Rating: 
Summary: FF doesn't peak like it intends to.
Review: Mind blowing animation (really really cool realization of physics). Equally good plot.
Just as much of the facial features are left unanimated (but still do the job) so is so much of the thrill of the plot left unexpressed. Yes the plot is juicy but ya gotta hunt for it. Little "active viewing" required maybe. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion. If you want to see a good movie, see it. So ya gotta make some allowances for the old "Planet of the Apes" lack of facial animation. It's a shame, but so what? Th fcl mvmnt rlly ws lckng, thgh, tht s why I gv t 4 strs nstd f 5
Rating:
Summary: Underrated
Review: Everyone seems to have the same opinion on this one: great visuals, lacking in story. No one can deny that the movie is graphically spectacular, it's the best out there today.But I beg to differ with the plot complaints. A lot of people who are familiar with the Final Fantasy games found the story disappointing... But, people, the Final Fantasy games take 40 hours to finish. There's no way you can cram that same amount of plot development into a movie. However, I can't deny that the script was way too blunt. The dialogue lacks any kind of sublety (the characters pretty much just lay things out in a "this is what we're doing, and this is why" manner for the viewers). Probably due to the fact that it was originally written in Japanese. And on a final note, for everyone complaining about this "Gaia nonsense": the Gaia theory actually exists, folks. It pretty much says that plants & animals are to the earth what our cells are to us - parts of a larger organism. The movie simply assumes that conciousness is energy - and energy can't be created or destroyed. There you have it, spirit energy. Just felt like saying that, 'cause I'm tired and bored.
Rating: 
Summary: Game-based movies just don't work...
Review: We saw it with Mario Brothers, with Street Fighter, and with Fatal Fury. When will we learn that a movie based on a game just won't measure up? Well...I suppose with Final Fantasy it's a little different. The games are, needless to say, the cream of the crop. No other RPG is as good as the Final Fantasy series. The graphics are astounding, the storylines are involving, the characters are colorful.
This is what fools you into thinking the movie will be great. Save for the CGs (which are just incredible!), the movie has nothing that the games do. The storyline was nothing more than a recycled version of the plot from FFVII, and the characters have absolutely no personality. Unlike the favorites from the games, these characters have no distinguishing personality traits. They don't get a whole lot of screen time, so you can't get attached to them the way you can with the game characters, and they all seem the same anyway:angry and pessimistic. Absolutly no imagination was put into the villian either-he was just Seifer in Sephiroth's clothing. And it doesn't help that the script was about as colorful as a 1920's film. With such bland dialogue, how can one determine the personality of any character?
The audience doesn't even see a good portion of the plot. At the start of the movie, the audience pretty much drops in on Aki Ross as she stalks stealthily about some resticted area in search of...what? You don't really find out for another 30 minutes or so. There isn't enough information in the beginning of the movie to really know what's going on, who's in on it, and what the whole problem is. Unless you're an avid player of the games, you're just an outsider looking in.
Another thing that annoyed me was the title, which was a bit misleading. If I had watched the movie without knowing the title, I never would have affiliated it with the Final Fantasy series (that is until words like "Gaea" and "lifestream" started popping up). There was nothing "Fantasy" about it. I started watching the movie expecting to see a few spells, a summon or two (what's Final Fantasy without Bahamut?), maybe a little world travel. Did I see any? Nope. Not a bit. I saw a couple of cool firearms, but nothing that resembled a weapon out of any of the games. The movie lacked the imagination of the RPG, and I found it disappointing.
But I think the very worst part of the movie is the end, and I'll sum it up for you: Everybody dies. Aside from our heroine, everyone is reduced to ashes so quickly that there was little significance to the characters' existence in the first place. Very disappointing.
All in all, The "Final Fantasy" movie did not live up to the name that its predecessing games created. Perhaps one day, a game-based movie will be more than "okay," but in the meantime, we'll call "Final Fantasy" another valiant attempt.
Rating:
Summary: Good CG, but thats all
Review: The CG was some of the best I have ever seen although some of the character animations where pretty stiff. Unfortunately the whole experience was let down by an extremely silly story, the thought of the earth having a spirit makes the story more fairy tale than sci-fi action which is what I expected. The action scenes are average at best and not in the same league as films like Aliens or Starship Troopers. The bloodless battle scenes are obviously geared to a younger audience but they would not be unable to understand the story with its large plot gaps so I'm not sure what the films target audience is supposed to be. I would have rated this film much higher had the story not been so lame, it is really only worth while watching for the CG effects.
Rating:
Summary: A visual treat
Review: On its release, Final Fantasy garnered mostly negative reviews for its story, but almost everyone agreed that this was a beautiful movie. Having finally had a chance to judge for myself, I believe the critics were overly harsh. The story is fairly straightforward and uncomplicated, but by no means stupid. I found myself drawn in to the mystery of the phantom invasion, and appreciated the message that sometimes there are better ways to solve a problem than by simply blasting away at it. I would have appreciated more character background detail, but at least each one was given a distinctive personality. And, as advertised, this is a gorgeous film. While the level of detail on the characters isn't so far advanced that you become convinced they're human, the expressiveness of the faces and body language are mind-blowing. The characters convey the same levels of warmth and life as those in Toy Story or Monsters Inc, but without the exagerated features. The production has such depth you forget they're just computer images, and sit back and get caught up in the action. I also appreciated the wealth of extra features on this DVD. Let's face it, with a movie like this, there's more to wonder about how they did it, and the various commentary tracks and making-of features should satisfy all but the most demanding of fans. But no matter how great the extra features are, they only matter if the movie is worth watching. In this case, it definitely is.
Rating: 
Summary: On the visuals alone.
Review: OK. It's nice to see a movie that is actually concerned about the planet, and spiritual balance. This movie is nothing short of technically amazing. I watched it with wonder at the quality of the work done in bringing this vision to the screen. As art. It's dead. As a long time anime fan (I have the original Dirty Pair series, all of Ako, Crusher Joe, Vampire Hunter D, Honneimize, Akira, etc.), If this movie had been drawn by hand, it would have been average at best. Frankly the bad guy was so singlemindedly stereotyped that it was ridiculous. The plot had holes bigger than the black one we think is at the center of our galaxy. Nothing was adequately explained, visually or by exposition.
Rating:
Summary: My family enjoyed this movie
Review: Truly amazing what can be done with computers. The plot kept me interested until the final ten minutes where it became it predictable.
Rating:
Summary: pretty to look at.........
Review: Computer rendering has truly come a long way and Final Fantasy is a milestone. I have watched the movie with the sound off several times just too watch the colors and textures. The acting, well left me cold. Let's face it a guy in front of a computer screen is not the same as a actor in front of a movie screen. Subtle nuances is what was lacking. I remember a Saturday cartoon called Tarzan. When he climbed up a tree it looked totally believable. I found out later that they had shot on video of a stunt man climbing scaffolding and they copied that. I wish they had studied the actors faces like that.I would say something about the script but there really isn't much to say. Anyway, this is still a decent movie not a great movie. Rent it before you buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Animation crude and not well thought out
Review: I was looking forward to renting the DVD of this movie, but what a letdown. The animation is crude and poorly executed. I mean, seriously, what good animator does not know that human beings have tongues, and that without them they cannot speak properly? The eyes, lips and limbs move, the hair looks great, but the faces look like what happened to Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck and Tom and Jerry when the animation work was moved to the Phillipines to save money. FACES HAVE MUSCLES and if they had devoted half the work they put into hair into facial muscles, the animation would have looked halfway convincing. Sorry, but this one doesn't rate more than 2 stars. Toy Story was a much more convincing technical achievement than this.,
Rating:
Summary: As predicted, dissapointing
Review: Well, I'm not going to explain the story because most of the other reviews do that fine, I'm just offering my opinion. Being a fan of the Final Fantasy games, I was both excited and aprehensive when they announced they were making a movie. Actually when I heard, I had only just finished playing Final Fantasy VIII, but in the time before the film came out, I managed to finish VII and IX. Anyhow, the movie was as I predicted when I saw the trailer, dissapointing. As soon as I found out that it was to be set on Earth and in the future, I knew it was doomed even from then. The animation looked great however, so I thought I'd see it, and at least give it a chance, because the story of the games were so good (usually) that I couldn't pass judgement until I had seen it myself. Unfortunately when seeing the movie, and although one half of me was desperately trying to make up excuses for it, I really couldn't accept that they had allowed this to be made. For one thing, setting it on Earth, and in the future, thus putting it on "our" timeline, unlike the games which were just "some world" in "some weird time", which worked perfectly. Instead of being nearly anything like a Final Fantasy story, it turned out to be a cheesy Sci Fi flick. I knew also that critics would just love to chew up a film like this. Anything with a large amount of special effects, that doesn't have a story to match becomes a sitting duck for hateful reviewists. And unfortunately, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was not worth defending. Also the directing was pretty pathetic. A big mistake was to make the movie like a holywood movie, whereas the film would have probably turned out OK, maybe even good, if they had stuck to the Japanese style. The music was pathetic as well. Why they didn't get Nobuo Uemetsu to do the score is beyond my understanding. Basically, they got too caught up with making the movie look really good, and forgot about the plot. Also it would have been much better if they made the characters look like the anime based characters which the game characters are more like, instead of making them try to look like real people. Anyway, to sum it up, they seemed to have gotten plot depth mixed up with special effects depth. It seemed to me they weren't trying to make a movie... just win the best special effects award.
|
