FINAL FANTASY: The Spirits within. No, not Jack Danials...

[Flangepart]

Just a movie. I finaly watched it last night, on dvd. Great Visuals, realy impressive. But, the story.....Hum. Good always to use professional actors for the voice talent. That helped. But, i did not make an emotional connection to any of the characters. General Hine reminded me of Prince Farquad, in fact! Similar manerisims, walk...any one else notice this? Steve Bushimi was good, in fact the only character i liked . The others were, well, cold for me. Like i said, the visuals were impressive, most impressive. But, the lack of an emotional connection is odd, as the same techinques were used in Shrek, and i loved that film. Go figure! Maby it was the story. The Gaia theroy does not wash with me. Maby the Japanese creators familarity with it seemed like a good idea, but i could not follow it easily, and the elemental nature of the spiritual explination was too new age to engage my willing suspension of dis-belief. Also, the villian.... did he seem too...i donno...simple to any of you? I think i mean, that he fitted somewhat into Ken Beggs theorys of "Villian Develoupment". Kind of a predidposion to hate him, because the movie set him up as a "Straw Villian". It  ques you into his "Hissability" early on. Woulden't it be intresting, if a film did all that, made the moves to point out how wrong headed the "Army type" was....and in the end, he was right, and the "Hero type" was in deed a patsy? Has that ever happened? I bet it has. General Farquad...Hine, i mean Hine!....had a Motivation, the fact his wife and daughter were "Soul devoured" by the phantoms.....ewww!...but his anger and ego were all that realy drove him to , shall we say, "Mess with New New Yorks night life", so to speak. Humm....well, thats my story, and i'm sticking to it.  Your thoughts"

[John Morgan]

I enjoyed the movie even though the story was not very original.  It seemed to have a "Saturday morning kids show" plot.  I also agree that I did not get to "know" any of the characters.  The development of the main characters was, pardon the expression, only skin deep.  It was hard for me to identify with any of the motivations of the characters at all. Aki, Hind, et. al. just seemed flat.  A movie has a task of introducing main characters and getting the audience to either feel for or identify with at least one of them.  I have always rated a movie on this: if I leave the theater and feel that I have always known the characters, then it was a good movie.  If I leave the theater and don't care about the characters, then it was not a good movie.

Computer animation has a problem built into it.  The computer animators are trying to "act" through a computer puppet while also creating the environment around the character.  The problem is they get so bogged down in creating every last visual detail that they miss the point of a movie, to tell a story.  There is one scene I remember where the Copperhead (the jump ship) is flying toward the dock.  As it is flying, we are treated to an effect of the control surfaces moving. WHY? Why was it so important for us to see the control surfaces move?  Did it ADD to the story?  NO!  It was just some animator saying, "Look what I can do!"  Also there is the scene where the orbital cannon is opening up and getting ready to fire.  THERE WAS SO MUCH MOVEMENT DURING THE CANNON OPENING SEQUENCE THAT IT GOT CONFUSING.  Why have every square inch of the thing move to show that it is opening up?  Did it ADD to the story? NO! Once again, some animator was saying, "Look what I can do!"

Lately we have begun to see computer-animated movies begin to loose that "fantastic appeal."  Look at the movie Ice Age.  Some critics are starting to say it's almost a rehash of Monsters, Inc.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/IceAge-1112631/

How well do you think Ice Age would have been received if it were traditional animation?  In order for the genre to grow, computer animators and CGI companies had better work out good stories that are worth telling and not rely on CGI, or the Star Wars, Ep. 2 trailer, to pull people in.

[Mofo Rising]

I don't have a problem with the story or any of the plot points in FINAL FANTASY.  To me it's just typical anime or RPG fare.

Where I think the movie bogged down is in the character animations.  Sure, they look fantastic, but they overlooked one big point.  The models are terrible actors.  You need more than a voice to make a good actor, there are methods of moving and mannerisms that all create a character.  The models are just really bad at it.

The models in SHREK work because they aren't "realistic".  They have broader ranges of expression and movement that are easier to identify with because they are not so specific.  Read Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" where he describes how "simple" character designs are more appealing because of the fact that they are more universal.

So the photorealistic models of human characters was an interesting leap, it's just that there's quite a ways to go before they can capture the subtlety required to make one truly compelling.

[The Honn]

The one thing that always strikes me about computer animation is how smooth it is: too smoothy. The characters in FF moved so fluidly-yes it was pretty, but it took away alot of the realism. I guess you could argue that it added a dream-like surrealism to the film, but the aliens themselves (not to give away any plot points to people yet to see it) did that well enough. It would have worked better in live action.

But for what it was it was a pretty entertaining experiment with interesting ideas (and an ending that borrowed more than a little from Akira) that was worth the watch.

[J.R.]

I liked it only for the visuals. The story was really old to anyone who's watched even a little anime and the action sequences were dull and poorly directed. Is it just me or does it seem like the only people on the Earth in this movie are military or scientists? We didn't get a glimpse of normal people and how they were affected. I just felt that was a contributing factor to the overall cold, sterile feel the film had. And I seem to be the only person on Earth that didn't love Shrek. I had heard it was an intelligent, subversive comedy but I found little of that. I laughed only once, at a well-executed fart joke, but that's it.

[Vincent Price]

I thought it was a great movie, but that probably has something to do with my love for the FF games
I think for the people who play the games it was more of a new addition to the series, than a movie with a great story or character development or whatever.

[Brian Ringler]

Just throwing in my two cents that the title of this thread is one of the funniest I've seen in quite some time.

[Flangepart]

Thanks, Brian. I try! Mofo mentions Scott McCloud's book, and it does help explain the psycology behind comic/Animation character design. I think, indeed, the Lack of realisim is the key to an animated story. If the Voices are matched by a great story, and characters we can care about, then we want to watch. Thats why Shrek worked for me. Sure, donkey was mouthy, but that made a contrast with Shrek, that worked, as Shrek's annoyance with him, became that of the audience. ( It Talks! Yeah, it gettin' em' to shut thats the trouble!) Agine, it all worked for me. The personalites were people, and thats what we come to see, even if we know the visuals are just lines on paper. I love Avation art. The painting of a P-47 flying low over France, with a shot up German goods train belching steam from bullet holes, while the backgrounds are as blurry and indistinct as you would expect to see from a plane doing 350mph on the deck, captures a reality that we civilians will never experiiance, and makes it easier for us to imagin that part of time and history. Its what animators try and catch, and apply, in the storytelling. But, while the physical details are important, they don't stand alone. That comes from context. The Who, What, Where Why, and How of a tale, thats just as important for a storyteller as a journalist. Do the details of a spaceships control thrusters tell a story? No, they only make for an easier immersion into an other wise strange reality, by reminding us of how real thing work. Its a tool. But, the tool is not the story. That, is another kettle of fish. And the storyteller is the chef.

[john]

I enjoyed watching the animation, but like others, the story and characters just left me cold. I also found the story kind of confusing. I *THINK* understood it while I was watching, but now that it's been a couple months, I can't remember any of it other than phantoms killing people.

 To me, the use of well-known actors for the voices was dsitracting. Every time a character spoke, I'd be picturing the real actor.

 As for the animation of the 'actors', the best I've ever seen was in the animated TV show of Starship Troopers, I think it was called Roughnecks. I happened to be flipping channels and hit it one morning. I didn't know what it was at first, I just saw people in spacesuits moving around outside. I thought they were live actors until I saw their faces. The animation of their faces was typical CGI, but the body movements were perfect.

[Neville]

Funny thing, I did not really enjoy Shreck, but I did like this one. The visuals were wonderful and I found the story relly interesting. I was glad to see at last a really adult oriented animation film in a theatre, with dead people, suicide attempts an even a (eliptic) sex act. Only major problem I found is that supporting characters had been left quite undeveloped. I can understand this only partially, because animating those virtual actors was quite expensive, but giving them better dialogues should have been quite cheap.

What a pity there will be no sequel(s)! As I see it Final Fantasy was more important as a draft of future, even better films than a complete film by iself (though probably was the best Sci-fi movie I watched that year in theatres), but I heard shortly afterwards that the Square film division had gone bankrupt.