that Mewtwo would be as wholeheartedly embraced as he's been. Because think about all the traits that Zuko, Loki, Kylo Ren, etc. have that Mewtwo lacks:
- He's not physically attractive and he's never presented as such. Yes, Rule 34 exists, so of course there are going to be people on the Internet who do find him sexy. But that's nowhere near the mainstream opinion. He's not a pretty boy. In fact, he's not even human. He's a tall feline humanoid who's weird-looking in every iteration.
- So, since he's not physically attractive, he clearly wasn't designed to appeal to women and girls. He's not played by a handsome actor that the Dreaded Fangirls can moon over. You look at the fanbase for Mewtwo and it's pretty much a mix of male and female fans. The media property that he belongs to is geared towards children of both sexes now, but at the beginning was mostly associated with boys, because gaming is traditionally seen as a masculine activity. So, again, zero chances of Mewtwo becoming a sex symbol who's going to be lusted over by scores of women.
- There is absolutely no romance in his story at all. Ash, the hero whom he eventually comes to befriend, is a ten-year-old boy. Mewtwo doesn't redeem himself because he fell in love with a woman; he redeems himself because a child sacrificed himself for his friends. Also, since there is no romance connected with Mewtwo and Ash is only ten...there are no ship wars to worry about. There was no significant Mewtwo x Ash ship, Mewtwo x Misty ship, what have you. He doesn't pose a romantic threat to anyone.
- So, since there is no romance AND Mewtwo isn't even human, there is no real-world parallel to be drawn with his story. He doesn't have the capability to represent a domestic abuser or a terrorist or any other real-life villain that detractors can compare him with. In fact, the closest parallel that people have found with him is Frankenstein's Monster.
- Even though he hurts and hampers the heroes, the worst things that Mewtwo has done are directed at the nameless scientists who treated him like an experiment and Giovanni, who treated him like a tool. Even when Ash was turned into stone, that was by accident and Ash was soon healed afterwards, so there are no lasting consequences.
- There is no personal relationship between Mewtwo and Ash when they first meet. As soon as Ash sees Mewtwo for the first time, Mewtwo is very clear about who he is and what he wants. They start off as enemies and they have no relationship until after Mewtwo recognizes that he was wrong and starts to turn away from his downward spiral. By the time that Ash runs into Mewtwo again in "Mewtwo Returns," Mewtwo has already improved from how he was in the first movie. So, when Ash helps him and the two of them start to get along, it feels like an easy progression, especially since Ash doesn't remember what happened in the first film. There's not really any baggage that they need to get past in order to be friends.
- Mewtwo doesn't cry. Not even when all of the other Pokemon are weeping at the end of "Mewtwo Strikes Back" does he shed a tear. The only time that he cries is when he's a child in the cut scene with Ai. The rest of the time, he broods and ponders and feels confused and upset. When he does have an emotional breakdown, he lashes out in anger. He doesn't break down in sobs or start bawling whenever something awful happens.
- Mewtwo went down the path of villainy and came back up the ladder to redemption in one movie. There was no lingering suspense by the end of the movie about whether he was going to be redeemed or not. There was no trilogy of films, no book sequels, no time gap in between Mewtwo's villainy and Mewtwo's redemption. The entire film revolved around the lesson that he needed to learn. "Mewtwo Returns" was the sequel, but it merely continued the arc that Mewtwo was already heading toward by the end of "Mewtwo Strikes Back." So, there was no option for fans to be 'wrong' about whether or not he would stop being a villain.
I mean...maybe I'm wrong, maybe the reasons stated above are irrelevant. But I can't help noticing a pattern. I can't help noticing how villains favored by fanboys don't usually get as much derision as villains favored by fangirls. I can't help noticing how fanboys aren't treated like they're morons for liking villainous characters. I can't help noticing that the knee-jerk response to an attractive villain with a sad backstory is to dismiss him or worry that the fangirls are going to squee all over him. I can't help noticing that whenever a male villain (or, really, any male character) starts crying or becomes really emotional, he's immediately perceived as a wuss. And I can't help noticing that pearls are clutched and eyes are rolled every time that there's the suggestion of a romance between the villain and a woman, whether in canon or fanon.
Maybe I'm overthinking this, maybe it's just a matter of those characters rubbing people the wrong way. But by the end of the day, it's not really a question of "Why does this character bother you?" The real question is "Why does it bother you that I like him?"
And not in the sense of "I can't understand what you see in that character." Because, yes, of course there are a lot of characters that I personally despise and that I don't understand the appeal of. But to feel so strongly about it that you feel the need to harass the fans of that character? And then try to cover it up by trying to drag real-world issues into a fictional story?
I mean, imagine if people tried to use the same tactics to stop people from liking Mewtwo:
"He planned to take over the world and did some twisted experiments, so he's a Nazi, because the Nazi Party did some twisted experiments and tried to take over the world, therefore you're a horrible person for glorifying Nazis!"
"He brainwashed a woman and dressed her in this outfit against her will, so he's just like those rapists who drug their victims' drinks with date-rape drugs! How dare you like a rapist!"
"I can't believe that you drew fanart where Ash and Mewtwo are friends! Mewtwo ABUSED Ash! How many times did he almost kill him in the first movie? Ash would've been DEAD if it hadn't been for the other Pokemon, and you want him to be Mewtwo's friend, you abuse apologist?"
It would sound pretty ridiculous, right? And yet that is what the discourse has continuously been for villains who share a lot of traits with Mewtwo, who play the same narrative function, and who have a similar arc. Which means that for as many reasonable complaints that one could make about the writing of certain characters, a lot of it is drowned out by righteous ranting that is ultimately revealed to be hot air.
Because, yes, why IS it acceptable for Pokemon fans to love Mewtwo? Why are they allowed to love him and enjoy his redemption in peace? As much as I love Mewtwo and I love that he was redeemed...was the writing for him really any better or more complex than the writing for the Phantom of the Opera or Zuko or whoever the new, sad villain will be? It can't just be the writing if the reaction to him would change if he looked differently or if he was more popular with a certain segment of fandom or if he was in a romance with someone.
So, I don't know if this will be a test or made-up Internet Law or anything, but it's just something for me to think about when the next Sad, Pretty Boy Villain shows up and his fans get the next round of mockery and harassment.