I watched Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within last night

Cafe Society
1

Yeah, finally.

Pretty derned impressive.
Scarey ghosts, ooooo.
Big guns.
Big explosions.
Peri Gilpin’s sexy voice.
The whole “Gia” angle was a little too much for my tastes ("we can’t prove “Gia” exists, but she’s this giant puddle of energy right under the spot where this creepy meteorite crashed into the Earth), but they kept it (mostly) internally consistent.

A few problems. Just little things. No big deal.
Explosions in space make noise. (Yeah, just try to get away from this convention. I dare you.)
When Aki was floating around in zero G, her hair stayed nice. (Must use a lot of products. I would have like to seen it fluf into a nimbus around her head. That would have been cool. Or she could have tied it back. Just something. Really, no big deal.)

Then there was the big problem I had. This alleged “big problem” took be 45 minutes to figure out it was bothering me. How bad could it be? It was just this tiny little thing that bugged me.

No one breathed.

They showed Gray swallow. They got most movements down pretty well. (Like most animation, gestures were too fluid.) They had Aki’s hair move sometimes. They even had (Peri Gilpen’s character)'s breasts bounce when she ran in the hangar. (Yeah, I noticed the breasts.) But no one breathed.

The Army (or whatever) guys were in hard armour, so you wouldn’t see them just sitting around breathing, but when they were running around you’d see something. A gasp or something. Nope. (They have a Space Marine guy gaspsing for breath in his spacesuit on an XBox game commercial now. I forget which game, but that’s not important.)

When they are standing (or sitting) around in their t-shirts, still no breathing.

It was a little, tiny detail that only bothered me once I noticed it. I just wanted to share. (The movie was way-cool though.)

Oh, and James Woods’ voice coming out of the big, beefy Evil Guy was wrong. The character needed to be smaller or they needed a bigger voice than James Woods. (Like Michael Ironsides- then they could save money 'cause Mike works cheap.) I’d vote for a smaller character, because James Woods is a great Evil Guy. (Yeah James Woods voiced Evil Guy, what did you think would happen when you let the Scarey Ghost Thingies into the city? Huh? Dope.)
-Rue.

2

I see to recall this flick getting reamed by the critics, unfairly I think. I thought it was a decent s-f movie, certainly flawed, but well worth watching in my opinion.

3

I also just saw it for the first time. I avoided it in theaters based on the reviews I’d read but my nephew bought the DVD so I figured what the hell.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty weak. It seems to me to fall into the category of “It’s sci-fi so we can do any damned thing we want. To hell with plausibility.” The spirit nonsense really bugged me.

Regarding the technical aspects, I was impressed with the quality in many respects but some things were wrong really detracted from it. Nice catch about the breathing – that’s the kind of thing that reduces realism in such a subtle way that you can’t relate to the characters but don’t know why. It’s especially apparent since there are so many extended scenes of a character just looking soulful, deep in thought, or whatever. RueDeDay made a nice observation about Aki’s hair in zero-g but I it doesn’t move right in gravity either. When she’s bent over looking down at something, her hair is still gently falling to her shoulders and being moved by the breeze. Weird.

I also found the character’s faces to be too perfect. Rather than normal people, they’re like soap opera characters. And the character voices – does anybody not know that James Woods voice signals bad guy? Hit us over the head with it why doncha?

The end result is that I watched this whole movie and never once could I bring myself to care in the slightest about the fate of any character.

Anyway, enough griping. If you’re interested, there’s a very insightful review of it available at Movie Geek Central.

4

Dude, I think it is Gaia, not Gia. It’s a real theory(belief) for some people.

5

I thought it was OK… The mystical “spirit” stuff bothered me a bit, not to mention the New Age take on Gaia which is all too common these days (I prefer a different take on Gaia).

On the whole, I still enjoyed it, but wasn’t enthralled.

Did anyone else notice that Final Fantasy and Star Wars: Episode I just should have switched subtitles?

Then we’d have Final Fantasy: The Phantom Menace and Star Wars Episode I: The Spirits Within.

Of course, Attack of the Clones is just part of a long, continuing brain fart at Lucasfilm…

6

Wouldn’t that have to be Star Wars Episode I: The Miti-Chlorians Within?

7

Final Fantasy bored me to tears.

the only thing that caught my eye was her hair. It was CG’ed nicely.

8

I watched it last night and had to have my husband explain the story to me because I was bored halfway through and started having major attention span problems.

The graphics were amazing (IMHO) and the story blew chunks.

Zette

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Wouldn’t that have to be Star Wars Episode I: The Miti-Chlorians Within?

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Sorry for the double post…I hit “submit,” stepped away for an hour, came back and it was still submitting so I thought it was stuck, and hit “submit” again. Weird.

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I personally really enjoyed the movie, but that’s because I am a big fan of the games. The movie was pretty similar to the games in theme, there weren’t any surprises (except for the fact that people actually died! People in your party are not supposed to die!) Issues that would have been explored a bit more in depth in a game format was glossed over for the movie, because obviously, you can’t have an 8 hr long movie.
All in all, I think it was unfairly criticized.

And why complain that it wasn’t plausible?! The movie is based on a series of games. What did you think the movie would be like?

12

I really did want to like it, but was very much not overwhelmed. I wasn’t really underwhelmed, either. I was just sort of…whelmed.

My general summary of my feelings towards it remains: I think they could have maybe rendered a couple thousand fewer individual strands of hair, and spent the money saved by that on better writers.

13

A minor correction to what Revtim said: Final Fantasy was not a standard sf film, it was a standard anime film. Which is why no one in America wanted to see it. Tentacles, exploding cities, spotty New Age mysticism, pointlessly downbeat ending… It’s just like Akira, except it’s a lot harder to convince yourself that it actually makes sense.

For what it’s worth, I really liked it. Loved the marines, I’ve been waiting for some more good space marine action ever since Aliens. Of course, thanks to Rue deDay, I’ll never be able to enjoy it again because I’ll constantly be checking to see if their breathing.

14

Wow… so much negativity here. I loved the movie. I bought it and must have watched it five times in as many days. Never did notice the breathing thing, though. :wink:

Actually, the Gaia theory isn’t any more outrageous than Materia from FFVII… in fact, IIRC FFVII had some Gaia-like elements to it in the form of the Weapons.

FTR I loved the movie. I thought the story was actually intriguing. :shrug:

15

I liked it. I think Miller has a point comparing it to anime. Guess I’m inundated with hokey sci-fi concepts, so I didn’t really notice it, except near the end where it went completely over the top.

Here’s what I thought the fatal flaw of the movie was, the computer models just aren’t very good actors. In fact they’re terrible. I have no problem seeing the models as human beings (although they are a little too perfect), but I can’t see them as actors. It’s just that their movements and facial expressions never quite built up to a character. They use all the mannerisms a bad actor would use.

Thinking it over, though, the “ghosts” were pretty cool. I should have seen this in the theater.

How much money did this movie lose?

16

Actually, I found the CG actors every bit as life-like and convincing as the actors in your average sf movie, lack of respiration not withstanding.
Mind you, I don’t mean that as a compliment.

17

I tried so hard to saty awake for the conclusion of this turd ball. It had a great look but that doesn’t hold my interest for more than 15 minutes. I need characters and story this had nothing. If I were playing this as a game perhaps I’d forgive the story but as a viewer I hated… HATED this coma inducing brain numbing lie back in the couch and shut your eyes hoping death will be quicker than this sleeper, I mean put to sleeper film.
But if you ask If I liked it I’d have to say I’m not sure I did as I missed most of it.

18

I haven’t seen it, but I sure wish they’d have based the movie on the story from Final Fantasy 3/6. I still get all teary eyed thinking about the opera house scene, and I think I’d have come out with mascara all down my cheeks if I ever had the chance to see that in something more than MIDI sound and 16 (32?) bit graphic, 2-D character “icons.”

Nothing I have read about the story is inconsistent with the theme of the Final Fantasy games. I’ve been meaning to rent the DVD and watch it, and this has reminded me that I should go do that…

19

Say, if no one minds my asking, how does “Final Fantasy: The Spiits Within” connect with the Final fantasy series of games…if at all? Most of the commercials I’ve seen for the games looked more like Sword & Sorcery type genres.

20

I’m still playing Final Fantasy 8 (my first FF game) and I gotta say there isn’t a whole lot of similarities.

Sure, the characters and style are similar, and there’s a guy named Cid in both, but there is no linkage in plot.

You can tell it’s made by the same people, though, because of the way things look, and the use of crawly sea creatures and giant space stations and ships, also mobs of evil monsters viewed from space.

As for the movie itself, I didn’t like it. The plot had serious problems and I had trouble staying awake. But it had some moments.

The game FF8, on the other hand, is a stroke of genius. Lots of depth and intricacy, and many moments where I was totally blown away. Far better than the movie. It was like having four very impressive games linked together.