Did you play Pokemon?

I didn’t. But I was a Magic the Gathering nerd… so I get it.

Even those who have no idea of the card game, are keenly aware that kids love them some Pokemens. The franchise has dominated cartoons, video games, movies, clothing, whatever pokey-bucks they could squeeze outta kids and their brokey-parents.

And just when you thought it was all over… Pokemon Go reared it’s grotesque mobile head and now the streets were flooding with twenty-somethings trying to ‘catch ’em all’, which was just a sad analogy for a last desperate grasp at childhood that was quickly fading from view.

Damn, that’s cynical.

Ok… even me and a super fun girlfriend, who were way too old for that shit, had too much fun on vacation catching ‘new’ Pokemon because were in a different part of the country.

So while most are familiar with the franchise on some level, the core of the Pokey-universe is best viewed through the eyes of a 10 year old.

But leave it to the French to re-imagine this now childhood classic into something more artistic. More creative. More sinister. I guess I don’t know what I really mean by ‘leave it to the French’. It’s not like they have this long standing reputation for warping kids toys into nightmares. That seems something much more… American. But ‘bien joué’.

But this fan-made ‘trailer’ (for a movie that doesn’t exist… but could… if enough money gets thrown at it) is a dark re-working of the whole Pokemon universe. The trailer suggests a sort of ‘Taken’ meets ‘Pokemon’ meets ‘Bloodsport’ with a liberal dash of animals rights. People get snuffed. Little kids get stolen. Pokemon are locked in cages. (‘is that worse that those little ‘Pokeballs’ they are captured with? I am unfamiliar with the inter-dimensional storage mechanics of Pokemons.)

But look how aggressively dangerous you can make a kiddie-monster if you put it through the right demon-filter.

This project was put together by a four-man crew: Clément Martin, Fabrice Leger, Florian Malchow, and Thomas Jerz. They aren’t really a studio per se, and work under the collective name, “noOne crew”.

Apparently, there is a whole screenplay written, so this trailer is more than just a one-off idea.

Clément Martin explains, “About the story, we actually wrote the full movie screenplay before choosing the best scenes to make the trailer. This is the story of a single dad with a single child. He is a police officer investigating The Team Rocket Pokemon traffic. To make him stop, Giovanni decides to kidnap his daughter. We originally planned to make that scene with Regis and his Alakazam but it was to much work. Anyways, Ricky (the main character) lost the case because he was obviously to emotionally attached to it. So he decides to infiltrate The Team Rocket organization and become a Pokemon Trainer. I don’t want to spoil too much of it, just in case one day Nintendo or Netflix contact us :). What we wanted to do with that trailer is to show to the fans how a Pokemon world would actually look in real life. Let’s be realistic for a second. Animal fighting, animal trading? Doesn’t it sound like illegal stuff for you? That’s why we did the Pokemon trafficking and mafia thing.”

Superfans of the franchise should be able to spot the various Pokemon featured, but in case you need some help, look out for: Sandslash, Pikachu (of course), Machamp, Charizard, and what looks to be one of the best ones… Meowth the cat.

The noOne crew has a lot of other interesting projects in the works. If you’d like to see more, or support this Pokemon Dark Edition project to perhaps see it turned into a full length movie… check out the noOne crew YouTube page.