Mr. Mime is one of those Pokemon that nobody particularly likes, but more than that, he's just damn creepy.
He's got those weird hands, he looks like someone's nightmare and he doesn't do sh*t except take up space in your Pokeball. But, for director Rob Letterman and 'Detective Pikachu', he forms a key scene in the movie.
It's already been teased in some of the trailers, but the ordeal to get him into 'Detective Pikachu' made it worth it. As he described to IGN, Letterman waited nearly two years for the OK from the Pokemon Company to make it happen.
But to make it even weirder, his inspiration for the scene? David Fincher's disturbing detective noir-thriller, 'Se7en'.
"I thought it would be really funny if we played that classic film noir detective interrogation scene, but with Mr. Mime," said Letterman. The scene involves the human character Tim Goodman, played by Justice Smith, and Detective Pikachu heading to the docks to meet an informant - who turns out to be Mr. Mime.
"So they run down the Mime and do like a classic police interrogation scene ripped out of every detective movie I could think of, but flipped on its head. Because the uncooperative informant that they're interviewing happens to be a mime," explained Letterman.
"Full disclosure, I thought no way in a million years would (the Mr. Mime scene) work. Honestly. It was so weird. I wanted to cut it at one point, because I was like this can't possibly work."
To make it even more complex, Letterman had to ask the president of the Pokemon Company for permission to use Mr. Mime, as just about everyone said the same thing - that Mr. Mime turned into a photo-real creation would be terrifying. "It came to the point where I literally had to ask the President of the whole Pokemon Company, Ishihara-san," said Letterman. "I gave him the whole pitch, and he started laughing, and he's like OK, give it a shot."
You can read the full interview here. 'Detective Pikachu' arrives in Irish cinemas on May 10th.
