Probably giving this more thought than a Cynthia bikini OP merits, one thing that comes to my mind regarding the Lugia and Entei movies is that once Ash and company enter the conflict, that conflict is the rest of the movie. No weak attempts to bond with new characters. No overly long exposition that doesn't simultaneously serve the characters going forward. Most of the downtime being snags they run into trying to save the day. Just set piece after set piece showing off that theatrical movie scale. The other movies don't do this, and not every movie has to, but to my memory most of them don't do anything immediate interesting enough to compare to Ash climbing a magic crystal tower to get his Mom back.
But then on the other side of that, we have rightly called the Lugia movie action with no plot since it released, and the likes of Mewtwo #2 and Genesect had plenty of action for its own sake and nobody cared.
>>53263565The way each of the first movies sort of takes lessons from the prior ones does make me wonder how another one from him would come out.
