Pokemon: The First Movie

Pokemon: The First Movie is an inspirational and heartwarming film. First released in Japan in 1998 this film has stood the test of time and is actually the second highest grossing TV adaptation film.

The film, follows the story of Ash Ketchum on his journey to be the greatest Pokemon master of all time. A phrase which here means he wishes to befriend as many people and Pokemon as he can in the Pokemon world, stressing the importance of friendship to the audience.

Pokemon is a massive franchise and as such the films are hugely popular with all audiences, not only do they appease a demand of entertainment with both its story and comedic elements, the film also contains key views. The first Pokemon film contains important morals that should shape our lives.

Focusing on Mewtwo, a cloned Pokemon and his questioning of life, the writers of Pokemon have tackled a key issue. The film ends with Mewtwo reforming his ways and instead of worrying why he has a life, he is going to live his life because that is what is important. Another key message put across by the film is that we have more in common than we realise and if we focus on this rather than our differences, as Meowth says 'well who knows'.

Pokemon has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember and is still widely popular today. It provides entertainment, morals and a ticket back to my quickly disappearing childhood and as such is the best film of my summer.

The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger, released in 2013 by Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films, stars Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the lone ranger. The film, directed by Gore Verbinski, follows the original story of the duo, but despite it's estimated budget of $225 million, had a poor performance at the box-office and was received negatively by American critics.

The Lone Ranger is considered to be a failure by some because of it's main western theme. Over the past ten years, 'cowboy' films have decreased in popularity, with both 'Cowboys and Aliens' and 'Alamo' expected to be summer hits that turned out to be box-office disasters. it seems cowboys are no longer as popular as they were in the past.

The film budget, estimated at $225 million, may even have ballooned to $250 million, the budget it seems had started to run out of control. The main problem here is the film probably ended as a mere shadow of the original vision and as such does not bear the same sort of effective story telling power it would have.

The other reasons are fairly minor in comparison but are still important. First it seems that Johnny Depp can no longer guarantee a film's success, there is a large pattern with this problem as people seem to care once more about the story of a film and not just the actors. The Lone Ranger was also released at a time with  many films that were predicted to be huge hits such as 'Man of Steel' and 'Monsters Inc University'. Film tickets are expensive and without any particular  uniqueness the film just couldn't be the box-office attraction Disney was hoping for. In other words, it's competition is much too strong.

Finally, the lone ranger is a classic American TV show and is well-known to most Americans. However, introducing this character in the large world is a much harder prospect. this is because, simply put, that character does not have a large enough fan base worldwide. So it seems, The Lone Ranger, was considered to be a box-office failure because of it's western theme, out of control film budget, dependence on actors, competition and a general lack of interest.