Lucario is different : he's easy to find (literally gaved to you by the champion in D/P/P), needs love to evolve, shoots beams, has a super expensive movepool to expand dongs and minds of kids discovring him, had a great design, and was promoted through a movie. To this day, just like Mewtwo, Lucario is used as the "Toy who can make new kids buy our stuff", appearing in the anime multiple times, having a mega-evolution to introduce new gameplay mechanics and many other things like this.
-The Champion doesn't give you a Riolu, it's Riley, and you don't even have to get it as Iron Island is optional (and that's the only place you can get it).
-I don't see why love shows how "special' it is, by that point in logic, Magmar is special.
-He has a great movepool, but a lot of Pokémon do (and a lot don't, but beside the point).
-Design is subjective, just because something is intended to be cool doesn't mean it'll come off that way. It could've very easily flopped if it didn't catch anyone's eye.
-The movie is a valid point as it's something most others don't get, but it's also not the only time a Pokémon has been promoted highly nor does a movie mean that it's going to hit it off with the fanbase. If the popularity sticks, then it's doing something more then just being "that one rare Pokémon in the movie," there's likely more of an appeal to it that people like about it.
But if we look at it, sure, Mewtwo and Lucario are similar. Both are super overrated, have a lot of fans, gets a lot of attention and are known by many. I still think though that Lucario was more builded to BE popular more than Mewtwo in a way.
In a way, a lot of Pokémon are "built" to be popular. Think about how we're introduced into a generation, they show us a number of Pokemon, hype them up, and then give out the game with the Pokémon that stand out the most at the forefront. They appear in movies, get caught by the main characters, in the card games, show up in advertisements, among other such promotions. GF knows that the fanbase pays attention to the Pokémon because they're the ones we're going to be collecting and battling with, so they give a number of them attention to sell the games. Starters and Legendaries in particular have to play by this because in the former case, they are the ones we're supposed to keep using on our adventure, so they have to stand out from the rest so that we continue to like them (and thus, they get cool stuff and toys others don't). Similarly, the legendaries have to stand out because they sell the movies, and in the case of the cover mascots, help sell the games. This is especially the case in Gen 1 as the starters doubled as the mascots of the generation, so they're on the cover selling their games alongside already being strongly marketed as a starter.
As for Mewtwo, yeah it didn't have a movie that showcased it (though they build up to that in the anime somewhat), but it was built up to be this awesome Pokémon within the games. It got a lore to it that the other legendaries didn't get (in fact, the birds got nothing at all), it's connected to an extremely rare Pokémon that no one knew about until later, it's the final boss that we see and have to battle, and it's the most powerful and broken thing in the game. It's definitely something that was given a lot of attention to ahead of its fellows in the generation.
Having said that, just because they may be pushed doesn't mean they will be popular. Zoroark was intended to be popular and it didn't hit it off, Mega Mewtwo Y was as well and it fell off, so on and so forth. Popularity is not something that's just easily "bought," you can try to appeal to it and get the results you want, but it's not always going to play out the way you want it. In the end, it's still up to the fanbase to react in the way that makes it popular regardless of its origins, and if what is popular remains so, then it did something that allowed the fanbase to keep loving it.
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