Quoted By:
The AU movies are all pretty good. Each of them has something to show for it. M20 had a lot of callbacks and nostalgia bait, perfect for a 20th anniversary. M21 had an ensemble cast for the first time and showed a lot of different, personal stories converging on something bigger. M23 was more simple: It was Tarzan and The Wild Thornberries, but with Pokemon. Not at all original, but they had to make a movie about Zarude, so jungle it was. It was nice seeing Galar Pokemon in the anime. It's a shame that, by all accounts, Journeys decided not to do that.
I remember the big sell for this movie was that it did some things that were especially dark. I was expecting a lot of Pokemon death, since the AU movies really seemed to like showing a Pokemon get killed each time, but that didn't happen. Granted, like, Molly's father is spirited away at the beginning of M3, and May and Brock are literally killed in the Jirachi and Lucario movies (and May was stuffed into a box and left to be submerged under the ocean in the Manaphy movie, which is a fate almost as bad as death to me). I get that actual, real murder hasn't been done in Pokemon before, but Pokemon dying is sadder to me for reasons unbeknownst to me.
You have to assume that one of the reasons they haven't made more is that they haven't made any more mythical Pokemon. Maybe when the DLC for S/V drops, we'll get some news of another one. At the moment, I think I'd prefer an AU Ash movie like these last two over a non-canon, "Liko and Roy help save the mythical Pokemon from the box legendary," movie. Just so long as they keep Ash away from Likokino entirely, the movies can do whatever they want. P.S.: OLM, if you're listening, do another Johto movie like M21 please and thank you.