Edward felt a bit curious.
After all, just as he himself had said, in the world as it currently existed, it was practically impossible for technological advancements to make significant progress. This wasn't because he lacked confidence in the technology of this world—rather, most of the technology in the Pokémon world tended to correspond fairly closely to real-world equivalents. Since even in the Scarlet/Violet era there weren't many instances of ultra-advanced technology, it was unlikely anything too futuristic would suddenly appear now.
What's more, Edward had great confidence in this area. After all, the Devon Corporation was under his control. If even Devon, one of the most renowned companies in the entire Pokémon world, hadn't been able to fully figure out certain technologies, he highly doubted any other company would. Still, when he glanced at the title of the newest film released by this particular movie studio, his expression turned a little strange.
"Hmm… Deep Rising?" Edward scratched his head as he looked at the title. Was it that Deep Rising he was thinking of?
Driven by curiosity, he entered the theater. He wanted to see what exactly this plot was supposed to be.
But the moment the movie began, Edward immediately felt swindled. This film was essentially using technology that he himself had developed, nothing more, and there weren't any substantial new elements added to it.
The so-called "super-sensory effects" they advertised were achieved simply through scents and environmental feedback. For example, while watching, Edward could smell the scent of the sea. Still, the plot itself wasn't bad. It was practically identical to the Deep Rising he had watched in his previous life.
In his previous world, Deep Rising had required a massive investment, yet its box office return was meager, resulting in a devastating financial loss. Because of that, no sequel was ever made. Edward always felt that was a bit of a shame, because he had genuinely enjoyed that style of movie.
It was said that the production cost for Deep Rising was around forty-five million USD, yet its box office intake barely exceeded ten million. If one judged by the most basic "one-third return" rule of thumb, that meant the film lost money catastrophically. Naturally, therefore, no follow-up film would ever be produced.
That's just how capital works.
Movies that earn money will always get sequels—even if they are cursed and scolded by audiences. Consider the classic Friday the 13th franchise: even after running out of ideas, they eventually sent Jason into space, yet Jason still continued his cold-blooded killing spree. Or the Saw series—who knows how many installments there have been by now? Ultimately, movies are like this: as long as there is profit, anything is possible.
"Well, whatever. I'll just treat it as revisiting a classic. And this kind of plot…" Edward's expression shifted slightly. He recalled the giant octopus in Deep Rising.
Originally, the movie even seemed to have a form of crossover, though he wasn't certain of the details. He decided to think about it after watching the film to the end. With that, he focused his full attention on the movie.
The night-shrouded Pacific rolled and surged like black silk. As the searchlights of the "SS Argosy" cut through the pitch-dark ocean, the idle chatter of the crew echoed across the main deck. This three-billion-League-pokedollar luxury cruise liner was carrying five hundred passengers toward Alola and not a single person noticed that three hundred meters beneath the waterline, some colossal creature was drifting beneath the hull, brushing its bulk softly against the ship as it followed the ocean current.
Suddenly, the propellers shook violently, and the gurgling rush of seawater flooding the propulsion system sounded like whispers from the depths of hell.
Private ship owner Finnegan gripped his whisky glass tightly, the ice cubes clinking softly against the bottom. When the mercenary captain, Rodriguez, slapped the insurance document onto the walnut table, the metal badge pinned to his vest cast a cold glint under the lamplight. "The hijacking plan is flawless," the muscle-bound man said with a menacing grin. "As long as we create the illusion of an explosion on the high seas, the insurance company will pay out triple."
Suddenly, the entire ship fell eerily silent—as though every soul aboard had vanished without warning. Yet no one knew why.
On the deck, Trillian idly played with a bronze pocket watch. The faded photograph of her father on the inside cover was peeling and discoloring with age. As a marine biologist, she should have refused this suspicious voyage altogether…but three days earlier, she had received an anonymous letter containing an exact sonar map of the biological signals detected the night her father went missing.
Just as she pondered this, a shrill alarm tore across the sky. The ship lurched sharply, sending her medicine bottle tumbling down the stairs. Broken glass mixed with blood-coagulant pills scattered across the steps like fragments of starlight.
By the time the mercenaries rushed toward the lower deck, the mutated octopus had already been waiting. Its massive suction-covered tentacles swept across the security cameras. In the reflective surface of the lens flashed an eerie emerald gleam.
The first to notice the anomaly, engine mechanic Mulligan, let out an inhuman scream before his half-mangled body slammed against the cargo racks in rhythm with the rupturing hydraulic pipes. Blue-violet bubbles frothed in the creature's viscous secretion as it devoured him.
Emergency red lights flooded the main dining hall. Shattered glass, fragmented limbs, and smears of gore flickered within the shadows. Finnegan dragged his injured leg as he rammed into a display cabinet; crystal ornaments exploded into powder alongside red wine bottles.
"It can move through the ventilation ducts!" he gasped, wiping the blood at the corner of his mouth. "Those damned tentacles secrete an acid that dissolves proteins!"
Trillian pressed her stethoscope to the bulkhead. The infrasound waves unique to deep-sea creatures reverberated through her skull, numbing her eardrums. Just then, three tentacles burst through the cabin door.
Mechanic Joey was modifying an acetylene cutter into a makeshift flamethrower. "Careful! It restrains prey with two tentacles, and the other six…" His voice was cut short as another crew member was torn in half mid-sentence. Pink mucus dripped through the ventilation grates, glowing faintly like ghost-flame.
Inside the locked library, a mercenary sniper was loading a magazine into his SMG. When he turned to reach for a spare weapon, half of his face had already liquefied into milky sludge. His shriek, mixed with a clam-like clicking sound, echoed suffocatingly in the confined room.
Through the crack in the door, Trillian saw the creature mimicking human skin patterns using octopus-style chromatophores. She suddenly realized that the creature her father had called "Antoria" might be far more than merely a deep-sea monster.
The instant the control room's instrument panel went dark, Finnegan smashed the bulletproof glass to seize the steering controls. As mercenaries pointed their guns at his head, the tentacles tore through the vents, killing half the men instantly.
Rodriguez hurled his last two grenades at the monster, but the explosion only caused the tentacles to divide and multiply. "Damn it! They're evolving!" he shouted, stabbing wildly with his knife. Acid seeped through the suction cups, burning through his tactical pants and his flesh beneath, the sizzling sound driving him into madness.
Trillian discovered her father's encrypted research log. She learned that he had altered the sonar frequency maps months before encountering the creature. Just as she decoded a rhythmic pattern resembling whale song, Joey yanked her into a roll just in time. Six stalk-like eye-tipped tentacles pierced the ceiling—one ending in a barbed bony structure, matching the so-called "unknown biological weapon organ" her father described in his notes. "It's intelligent!" she screamed amid the tremors. "These aren't instinctive attacks—this is coordinated hunting!"
When the flooding in the lower hold reached knee-height, Finnegan discovered that the corpses of the crew were being encased in slimy cocoons. As he punctured one of the quivering pods with a steel pipe, dozens of juvenile octopi erupted outward, gnawing at metal.
In despair, Trillian suddenly remembered a weakness recorded in her father's notes: "They use resonance to locate prey!" Everyone worked together to push a grand piano into the propeller shaft. The twelve-ton mass colliding with the rotating blades produced an intense infrasound shockwave, causing all the tentacles to convulse simultaneously.
On the explosion-scarred deck, Finnegan loaded the last two anti-ship torpedoes into the sealed launch tube. Trillian suddenly stopped him. "The detonator current will trigger a chain reaction!" She grabbed a soldering iron and rewired the circuitry while Joey used his own body to block a lunging tentacle. When the monster nearly caught up to their escaping inflatable raft, Trillian finally pressed the trigger for a three-second delayed detonation.
After the explosion, the two survivors drifted onto a remote island. Yet from deep within the forest came the unmistakable roars of monsters. Upon zooming in, the island's features looked uncannily like Skull Island. Seeing this, Edward's expression grew even stranger. At this point he was nearly certain: this movie was Deep Rising—just a modified version.
After all, in the original Deep Rising, although the octopus monster displayed some intelligence, it wasn't particularly smart, and its manner of devouring humans was extremely gory. When the protagonists reached the creature's nest, the mountains of blood-soaked skeletal remains had stunned Edward even back then. It was the late 1990s, yet when the film was imported into China, very little censorship had been applied—the gore was fully intact.
But what stuck with Edward most vividly was the scene where a mercenary was swallowed whole, only to be spat out halfway liquefied—half his body reduced to exposed bone. And of course, the scene where the mercenary leader was slowly eaten alive.
Someone kindly handed him a gun so he could end his own suffering, but instead he tried to shoot the man helping him. When the other person escaped, he attempted to shoot himself… only to discover the gun had no bullets left. He could only watch helplessly as he was eaten alive. Truly heavy stuff.
"Even if it feels a bit like false advertising, overall it's pretty good." Edward was rather satisfied with the film. Its style was very similar to Deep Rising, and the visual effects were well executed. The only questionable part was their so-called "super-immersive filming technology," which amounted to releasing sea scents and spraying mist onto the audience—more or less the same gimmicks used in old 5D theaters.
But from a filmmaking standpoint, the movie was solid—better than average, even. Although some minor issues existed, none were significant.
"Not bad. If the full score is ten, I'd give it… 8.8." Edward nodded. He admitted his score was influenced by nostalgia. Back then, the movie had left quite a strong impression on him.
"Seems like the Pokémon world does have some good films." Edward smiled faintly. Actually, most of this world's movies were fairly decent—only a few had noticeable shortcomings.
Edward felt a sudden curiosity. Would this world ever produce other kinds of unique movies? As he scanned the listings, he noticed a zombie film released at the same time. This piqued his interest. After all, he had always been fond of zombie-themed movies. On impulse, he bought a ticket and entered the theater.
The moment he walked in, he discovered the zombie film was based on the Alola region. Edward's expression immediately turned strange. Watching the cheerful Alolans greeting each other with "Alola~" while the movie tried to present a grim zombie apocalypse felt bizarrely contradictory.
The skies above Alola suddenly darkened. When the first zombie Meowth staggered through the streets of Hau'oli Pikachu's ears shot upright in terror. These Pokémon, corrupted by an unknown virus, no longer had their usual spark of life. Their eyes were hollow and bloodshot.
"Run!" shouted a boy who looked suspiciously like Hau. His Pokémon punched desperately but could only knock down a decaying Rowlet. The "P-Virus," developed by a shadowy organization, was originally meant to create combat organisms, but instead threw the Pokémon world into utter chaos. Eevee's rainbow-colored fur was fading into sickly gray; Jigglypuff's sweet singing had warped into a shrieking lament of the dead.
Lusamine, as the queen-like leader of Alola, organized the final defensive line. Her army of Mimikyu struggled desperately against hordes of zombie Tangrowth. Even worse, an infected Tyranitar toppled the barricades, the spines on its back covered in web-like crystal growths. A Pokémon Professor hurriedly formulated an antidote that worked on certain high-level Pokémon, but it was powerless against the virus's spread among common species.
Under the moonlight, Greninja suddenly stopped. It realized the zombie Pokémon were no longer attacking reflexively. Instead, they were mechanically repeating moves they had learned in life—their battle instincts still functioning. This led the protagonist to suspect that perhaps the infection could be reversed by restoring their memory frequencies.
But as the last rays of sunlight were devoured by the bloody clouds, what exactly lay inside the Poké Balls that trainers carried? Trusted partners? Or creatures that could turn on them at any moment? The entire Pokémon world was undergoing a species-level evolution far more brutal than any normal transformation.
And then Edward saw a zombie Ho-Oh. And a zombie Groudon.
The corner of Edward's mouth twitched. These filmmakers were truly bold. But he had to admit, the concept was interesting. If the Pokémon were zombified, it made sense that their moves wouldn't function normally anymore.
"Tsk, tsk." Edward didn't even know what to say. But he had to concede—the special effects were impressive. At least they clearly spent money.
Rubbing his chin, Edward thought that this world really did have more than a few unique directors. He wondered whether someone would eventually produce even stranger film genres.
(End of Chapter)