The first Pokémon movie is an iconic piece of pop culture for many Millennials, with Mewtwo's parting words having lived on in the years since. However, there's a big part of that movie that many fans have never seen before, and it explains exactly why Mewtwo is the way it is.
The original theatrical cut of Pokémon The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back is only 75 minutes long, but another version was created, which became the base for the English dub. This version, referred to by fans as the "kanzenban" version, featured 10 extra minutes of footage detailing Mewtwo's past, prior to his escape, in addition to other graphical updates and modifications. While those modifications made it into the English version of the film, the extra 10 minutes were still left out, keeping it the same length as the Japanese original. Despite this, those scenes were still dubbed, even if they went unused.
Pokémon The First Movie Cut Mewtwo's Original Tragic Backstory
This extra footage was eventually brought over in the form of a short known as "The Uncut Story of Mewtwo's Origin," which was available as a DVD special feature on home video releases. The short shows Dr. Fuji recovering the Mew fossil and bringing it back to his lab. There, a young Mewtwo is incubated in a tube alongside other clones that Dr. Fuji had been working on--a Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur, as well as a human child named Amber. The clones are able to communicate telepathically with each other, and so they begin to explain concepts to Mewtwo as Amber shares some of her memories. However, the other clones are unstable; each disappears, one at a time, until only Amber is left. She tells Mewtwo not to be sad, because it's still alive, and being alive is wonderful, before vanishing into nothing. Mewtwo's memories of all of this are wiped, but a vague recollection of Amber remains.
Mewtwo Was Friends With a Human Clone Who Died
The theatrical version of the film opens with Mewtwo as a fully grown adult, who then destroys the laboratory and heads off to his island fortress. An unknown amount of time es before Mewtwo invites Ash and other trainers to the island, but it was enough time for him to reconstruct Dr. Fuji's cloning technology. The backstory reveals why Mewtwo already had clones of Charizard, Venusaur, and Blastoise--he created them based on his first friends, whom he could barely . It also sets up the film's end, when Ash is petrified, by adding a line from Amber stating that "Pokémon's tears are full of life," foreshadowing how Ash will be saved. Even Mewtwo's famous quote about "The gift of life" goes back to Amber's parting words with him from that short. The added scenes were (somewhat) present before the movie's release, however--the new footage was based on a radio play prequel to the film which was only released in Japan.
This added backstory makes Mewtwo a much deeper character in Pokémon, rather than just an angry experiment eager to turn the tables. These scenes elevate Pokémon's first movie and help it to live up to the quality it holds in the memories of many--even if many people who only the film from theaters never saw it.
