As others have already noted, Detective Pikachu has a Home Alone easter egg. In Detective Pikachu (our review here!), protagonist Nick Goodman finds a film playing in his lost father’s apartment. In case you don’t know, it is titled Angels with Filthy Souls. It is the same detective movie we see in Home Alone.
If you stuck around for the credits and were hoping for an end-credit scene, you would have been disappointed. But, you also may have noticed that there was licensing from Home Alone. “How strange!” my movie-goer-companion said. “Why is the licensing from Home Alone and not the original movie?”
It turns out that Angels with Filthy Souls is not a real movie. It was made specifically for Home Alone. Angels with Even Filthier Souls was featured in Home Alone 2. Director Rob Letterman confirmed that the Home Alone easter egg was more out of convenience than anything else. In an interview with Kotaku, Letterman said,
“We were just looking for the perfect placeholder. [Angels with Filthy Souls] just fit perfectly. We could not beat it. And it came down to the wire and we were like, let’s just embrace it and we licensed it.”
Most viewers who noticed this easter egg have contemplated the possibility of Pokémon and Home Alone existing in the same universe. Whereas it is tempting to think that there is some continuity in two of our beloved films, the court of public opinion has declared it not so.
Angels with Filthier Souls is pretty meta. Meta is short for meta-key. The definition of meta-key is a creative work’s ability to comment on itself. But rather than Kevin McCallister and Pokémon existing in the same universe, here’s my theory (and bear with me here):
Most films that we see in other films exist in concrete reality as a cultural reference point. That reference point serves to help us better understand characters. However, the film makers of Home Alone created a film that we assume exists in the real world, but it is in fact a creation of the makers of its internal world.
Additionally, Angels serves the same function in both films: to foreshadow and inform the trajectory of the protagonist.
That Ryan Reynolds plays Deadpool, a character that is known for his meta-ness, and that he voices Pikachu, suggests to me that this is a commentary (Home Alone) on a commentary (Angels with Filthy Souls) on a commentary (Detective Pikachu) that pays homage to more meta-ness, Deadpool.
Masked to some degree in both Pikachu and Deadpool, can we put it past Reynolds to infiltrate the Pokémon universe as he has the Deadpool one?
A stretch? Maybe. Possible? Absolutely.
