Pokémon
Mewtwo
I never watched Pokémon: The First Movie in the cinema. I was already a fan of the Pokémon anime when the film came out, but sadly, I was too young to go and watch it with my friends. It was a deep blow to 10-year-old me, not only because Pokémon: The First Movie was a massive cultural phenomenon at the time, but also because I was a huge Mewtwo fan. I had saved my Master Ball in Pokémon Blue specifically so I could capture him. I had a Mewtwo trading card. I desperately wanted to see some Mewtwo action on the big screen. Instead, I had to make do with one of my friends describing the plot to me in the horrible and scattershot way only a 10-year-old boy can.
Why did I (along with countless other Pokémon fans) love Mewtwo so much? Well, in the original Pokémon games (Red and Green in Japan; Red and Blue elsewhere), Mewtwo was the 150th and final Pokémon in the Pokédex (Mew was hidden in the game code and not legitimately available during regular play). As such, Mewtwo was exceedingly powerful and difficult to catch – an end-boss-type creature, in other words.
And Mewtwo was made even more memorable due to the fact that it was given more backstory than pretty much every other Gen I Pokémon. Simply put, Mewtwo was created by the scientists of the Pokémon Lab on Cinnabar Island, who dreamed of creating the world’s strongest Pokémon, the ultimate fighting machine. It was cloned in a test tube using the genetic material of a more ancient, supposedly extinct Pokémon, Mew, which was found in the jungles of a faraway island1. In order to fully create Mewtwo’s genome, genetic engineering was applied to the sample of Mew’s DNA. Due to intentional alterations of the genetic source material, Mewtwo gained extremely powerful psychic power, its abilities surpassing even its progenitor. Its size and disposition are also very different to Mew’s. Its name is literal: Mew + two, emphasising its status as a manufactured successor.
Only one individual Mewtwo survived the original cloning process, and it proved too mighty to be controlled and contained. Eventually, it broke free of the lab in which it was created and fled into the world. In Pokémon Blue and Red, the player first learns of Mewtwo by reading research documents left behind in the ruined laboratory on Cinnabar Island. These notes warn of a cruel, violent being with destructive tendencies. It seems that, although the gene-splicing experiments gave Mewtwo overwhelming power, the scientists failed to endow it with a compassionate heart and, consequently, it thinks only of defeating its foes.
Later, after beating the Elite Four, the player can encounter – and potentially capture – Mewtwo. It dwells in the depths of Cerulean Cave (aka the Unknown Dungeon), waiting for very powerful foes to find and battle it. It usually remains motionless to conserve energy so that it can unleash its full psychic power in battle. I never gave it the chance to do so. Having saved the game’s only Master Ball for this one particular encounter, the world’s most powerful Pokémon was added to my collection.
In terms of design, Mewtwo retains a few characteristics from its progenitor, Mew, but it has a much more humanoid posture, emphasising its cold, artificial nature. In fact, it looks quite alien in appearance, with a sleek, purplish-grey body, fleshy contours, strange spherical fingers, and a weird tube-like mass of flesh that extends from the back of its head into its upper back. Many people have theorised that this acts as a secondary spinal cord, allowing more blood and sensory signals to reach the brain, thereby heightening its psychic power. As far as I know, this has never been officially confirmed. However, regardless of whether it is canon or not, it still makes Mewtwo look like some sort of unholy bioweapon, twisted and mangled by human experimentation. In short, nothing about Mewtwo’s body looks healthy.
Generation VI, which began with Pokémon X and Y in 2013, introduced Mega Evolution to the franchise. This isn’t true evolution – it’s only temporary, brought about by a sudden, sharp burst in energy – so it allowed Game Freak to create evolutions for stage-three Pokémon, such as Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur – and even Legendary Pokémon such as Mewtwo. And since Mewtwo remains one of the most popular Pokémon of the first generation, if not the whole franchise, it was given two Mega Evolutions – possibly to represent different ‘directions’ Mewtwo’s psychic power could take when pushed to the extreme.
This is Mega Mewtwo X, which represents the ‘warrior’ version of Mewtwo. The power it has gained through Mega Evolution has augmented the muscles in its arms and legs, meaning it has adapted to raw physical power as well as psychic energy. As you can see, this Pokémon is pretty ripped, with lots of bulging, exaggerated muscles, highlighting its unnatural origins even more and making it look almost like a ‘bio-weapon’ super-soldier. Its powerful legs allow it to spring 100 metres in just two seconds, while its hands have a grip strength of a ton. Those legs and arms are also extremely stretchy.
Mega Mewtwo Y, meanwhile, has honed its psychic power phenomenally and can smash a skyscraper to smithereens with a mere thought. Its body is small and delicate, in contrast to its oversized head and crest, which emphasise a mind-over-body theme. Its ‘tail’ (if it can still be called that) has moved up to the back of its skull to make it look even more like an otherworldly mutant.
Due to its immense psionic power, Mega Mewtwo Y always floats in midair, which, coupled with its smaller, daintier body and big head, makes this Pokémon look quite like Mew – almost as if this is what Mewtwo should have looked like if it hadn’t been subjected to quite so many horrific genetic experiments.
I find it interesting that Mewtwo was created at a time when (thanks mainly to Dolly the sheep) animal cloning was hitting the headlines. There was a lot of negative press, with many people claiming that science had gone too far and that it was only a matter of time before we engineered our own demise. Perhaps because of the anti-science panic of the time, Mewtwo, being an inhuman test-tube baby, was originally portrayed as a cold, heartless antagonist, devoid of empathy – a straight-up sci-fi villain.
However, thanks partly to the passage of time and a redemption arc in the anime, Mewtwo has since gone from being a heartless abomination to a more complex and emotionally rounded individual suffering from an identity crisis, angry at humanity for the unnaturalness of its creation, and unsure of its place in the world. This has coincided with our changing views. In general, we tend not to view science and technology as threats these days; rather, it is the powers that wield and misuse them that pose the most danger. Mewtwo is not the monster it once was; it’s a victim of the true villains of the story – rich, greedy sociopaths hoping to use the creature for their own personal gain.
Even today, over 25 years (and 1,000 + Pokémon) after its first appearance, Mewtwo remains one of the most wildly popular Pocket Monsters in the entire franchise. Partly, I think that’s because Mewtwo was the first ‘endboss’-type Pokémon introduced in the series, which means we are more likely to remember it fondly. I also think its enduring popularity stems from the fact that Mewtwo has continued to appear in the franchise over the years, yet it has always remained elusive. Later Pokémon games established their respective Legendary Pokémon as focal points of their regions’ mythology, with the creatures worked into the main plotline – but Mewtwo is almost always secluded somewhere in a remote, optional, post-game cave.
And the third reason why people love Mewtwo is simple – it’s just so damn cool! Not only does it have a menacing, alien-like appearance, but it’s also mysterious and extremely powerful. And the very concept of a blasphemous science experiment as a Pokémon is a very interesting and thought-provoking one. All of these factors combine to make Mewtwo just as appealing to kids today as it was over two decades ago.
- Originally, Mew was said to have been found in a Guyana jungle (in South America), but later games in the series largely removed or retconned references to the real world. ↩︎