A Film Review of...
Images (C) Columbia/Tristar
Genre: Sci-Fi/CG Animated
Cast (Voices): Ming Na, Alec Baldwin, James Woods, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland
Synopsis: Based on the famous computer game series. The year is 2065 and Earth is under siege. A meteor has crashed onto the planet, unleashing millions of alien creatures which roam the Earth. Decimating field and city alike, these predators are threatening to extinguish all life on the planet. The survivors of the initial onslaught have retreated to barrier cities built to protect the inhabitants of Earth from the marauding invaders. But the few cities around the globe are in decline and time is running out. Yet, the sprit of humankind is resilient and embodied in the brilliant and beautiful Dr. Aki Ross. Determined and capable, Aki strives as Earth's last hope against extinction. With the guidance of her scientific mentor, Dr. Sid, and the aid of the Deep Eyes military squadron led by the courageous Captain Gray Edwards, Aki races to save both the Earth and herself.
Terminally infected by an alien, Aki holds the key to discovering the secret to defeating the alien predators. But her quest is jeopardized by the militant opposition of General Hein, who plots to unleash a massive space cannon that will annihilate the aliens and possibly the Earth. As the clock ticks down, Aki searches within her dreams to find an answer to the alien mystery, while scouring the Earth to collect the eight spirit waves she believes will save the planet. Fighting both the enemy within and the scheming General Hein, who would destroy the Earth in order to save it, Aki valiantly pursues her Final Fantasy.
Film Review: "Final Fantasy" the movie is a ground breaker in terms of CG animation. The designers have used the sci-fi genre to conjour up imaginative structures whilst concentrating on realistic humans as well - their facial movements aren't perfect but hair, skin, limb movement, etc. is frightening real at times. On a visual level its a pure stunner, but as a movie it turns out to be a real fizzer of an effort. At first it starts of well with a sequence in old NYC where the threat feels quite creepy and the animation's effect is still new to us. After this though it begins to sink into basically a bad "Aliens" clone - the dialogue chokes on its own exposition and cheesiness with all sorts of religious themes which are fine at first as they're used sparingly but then basically overwhelm the story in the last act. The visuals stay solid throughout the runtime though there's something disturbingly cold about watching these sort-of humans romantically involved, in fact emotionally only one time in the film is there any effect - when Aki describes a young girl who was one of the spirits. Its a shame really considering these human creations such as Sutherland's amazing looking Dr. Ross are stuck with very stock characteristics, James Woods' one-dimensional bad guy proves really atrocious. In the end FF feels like a longer, more expensive looking version of those CG animated cartoons on network TV, the script is more adult aimed but the writing is just as weak. Does this set a new standard for films? For animation techniques it sort of does, for movies - no way. If only they'd spent a good portion of their large budget on the script, it could've been so much more. With sound its a rather confusing religion sermon, without though its a work of art. - Garth Franklin
| "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" Special Edition DVD Details In Brief (Region 1) Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 106mins Versions: 16:9 Enhanced Widescreen, 4:3 Letterboxed Aspect Ratio: 2.35: 1 Sound: Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 & 2.0 Language & Sub-Titles: English, French Commentary: Track 1 by Co-Director Moto Sakakibara, Sequence Supervisor Hiroyuki Hayashida, Artist Tatsuro Maruyana, Phantom Supervisor Takoo Noguchi. Track 2 by Animation Director Andy Jones, Editor Chris S. Capp, Staging Director Tani Kunitake. Isolated Score Track with Elliot Goldenthal commentary Documentaries: 'The Making of FF' Interactive Documentary, 'Compositing Builds' & 'Matte Art' Featurette, 'Trailer Explorations' Featurette, 'The Gray Project' Rough Edit Clips: Theatrical Trailers, Alternate Opening, Dream Sequence Clip, Joke Outtakes Clip, 'Thriller' Music Video, Other: Re-Editing Shuffler, Character and Vehicle Biographical Clips, Storyboards, Production Notes Region 1 vs. Region 4: No Region 4 DVD Available. |
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DVD Review: Whilst FF was a failed masterpiece, the DVD is anything but - proving to be certainly amongst the Top Ten releases of the year.
Disc 1: After a superb animated menu comes the movie - as its computer generated the transfer is done entirely digitally so its looks and sounds fantastic, arguably better than it did in the cinema. This is right up there with Disney's "Dinosaur" transfer. There's two commentary tracks - the first with the animation directors is all in Japanese and they laugh their heads off every 30 seconds. The second track is in English which is not as fun sounding, but does ok - its more personal reactions of the speakers to what they liked and disliked. Another interesting feature is the ability to play the 'Boards/Blasts' option which swaps every few seconds between storyboards, animatics, and final versions of scenes - and runs the entire length of the film. There's also both theatrical trailers and previews of "Starship Troopers", "Men in Black", "Metropolis" and the tenth "Final Fantasy" game.
Disc 2: Kicking off with a nice offbeat 'Film Set' style opening, the second disc has a ton of stuff. The big extras feature is a 30-minute 'making of' documentary with an unusual twist, during it about 12 little buttons pop up and if you select 'enter' you'll be taken to short one-minute featurettes about various things such as storyboarding sequences, facial mapping of all the main characters, etc. The doco is quite good, and while these little 'extra offshots' are fine, none of them really grab your attention. "Character Files" and "Vehicle Scale Comparisons" are ten one-minute sales pitch-like ads for the seven major characters and three vehicles used throughout - shown off is storyboards, final edits, fake dossiers and the like all done to a spooky female voiceover. One of the better features is the "FF Shuffler" which spilts the conference room scene into 12 different segments and allows you to re-edit them in whatever order you wish (its tricky but can prove fun if you work at it).
"Trailer Explorations" is a 5-minute featurette with a Studios USA rep talking about the trailer release schedule and screens the first teaser along with an expanded full trailer I'd never seen before. "The Gray Project" gives us glimpses at rough footage and animatics from the CG short film which formed the basis of the FF movie - sadly most of this is very rough which is a shame as high quality final versions of it have been screened (not sure why Sony decided against including it) which contains dialogue and shows off the much hated daughter of Aki character who was thankfully dumped.
"More Boards/Blasts" swaps between storyboards/final footage of the Aki/Gray meeting & kiss. "Matte Art Explorations" is a 7-minute featurette on the various backgrounds that were digitally created for certain scenes with a German animator explaining elements. "Aki's Dream" cuts all of the dream sequences from the movie into one ten minute sequence (and it makes more sense), "Original Opening" gives us a different dream opening with three astronaut suited guys exploring a volcano crater when one of them has their spirit sucked out of them. This sequence is actually pretty cool, but then its Aki in the shuttle giving a new exposition filled intro which is rather dull. "Compositing Builds" is a seven-minute sequence set to bad techno music and basically shows several dark shots at different stages of the animated process. There's no voiceover or on-screen text so unless your an animator its all a bit confusing.
Then comes the two highlights - 'Joke Outtakes' and the 'Music Video'. 'Outtakes' gives us several animatics which are warped comical versions of scenes in the movie (Gray calling Aki bitch and she kills him, Dr. Sid survives a sharp car turn with a muffler through his head). Hidden in the bottom corner is the 'Thriller' music video which takes the zombie dance sequence from Michael Jackson's unforgettable music video and has the cast dancing to it - no words from the song are used (copyright infringement no doubt) but this is hilarious, especially one shot with Dr. Sid.
While the film aint up to scratch, the DVD gives it a decent comeback and is worth getting for the extras alone. - Garth Franklin
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