Now, where were we? Ah, yes; Ash, Pikachu, Iris and Cilan were in mayor Mannes’ office with him and Damon, who were about to tell our plucky young heroes the history of Eindoak Town and the Sword of the Vale. Right.
One thousand years ago, according to Damon and Mannes, their ancestors lived in the Vale, a now-lifeless area which is just visible from the battlements of the castle. At the time, the Vale was a paradise, thanks to a mysterious power called the Dragon Force, which is basically the life energy of the planet; the flow of the Dragon Force through the Vale made it one of the most naturally temperate and fertile places on Earth. The Dragon Force… has never been mentioned in the series before now, to my knowledge, and will probably never be mentioned again. It doesn’t come completely out of nowhere because it’s well-established that some sort of “life force” is as much a part of the Pokémon universe as gravity, and that Dragon Pokémon have a particularly close connection with it, but as we’ll see, the Dragon Force has an alarming tendency to function in whatever manner the plot requires it to. Anyway. The Vale was ruled by a benevolent old king – Victini’s master – and his two sons, who were known as the “Hero of Truth” and the “Hero of Ideals” because of their “unique qualities” (yes, that’s as specific as the movie ever gets) and partnered with two almighty Dragon Pokémon: the white dragon Reshiram and the black dragon Zekrom, respectively. For reasons that are never explained and which cannot be extrapolated because we’re never told anything else about the heroes or their beliefs, the two princes quarrelled, and their argument gradually escalated into a full-scale war that devastated the Kingdom of the Vale. The King, whose Pokémon partner had the power to make him unbeatable at everything ever, including diplomacy, sat his sons down for a good long talk that resolved all of their disputes and made everyone happy again. This is exactly what didn’t happen because then there wouldn’t be a story. The King… I don’t know, watched, I guess. Reshiram and Zekrom nearly killed each other and were turned into two small round stones, at which point the princes stopped to think about it and realised that they were shredding their kingdom. Unfortunately, the chaos of the battle between two of the most powerful Dragon Pokémon ever had infected the Dragon Force and caused it to become destructive, because of the plot. The King, in desperation, created the Pillars of Protection to channel Victini’s power and used them to cast the spell that moved the Sword of the Vale, with all his surviving people crowded inside, to the castle’s present location at Eindoak Town. At the same time, he altered the flow of the Dragon Force to restore its balance, but had to cut off the Vale to do so, leaving it a wasteland. Unfortunately, the exertion was too much for the King and he died before he could dismantle the pillars, causing Victini to become trapped in Eindoak Town. Most of the People of the Vale, bereft of their ancestral home, left the region for good.
This is where Damon comes in. When he was a child, Juanita once told him about her dream of seeing the Kingdom of the Vale restored to life, which he apparently took to heart, leaving Eindoak Town to travel the world and reunite the scattered People of the Vale when he grew up. Most of them seem to have thought he was insane; they probably didn’t even believe in the old legends anymore. Dejected, Damon returned home, where he heard a mysterious voice telling him to seek the truth. The voice led him and Mannes to the crystal caverns beneath the Sword of the Vale, where Damon found the Light Stone and reawakened Reshiram, who told him that “the truth within you has been judged worthy.” Suddenly his distant cousins find him far more credible. Now, he’s brought everyone he met back to Eindoak Town and wants to re-enact the King’s spell, return the castle to the Vale and restore the original flow of the Dragon Force.
By the time all this has been explained, it’s late at night, so Ash and his friends go to bed. In the garden. Cilan has a sleeping bag, Iris climbs a tree, and Ash just leans against the trunk and drapes a cloth over his knees. I guess hard core badass Pokémon Masters can get a good night’s sleep anywhere. While they sleep, Ash appears to share Victini’s dream: a vision of the old King dying. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that the poor little guy was horribly traumatised when his master died right in front of him and left him trapped and alone for a thousand years. The next morning, Ash resolves to find a way to free Victini and, rather rashly, promises to take him to the ocean.
Meanwhile, Damon has gone up to the central tower of the Sword of the Vale, where his Sigilyph helps him to coordinate the vast numbers of Solosis and Duosion who live in the tower and provide the psychic energy required to move the castle. Victini realises something is going on and flies up to the tower. He doesn’t like what Damon is up to one bit, but Sigilyph uses a set of six miniature Pillars of Protection to trap Victini on the altar in the middle of the room. The full-size ones are now airborne and revolving steadily around the castle. The pillars use Victini’s power to fire up the horde of Duosion and Solosis, and the castle takes flight, granting Damon control over the Dragon Force. Ash, Iris, Cilan, Juanita and Carlita lean out over a balcony and watch joyfully as Damon redirects the flow of energy back to the Vale… until Ash hears Victini cry out in pain. He runs to the tower, sees Victini trapped, and tries to free it, but Damon calls out his Reuniclus to stop him. Pikachu and Reuniclus are fairly evenly matched, so Damon plays his trump card and summons Reshiram. Juanita tries to fight Reshiram with her Golurk, which goes better than you might expect, in that Golurk is not instantaneously reduced to a heap of molten glass and actually manages to keep Reshiram busy in aerial combat for a few minutes (yes, Golurk can fly; it is perfectly aerodynamic). Damon is confused that they’re trying to stop him, which is not entirely unreasonable; everything seems to be going according to plan. Victini clearly isn’t happy about it, but they’re not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, so Damon has no reason to think he’ll cause Victini any long-term harm. We the audience, however, were watching when Victini and the King did this the first time, and Victini wasn’t struggling or in pain then. Something is wrong here. With his dreams so close to fulfilment, though, Damon won’t listen to his family or friends, and Reuniclus knocks them all out with its Psychic attack.
While Ash is unconscious, he receives another vision from Victini, which shows him what the problem is: Victini is resisting Damon because the King’s last words were to tell his friend that the Sword of the Vale must never be moved again; its new position in Eindoak is essential to keeping the Dragon Force balanced, because of the plot. So, to summarise, Victini watched his beloved master die, was imprisoned alone for a millennium, and is now being forced to violate his master’s dying wish. Also he met Ash. This movie really hates him. Reshiram doesn’t understand the danger, so Ash goes to explain and- oh, no, wait, he’s Ash, so instead of that he goes down into the crystal caverns (which are attached to the castle’s foundations and lifted off with it) to find Reshiram’s opposite, Zekrom. I’m not sure why they think this will help, since Zekrom doesn’t know anything more about the situation than Reshiram does and is no more likely to listen to reason. Nonetheless, like Damon before him, Ash is inexplicably able to navigate the maze inside the caves when no-one else can, and finds Zekrom sleeping at the bottom in the form of the Dark Stone. Zekrom demands to know what Ash’ s ideal is, to which Ash stammers that he wants Victini to see the ocean. This… is apparently good enough for Zekrom, and here I really have to talk about this “truth and ideals” stuff. See, the one major difference between the two versions of this movie is that in the other version, Damon found Zekrom and Ash finds Reshiram, which means that, in theory, Damon’s ideals and Ash’s truth should be put to the test in the other story. The writers, however, weren’t keen on actually having to write two separate plots for their two movies with separate character arcs for both Ash and Damon in each one, so what they’ve done instead is whitewash (no pun intended) the concepts of “truth” and “ideals” to the point that they are completely interchangeable, and translate out to “your vision of how the world should be”. As a result, Reshiram talks about “truth” as though it’s an incredibly subjective thing that each person has to find inside him or herself, and both of them, in their respective versions of the film, are perfectly satisfied that Ash’s wish to take Victini to the ocean exemplifies each of their respective virtues. As in the games, therefore, Reshiram and Zekrom both represent exactly the same things: desire and the will to pursue it.
…suddenly it makes perfect sense to me that they wound up fighting.
Pokémaniacal 