"Who says there's no such thing as monsters?"
"I'm looking for the programmer, don't interfere!"
Digimon: The Movie is a 2000 compilation of short movies from the Digimon franchise: Digimon Adventure (a Pilot Movie), Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! (a Short Film), and Digimon Adventure 02: Digimon Hurricane Touchdown!! / Supreme Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals (another Short Film). It was the first time the franchise saw a movie in American cinemas (and for the longest time, the only one, until the Digimon Adventure tri. series saw some theatrical releases).
Taking place over a span of eight years, the movie chronicles the first appearance of Digimon, The Internet meltdown and near-nuclear holocaust caused by Diaboromon, and the fight between the cast of Digimon Adventure 02 and a mysterious Digimon named Kokomon.
The first two chapters of the movie (Digimon Adventure and Our War Game) were under director Mamoru Hosoda, who went on to make several well-acclaimed films including Summer Wars.
The rest of the Digimon movies would later be dubbed as well, though unlike this movie, were all kept in their separate entries. They were only shown on Toon Disney with no DVD releases.
On July 29, 2023, a full remaster and redub of all three individual movies
was announced to be in production by Discotek Media, as well as a remaster of the original compilation movie dub itself. (No Angela Anaconda short will be included though.)
This movie provides examples of:
- Adaptation Origin Connection: In the original Japanese versions of "Our War Game" and "Hurricane Touchdown/Transcendent Evolution", the origins of the Digi-Egg that Kuramon hatched from, as well as the virus that corrupted Kokomon, are both unspecified. In this movie, the Digi-Egg was created by Kokomon's tamer, Willis, but was subsequently attacked by the Kuramon virus. Sometime after its defeat as Diaboromon, the virus is then shown to be the same one that finds Kokomon.
- Adaptation Personality Change: After Veemon and Terriermon respectively digivolved into Magnamon and Rapidmon, they became a lot more hammy and talkative than they were in the original japanese version. In the original, they were serious, and talked very little, to the point that they never even announced their names.
- Adapted Out: The dub version of Golden Digimentals omitted the plot about the kidnapping of older Digidestineds, and all scenes involving them were removed.
- America Saves the Day: Subverted. When Diaboromon fires two American nuclear ICBM missiles at Japan and Colorado the American government tries to intercept them along with Japan and several other nations. Their missiles, are redirected by Diaboromon to fall into the Pacific ocean due to his infiltration and infection of the U.S. Department of Defense computers at the Pentagon.
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: The poster depicts the characters as much more angry and aggressive than they are in the film itself or the original series.
- Animated Music Video:
One hit wonders Len Covered Up the song "Kids in America" for the film and also produced a music video for the song which shows the band as they appear on the cover to You Can't Stop the Bum Rush. - Arc Welding: The third section of the film, featuring the 02 cast, is reinterpreted as a sequel to the original Diablomon incident, Our War Game.
- Arc Words: "Don't interfere" and then "Go back to the beginning".
- Artistic License: A technological case in a major plot point during the second act of the movie. WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon wind up getting their connection speed cut by millions of people flooding Izzy's email account. Not only do emails not interfere with internet connection, but MetalGarurumon shouldn't even be affected since he's patched in through an entirely different internet connection. This is forgivable however since the plot would lose a good deal of drama without it.
- Artistic License – Geography: Kari, T.K. and their Digimon go by train from New York to Colorado in under a day.
- Autobots, Rock Out!: The soundtrack includes music by Barenaked Ladies, Less Than Jake, and Smash Mouth, among others.
- Beyond the Impossible:
- Hikari's digivolution hijinks with Greymon in the first portion. There's no Digivices, no crests, no digi-eggs, no digivolution assists anywhere... but it goes through every single evolution stage known at the time in quick succession.
- The Mega-level when introduced in the first season was already this but in this movie we have two Mega-level Digimon Digivolve together into the second ever Ultra-level Digimon (the first being Apocalymon from the Adventure finale). Also, since this scene takes place before Season 2, no one had any idea that Digimon could merge at all, let alone two Megas.
- BFG: MetalGarurumon's contribution to Omnimon's arsenal is the "Supreme Cannnon." It's powerful enough to wipe out hundreds of Diaboromon clones with a single shot.
- BFS: Omnimon sports one in the arm that constitutes WarGreymon and eventually drives it through Diaboromon's head, mere milliseconds before the nukes would've detonated.
- Big Bad: The Virus is responsible for all the trouble that goes on for two thirds of this movie.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the second segment, after Izzy's computer is disconnected, he and Tai stare at the camera in fear. (With Izzy even talking directly to the audience) In the third, Cody says Digmon "could be better animated".
- Breakout Character: Terriermon ended up becoming one of the partner Digimon in the team of three in Digimon Tamers, and is the only later addition Digimon to get enough merch to rival the Adventure cast.
- Canon Immigrant: Ryo from the Wonderswan games makes an appearance in the second segment.
- Car Cushion: After Koromon ends up digivolving into a huge Agumon, he jumps out the window of Tai and Kari's bedroom and lands on a car beneath. The dub adds a bit of funny dialogue as to its owner:Tai: If Mom's worried about the lamp, wait till she sees her car!
- Catastrophic Countdown:
- "Who can count backwards from ten?"
- "Which one has the clock?" in the original though the countdown was still shown.
- Combat Pragmatist: Infermon attacks Greymon and Kabuterimon as they finish digivolving into their ultimate forms, resulting in them being reduced back to their Rookie forms of Agumon and Tentomon.
- Compilation Movie: Of the first three Digimon film shorts.
- Continuity Snarl: The "Present-day" segment popular fanon says it would take place between episode 21 and episode 22, but Gatomon is able to Digivolve to Angewomon which we later find out she shouldn't be able to do so. There's also the fact that Angemon and Angewomon reach Mega and act like this is something they've always been able to do; they never reached Mega before in the series and don't do so again until Digimon Adventure Tri.
- The Corruption: The Virus which infects Diaboromon and Kokomon.
- Covers Always Lie:
- Similar to how all the trailers and TV ads only focused on the second and third segment, the front cover of the movie poster focuses only on the characters in the third segment (with only Omnimon from the second segment far above the title), acting like the entire movie takes place during 02. The back of the VHS synopsis always describes a wayward Digimon kidnapping the Digidestined, which is true for the uncut third Japanese movie, but not for the American film.
- There are also two Terriermons in the cover for some reason. In the movie, there is only one.Although...
- Darkest Hour: When they get defeated by Diaboromon the first time and Tai and Izzy get reconnected they find that WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon are in very poor shape and practically unable to fight (WarGreymon being unconscious when they find him) and when it seems it can't get any worse, Izzy gets an email from someone who hacked into the Pentagon and found out a nuclear missile code named "Peace Keeper" has just been launched by Diaboromon with no determined target (in the dub, this was changed to two missiles, one launched at Colorado and the second being aimed right at Tai and Izzy); it could hit ANYWHERE in the world and they have no way of tracking it, and they only have 10 minutes to find Diaboromon and stop the clock. Easy, right? Wrong, because he starts multiplying himself when the countdown starts, and when they track him down, he's already made millions of copies of himself.
- Demoted to Extra: Mimi and Joe get little more than cameos throughout the movie. Neither of them appear in the third segment since the subplot about the older kids being kidnapped was cut. While all the scenes of the older kids in that segment stem from right before they're kidnapped by Endigomon in Hurricane Touchdown, Joe's didn't lend itself to a pithy joke (he just gets himself a drink out of a vending machine and disappears) and Mimi actually vanishes right in front of Kari and T.K., which would have caused all sorts of questions for a plot thread no longer being pursued.
- Deus ex Machina: Angemon and Angewomon just obtain the previously unmentioned Golden Digi-Eggs from nowhere. There is a bit of an explanation within the card game in that their Mega forms are supposed to be the keepers of the Golden Digi-Eggs. Though this still doesn't explain how they were able to reach those forms in the first place, not to mention causing a continuity issue with the main series.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The Digidestined thought that defeating Diaboromon would solve the problem, but The Virus escaped to cause more trouble later.
- Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The film is crawling with them, which is inevitable considering that it was rushed out after being made from three Japanese films.
- One big one would be the final act of the movie, as in the original Kokomon was kidnapping the Digidestined and de-aging them. In the dub this plot point is removed and when the final battle happens the De-aging of everybody else comes out of nowhere and is not elaborated on in the slightest (aside from a mention on Kokomon "going back in time").
- The third segment of the movie was not intended to take place in-continuity. The dub puts it into continuity, which causes a plot hole in the penultimate episode of 02 when Patamon and Gatomon do not digivolve into Seraphimon and Magnadramon respectively.
- Dub Name Change: The dub changes the name "Diablomon" to "Diaboromon", a Nihon-Shiki romanization of his name. This is most likely a result of early 2000s American kids programming shying away from overt religious references.
- Dueling Hackers: Diaboromon and Izzy during the second segment.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Meta example. This is the first time Terriermon appears in the franchise before being the digimon of a protagonist in Digimon Tamers. This also applies to his digievolutions.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first segment (which is kind of the original pilot to the series) Greymon has a more horizontal body structure like an actual therapod dinosaur instead of the more upright one he would have in all other adaptations. Additionally, Agumon is roughly the size of a car and both have deeper more intimidating voices. Both use altered versions of their in-series moves as well, with Agumon using the much larger and more destructive "Pepper Flame" and Greymon using "Nova Flame" which is more of a flamethrower than a bigger Pepper Breath. The credits differentiate them from their main-series counterparts with the named "Big Agumon" and "Red Greymon".
- Epic Movie: Takes place over the span of eight years, involves three individual stories, and involves many, many characters. Inverted in that it's more like a B-Movie in content.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Virus. At first it's just a computer virus that corrupted the Digi-Egg that would eventually hatch into Diaboromon, however after Diaboromon is defeated it crosses into the human world, tracks down Willis, and infects Kokomon.
- Four Is Death: The movie's three parts are each separated by a span of four years and at the beginning four Digimon are born into the human world, Parrotmon, implied to have been the fourth to do so, being the evil one.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Diaboromon started out as a Kuramon that had just hatched and soon began digivolving at the fastest rate of the franchise, his influence over the internet growing with him. This is justified since the virus that infected him during the creation of his digi-egg accelerated the process.
- Fusion Dance: WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon combine into Omnimon.
- Gratuitous English: In the original cut of the last movie Wallace (Willis) starts off talking in full blown English when confronting Cocomon and when on the phone with his parents. However, when alone with Terriermon, he starts talking in Japanese again. Justified later when talking to the group; he mentions that he used to have a Japanese girlfriend and he learned to talk Japanese for her. However, there is some inconsistency later on when he calls his mom again and talks to her in Japanese even though he should be speaking English.
- The Ghost: Despite being the Big Bad of the movie, you never see The Virus beyond some abnormal wind.
- Honor Before Reason: Sora considers helping Tai fight Diaboromon, to the point where she comes close to knocking on his door. She refuses at the last moment, too upset over the hairclip he give her on her birthday.
- The Internet: The battleground for the second part.
- Ironic Echo: "Connection terminated." The first instance is an Oh, Crap! moment when Tai's internet drops out. The line makes a comeback as a Bond One-Liner when Diaboromon is killed by Omnimon's sword milliseconds before the nukes would've detonated.
- The Movie: The first one for the Digimon series.
- Never Trust a Trailer: All of the advertising focused solely on the second segment, presumably because it was the most interesting and they wanted to avoid telling audience it was three different stories loosely tied together.
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: After they are defeated by Infermon, we got a couple of amusing ones from Agumon and Tentomon.Tai: Agumon! Say something!
Agumon: Don't take me out, Coach.
Izzy: Tentomon!
Tentomon: I'm fine. Just one question: Who's Tentomon? - Opinion Flip Flop: Willis is telling Davis a sob-story and Davis, beside himself with sorrow, chokes, "That's the saddest story I've ever heard." Willis responds, "I'm the one with the problem, not you. Get over it," and Davis, immediately in high spirits without a trace of tears, says, "Okay!" Willis even lampshades it right after:Willis: Hey, that was fast!
- Overly Narrow Superlative: Koromon calls Kari and Tai the best friends he ever had. Kari points-out that they're the only friends he ever had, since he just hatched. Cue Koromon glomp-kissing her. Again.
- Personal Space Invader: The first Koromon that Tai and Kari meet likes to do this. His way of thanking people is to latch onto their faces and kiss them until he pops off.
- Post Cyber Punk: The Our War Game segment more so than the other sections because it takes place inside the Internet.
- Product Placement:
- Kari mentions she got her friend a pink Power Ranger figure for her birthday.
- In the third section, Davis, Terriormon and Veemon crash into a Northwest Airlines billboard.
- Residual Evil Entity: Diaboromon, the main villain of the Our War Game act, is destroyed by Omnimon. However, the virus that created him lives on and corrupts the Digimon partner of an American Digidestined Willis.
- Saw a Woman in Half: Kari volunteers to have this done to her at a friend's birthday party while Tai, Izzy and their Digimon fight off Diaboromon. Tai jokes afterwards asking for the half with legs to get home ASAP.
- Ship Tease:
- The dub gives a rather cute one between Joe and Mimi, wherein one of the many letters piling up in Mimi's mailbox is a heart-shaped message that says "To Mimi, From Joe". In the original, it was just Mimi's family's nameplate.
- Sora misses out on the whole war game against Diaboromon because she and Tai are too busy going through a phase of Belligerent Sexual Tension.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: A huge chunk of the pop music used in the dub could qualify, especially when it was used in "Our War Game". The biggest offender would be during the phone jamming scene where Less Than Jake's "All My Best Friends are Metalheads" is used with no rhyme or reason for it being there. (Though it does, arguably, go pretty well with the rhythm of the sequence, especially Diaboromon crawling across the American flag.)
- Starter Villain: Parrotmon is the villain of the first segment.
- Stress Vomit: Izzy is left collapsed on the apartment railing gasping for air as he and Tai watch the nuke Diaboromon fired at them land harmlessly in a nearby lake: had Omnimon been a split-second later, that nuke would have wiped them out along with the rest of their neighborhood.Izzy: I'm...about...to barf.Tai: Wait 'till you try the cake...
- Transformation Is a Free Action: Averted when Infermon intentionally attacks Greymon, Kabuterimon, and Patamon mid-digivolution sequence, preventing their transformation.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: During the second part, both Tentomon and Patamon completely disappear without comment after Tai and Izzy get disconnected.
