Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: Pikachu should not talk. He is a Pokémon, and like most of his Pokémon brethren and Mike Jones, he only repeats his own name. In a right and just world, that’s how it should stay. Unfortunately, the hellscape that is 2018 is neither right nor just.
On Monday, Warner Bros. released the first trailer for Detective Pikachu, in which Pikachu will not only inexplicably wear a Sherlock Holmes hat and have fur, but also speak fluent English, and be voiced by Ryan Reynolds for some reason. The extremely cursed trailer is a bizarre and deeply unsettling sight to behold, with Reynolds-as-Pikachu cracking jokes like a PG Deadpool while failing to ever acknowledge how dark it is that Pokémon are self-aware, emotionally intelligent animals who have been enslaved and forced to fight for the delight of humanity.
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Watching the trailer once will ruin your day, watching it a second time will send you spiraling into a deep depression, and watching it a third will make you loathe your parents for being cruel enough to ever bring you into this terrible world. Lord only knows what happens after that. But thankfully, a few noble souls have taken it upon themselves to fix Detective Pikachu, or at least make it a little more palatable, by replacing Ryan Reynolds with some better voice actors—and the results are a goddamn revelation.
First, there’s Alex Jones:
And then someone gave Pikachu Ron Swanson’s voice:
There’s also True Detective Pikachu, which is really something:
But as hilarious as it may be to hear Alex Jones’s batshit rants spew out of the mouth of a freakishly realistic Pokémon, the greatest fan edit is, hands down, the one that gives Pikachu the voice he should’ve had from day one: Danny DeVito’s.
Why are we settling for Ryan Reynolds when we could’ve had Frank Reynolds? Please, Danny DeVito: There’s still time to redub the entire movie. It’s the only way to save this abomination before it hits theaters in May. Ryan Reynolds may be a great actor or whatever, but has anyone ever built him a secret shrine inside a bathroom? Of course not. Get on with it, Warner Bros., before it’s too late.
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