Detective Pikachu arrived in theatres a couple of weeks ago. The film is the first live-action expansion of the long-running
Pokemon franchise. Therefore it revealed how many Pokemon would look and act in the real world. One of the most surprising inclusions was that of Mr. Mime.
The Pokemon is by far the most humanoid of the bunch, this would serve as an issue to the VFX team who had to bring him to life without making him too creepy.
Detective Pikachu's VFX supervisor recently discussed this with
DigitalArtsOnline - you can find out
more about that here - and he also revealed the physical comic who served as inspiration for the bizarre Pokemon creature.
Pete Dionne, the afformentioned supervisor, stated that the performance of Mr. Mime himself was based on, New Zealand physical comic, Trygve Wakenshaw. After finding the comedian's work online, the film's director brought him to set where he would essentially do motion-capture for the character.
"Trygve is just absolutely hilarious," Dionne explained. "Rob Letterman brought him in after seeing a video online, and he did about three hours of workshopping the interrogation scene with him, which we recorded with multiple cameras. We got absolute gold, and a large portion of that performance in the final film was inspired by Trigve’s original performance in the workshop."
It's truly uncanny how similar the below performance is to Mr. Mime's actions within the film. You can check out one of Wakenshaw's stage performances below:
Ace detective Harry Goodman goes mysteriously missing, prompting his 21-year-old son, Tim, to find out what happened. Aiding in the investigation is Harry's former Pokémon partner, wise-cracking, adorable super-sleuth Detective Pikachu. Finding that they are uniquely equipped to work together, as Tim is the only human who can talk with Pikachu, they join forces to unravel the tangled mystery.