very good; I appreciated the fact that it didn’t talk down to the audience, and instead expected the audience to figure out exactly what’s going on.
did the whole gaia thing remind anyone of the materia theme in Final Fantasy 7?
Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! 
I haven’t gotten to see it yet, and I’m the biggest Final Fantasy Freak in the entire known universe.
I just got the trailer for FFX last night. Oh man… oh man… oh man! First FF game for the PS2… I’m so excited!
They’re also releasing a playstation version of FFIV along with the Chrono Trigger series. I’m gonna get that the day it comes out too. FFIV was by far my most favorite FF game. I think it had one of the best stories.
Okay… sorry… this is why you never bring up Final Fantasy around me. 
aahh! aeegoo! [eek!]
good news: Final Fantasy Chronicles is out; saw it at Electronics Boutique yesterday. Don’t know if I’ll buy it just yet; never played IV when it was on the Super, and really don’t care for chrono trigger. but, again, it’s availably for buying at your nearest retailer.
Pheh. Xenogears all the way!
But I still want to see the movie. It seems that, most of the time, the video-game writers are more creative and original then the regular Hollywood hacks.
It’s weird. I saw the commercial for this movie, and my wife and I were both startled.
She looks exactly like the Final Fantasy Babe.
I saw it last night, and to quote my webpage:
"It is one of the most original movie plots to come along in a long time, with some of the greatest computer animations to hit the big screen. I can honestly say I was impressed. The emotions and feelings were portrayed perfectly (which hasn’t been done since Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop).
Needless to say that the fans of the console/computer game of the same name were not disappointed, although you had to look a little deeper in some places to see it. One of the main characters, Dr. Sid, is a play on Cid from Final Fantasy 7, and in a long sweeping shot of a mountain range you can see a cave that looks just like the caves in Final Fantasy 3. I am sure there were others that I missed, but I am sure that fans will pick up the fact that the creators of the film did not forget them.
Finally I have to give kudos to the casting director for the voice talent. Donald Sutherland, Ving Rhames, James Woods, among many others gave this film life. The distinct voices gave the movie a feel of individuality that if it wasn’t there would have made it another cookie cutter Sci-fi flick."
Umm, robgruver, there’s always a Cid in the later Final Fantasys. I think Sid from the movie was closer to 6/3’s Cid than 7’s. But the whole Gaia thing really did remind me of the Lifestream from FF7.
Did anyone else feel that the general looked like Seifer from Final Fantasy 8? Just older and with darker hair. And no scar, of course. As for the girl…all the Final Fantasy girls are starting to look alike. They all look like Riona. Hmm. Has the charater disiner got a girlfriend or something?
the girl actually reminded me of Laguna. but, then again, I always thought Laguna was a bit effeminate.
You have once again confirmed that you are a most fortunate man. You must have been reeeaaal good for about your last 10 incarnations–or maybe the groundhogs have burned off the karma for you…
FWIW, I started a spoiler threadhere for more discussion.
Yeah, I saw it early Wednesday morning and posted a thread as soon as I got home, but hardly anyone noticed. Here is the link.
For what it’s worth, my thread was the original Final Fantasy Movie thread(since it came out, of course). I saw it first! Nah, Nah, Na, Nah, Nah!
I’m so childish.
Here is my review(spoiler-free).
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=77695
And here is Roger Eberts review. He gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 4. He only gave A.I. 3 stars.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-rog11.html
I am such a Final Fantasy freak. I have played all of them from 2-9, including the original nintendo ones.
I was informed of this earlier today by my roommate who is a huge FF buff (I like the games, but I dont get THAT invovled in anything but flirting and baseball). There is a Cid in FF3 and 7 that I was aware of. Thanks for the correction.
For what it’s worth, here’s my review. In general, I liked it okay, but I think for a lot of reasons the general public won’t care for it at all. More details in the review.
That actually might be a good topic for debate: What will account for the difference in opinion between those who love it (based on message board traffic, mostly gamers and anime fans) and those who don’t (apparently, everybody else I’ve talked to)?
Went out with a bunch of guys from work last night to see it (all college students). We all thought it was a pretty sweet movie. And yeah the Gaia reminded me of the Lifestream in 7. Still all in all it’s a movie I’ll probably go see a second time around just in case I missed anything the first time around.
Actually, I thought they were talking down to the audience. Some conversations in the movie come across as contrived to explain things to the audience long after we get it already.
There were a number of common themes that carried over from the games. There’s usually a sublimated environmentalist message in the Final Fantasy games, and in the movie it was that Gaia was a being, and that the phantoms were the ghosts of another planet that had destroyed itself as we were about to destroy the earth. The technology used in the movie is made out of the life force in question, just like in the games, but in the movie this doesn’t taint the use of this technology, unlike in the games.
After I realized that the old scientist’s name was Sid, I was disappointed that there was no Biggs or Wedge.
Another recurring theme from the games, and from Japanese-style RPGs in general, is unfathomable destruction. In Final Fantasy games, I talk to everyone in every town and finish all quests I can in the first visit, because the odds are pretty good that the next time I see the town it’ll be windblown rubble. I’ve always assumed that mass destruction was such a common theme in Japanese Sci-Fi because Japan as a nation has weathered earthquakes and sea storms and nukes. Where in American Sci-Fi, you get “red shirts” – characters whose entire role in a story consists of getting killed so that the audience knows that death is afoot – in Japanese Sci-Fi, towns, kingdoms and sometimes entire civilizations get destroyed, sometimes several.
One recurring theme from the games that does not appear in the movie is hokey Freudian, new-agey psycobabble. Nobody has abandonment issues, or is recovers repressed memories. There are dream sequences from which the main character gleans insight into her dilemma, but this was far less hokey than it usually is in the games.
I saw it yesterday morning. I thought it was the most visually beautiful thing I had ever seen. The animation is almost flawless. Unfortunately, like every other SF movie I’ve ever seen, there are holes in the plot you could drive a Mac truck through.
I think the FF games are the best RPGs I’ve ever played (and I’ve played almost all of them). Can’t wait for X!
Visually Stunning. Horrible Fucking Plot. That’s what I thought.
I think they could have perhaps rendered a thousand or so fewer individual strands of hair, and spent that money on some better writers.
I’m glad I saw it in the theater, though. Very nice eye candy.
Save for the first (and maybe II (the real II, for the NES, not IV), which I haven’t played far enough to know) there’s a Cid in every FF.
(I don’t think any of these are really spoilers)
III: Airship Engineer
IV: Ditto
V: Scientist, expert on the crystals.
VI: Scientist, expert on Espers
VII: Engineer and Astronaut
VIII: Headmaster of Balamb Garden
IX: Regent of Lindblum, Airship designer.
I agree that he really feels like the Cid from VI. (Although with a bit of Cid IV, too. Too much of a sense of humour for VI’s.)
Honestly. I thought it was boring. Impressive animation, but you can only marvel at the talent it must have taken to animate the movie for so long before you’d like something else to think about.