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Review : Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within on DVD
When is Final Fantasy not Final Fantasy? When you are talking about the movie Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within.
I have seen the movie before but I recently purchased a used copy of the DVD.
Squaresoft may be the greatest Video game RPG maker ever and their games feature the cutting edge of animation so their first foray in to the world of feature film making to produce an epic all computer animation Science fiction epic should be pure gold right... God I wish it worked out that way.
They created their own studio and hired scores of animators and programmers from all over the world to work in a new Animation studio in Hawaii. Square almost bet the company with this movie and invested over two hundred million dollars on this movie. The problem was that it brought back under fifty million from the Box Office and it left Square soft with a very very big debt to pay.
The idea looks good on paper but the plot that they made was very strange, new agey and hard to relate to. It was not a traditional computer animated movie like Toy Story and it was not a traditional Japanese Anime movie and it was not a traditional science fiction movie.
Naming the entire movie Final Fantasy was a bad idea. It had nothing in common with the Final Fantasy games except one guy was named Cid and the word Chocobo was in the background on one of the space ship. That is freaking it. In fact the movie started with the name Gaia and it might have been better if it kept the original name with out invoking the Final Fantasy games. You know if you are going to call a movie Final Fantasy It better be about Final Fantasy. Sort of like if Hollywood wants to make a movie called "Godzilla" It better actually have Godzilla in it.
I got the impression that it was not aimed at an particular target groups and it was to weird and indigestibles for mass consumption and to mainstream to get respect from the art house crowd.
This might have worked with a Hollywood guy around to smack the Squaresoft Otaku directors up side the head in early script development and to actually think about where they are trying to go with this movie. I love art house flicks as much as the next guy but a good art house flick does not leave you with a big gaping hundred and fifty million dollar bill.
If you ask me they spent too much money spent on software technology and motion capture than on the focus on the plot. The visual effects of the movie are ground breaking and I think the only film to match the skill of humanoid emotional character animation is The Lord of The Rings :The Two Towers . Sure the explosions and monster effects look damn cool and the lead heroine's hair looks perfect but that is not all you need for a successful movie.
As a 3d animator I have mixed emotions and about motion capture technology. Performance capture for 3d animation is the Devil's rotoscope and I think that it was extremely over used almost to the point of absurdity. Shrek used no motion capture animation. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The movie is set in a dystopian science fiction setting where the world is dominated with ghost like alien monsters who will suck and devour the souls of any life they come in contact with. All they have to do is to touch you to kill you and they can move through walls. Most of humanity lives in outer space or in shielded domed cities. The Alien Phantoms come from an massive meteorite that hit the earth three decades before the movie. The monsters are damn cool.
Our hero is a woman names Aki Ross who is a scientist trying to capture and record special spirit energy so they can create a super hippie pulse of earth love to cleanse the world of the alien spirits. I did not make that up or exaggerate. That is what the movie is actually about. At least her hair looks good.
There is the evil war mongering military forces with their space based super cannon. They really want to use it but the hippie scientists are worried that they would injure the spirit of the earth. I guess the Japanese Baby boomer directors would have a different personal perspective on atomic weaponry and the space based Zeus cannon is the thinest veiled analogy to atomic warfare that has ever graced the cinema.
Oh yeah there is this Ben Affleck look alike that is so blatantly a rip off that I think Ben's lawyers would have a good case to sue.
The movie is a visual treat. The two disc DVD set is full of extras and since it is a computer animation digital movie the DVD was authored from the direct digital source. It is rated PG-13.
Stoned nerd college students are the only crowd that is going to follow and enjoy the movie the first time they see it. The rest of you will think.. WTF?
Jake at October 7, 2003 
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Comments
the graphics were amazing. the story was pretty good. i liked it. i don't need to see it again though, kind of a one time shot for me.
and motion capture is kinda cheating in my book. i still enjoy the movies that use it, but have WAY more respect for the movies that don't. shrek was the bomb!
Posted by: tj at October 7, 2003 5:47 AM
I liked the FF movie,but they could have done so much more. It's mostly just eye candy, and with a movie that expensive, that's a serious problem.
It's a shame that this tanked so badly. Square's upcoming FFVII movie is going to be all of 60 minutes long and direct-to-DVD. If this had been a hit, I could see that being a full theatrical release.
Oh, and I don't mind mocap, as long as it's used well. I look at mocap as being no different from rotoscoping which can be used really well (as disney always has) or just horribly (as ralph bakshi does).
Posted by: jason at October 7, 2003 7:01 AM
Well the Japanese direct to video animation or OVA is a big deal over in there and it does not have the same stigma as direct to to video in the US.
Posted by: Jake at October 7, 2003 8:14 AM
Hey! I saw this movie months ago! I'm so excited! I feel so cool right now! Though I have to admit that it was a friend who is a Graphics Animator that turned me on to it.
Posted by: puunum at October 7, 2003 10:37 AM
I am apt to agree with you for the most part. Although, I think if none of us had known the amazingness of the FF series, we might have been able to go into this movie with a more open mind and seen it for what it was. Great animation. However, Square made the mistake of titling it after one of the best series of video games ever, more than likely trying to capitalize off of it, and therefore we all went in and were looking for just that...a great movie. And we didn't get it. *sigh*
Seems like I remember this happening before with the Final Fantasy games that came out on the GameBoy...
Posted by: Mici at October 7, 2003 10:47 AM
And coming soon from Square: Final Fantasy anti-bacterial cream! It also has nothing in common with the games, except that it drains all the HP of the bacteria on your feet.
Posted by: BBQ at October 7, 2003 12:28 PM
I saw it at the cinema when it came out. Everybody oohed and ahhed in the packed theatre.
I saw it on video and laughed my way through the effects. Sometimes they looked nice, sometimes they were too cheesy.
I saw it on DVD and was locked out. Stupid Region 1.
Come a few years later and Square's finally giving the otaku what they want - a FF7 movie.
Posted by: Matt at October 7, 2003 12:49 PM
i dunno...i rather liked it...but trust me to like some new age hippy-ish movie that's set in outer space ;)
Posted by: lilly at October 7, 2003 1:35 PM
I thought that the bad guy general who wanted to use they outer space based Death cannon had the right idea.
Posted by: Jake at October 7, 2003 1:52 PM
Hey, BBQ...Will that anti-bacterial cream help with this chocobo growth on my butt too?!
Posted by: Jeff at October 7, 2003 2:31 PM
Just use a Pure Potion. They are only 30 Gil and you can get them at most towns or you can have a White Mage cast some cure spells on you.
Posted by: Jake at October 7, 2003 2:56 PM
There's a lesson in here somewhere. I always thought that it served them right for plunging so much Gil into a movie that had nothing to do with the franchise.
Posted by: Trapp at October 7, 2003 3:53 PM
Well, i saw the movie today (lol) and well...i don't follow the final fantasy games and stuff so for me the movie was pretty cool...it's different...but i think that i can't judge if is good or bad...the ones that can are the true fans of finaly fantasy adventures...loool
yeah...gray IS ben affleck looool
Posted by: sue at July 11, 2006 3:29 PM
i luv the final fantasy games im trying 2 collect all ff's sept wen did ff 7 film cum out i want it *cry* but i cant find it any were and i only discovered it this year like wen it cum out... tis final fantasy dosnt realy go with all the games though l8terz
Posted by: lois at August 31, 2006 3:01 AM
awesome
Posted by: mj at October 26, 2006 7:19 AM
