The upcoming movie Detective Pikachu will bring Pokémon to real life for the first time. Whether or not you vibe with Ryan Reynolds’ voice emanating from a very hairy Pikachu, it’s still pretty exciting to see just how our favorite little Pocket Monsters look in the real world.
The first trailer was already chock full of Pokémon from every generation and new footage reveals even more! Just look at Pikachu and Bulbasaur and Growlithe and ... Lickitung!
Oh boy! Let’s take a closer look at this marvel of nature.
And again in reverse! You can just feel that heavy thump of the tongue!
Much like Mr. Mime before it, Lickitung is a reminder that, while there are plenty of sweet, furry Pokémon that more or less look like the animals we have in our world, there are some that would be incredibly and utterly unsettling.
In the Pokédex, Lickitung’s tongue is described as running 6-and-a-half feet when fully extended. That’s taller than the average human adult. That’s really long. That’s longer than a Furret and a Charizard. That’s a really long tongue that, in its cartoonish iteration, seems like an odd quirk. But Detective Pikachu will let us see that tongue loll out of Lickitung’s mouth in excruciating detail.
We at Polygon have already debated at length about the merits of the movie’s super photorealistic style versus taking a more cartoony approach. As someone who is in camp cartoon, I feel that Lickitung firmly pushes the argument in my corner.
All this tongue and more can be seen in Detective Pikachu, which comes out on May 9.
