|  | | | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
 Incredible animation for its time Dec 10, 2008
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a science fiction film by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy role-playing games. This film was the first attempt to make a photorealistic rendered 3D feature film, and was released to theaters in the United States on July 11, 2001. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is only vaguely related to the Final Fantasy games. Dr. Sid's Gaia theory (a lifeforce within the planet to which the spirits belong) is reminiscent of the Lifestream/Mako in Final Fantasy VII. Also, Dr. Sid continues the tradition of having a character named "Cid" in the Final Fantasy games (although his name is spelled "Sid" instead of "Cid").
The first disc in this set contains the film, theatrical trailers, and production notes. The second disc includes two Easter eggs: one is for a storyboard of a scene that's not in the film, while the other shows what appears to be a physical bust of Aki that is digitized. The documentary on the DVD runs for about half an hour, and it talks about the animation, an explanation of the Gaia theory, the process for the 3D animation, the audio, and the music.
There are "character files" for Aki, Gray, Dr. Sid, Hein, Ryan, Jane, and Neil. For each one, there is footage of the character with a robotic-sounding female voice-over who provides information on the character, as well as the lead animator and voice actor for that character. The "vehicle scale comparisons" is in the same style as the "character files," but instead covers the following vehicles: Bandit, Black Boa, and Quatro. The "Final Fantasy Shuffle" allows you to re-edit the conference scene and to learn background information from the animators. However, I couldn't quite figure out the point of this feature. It appears you can only re-organize the footage from the film; there are no alternate angles to choose from.
"Trailer Explorations" talks about putting together the teaser and the trailer for the film. "The Gray Project" is a five-and-a-half minute piece which shows some footage that was put together as they were figuring out the designs for the characters. "More Boards/Blasts" has storyboards, footage from the film, and animatics mixed together. "Matte Art Explorations" shows the various mattes the animators used. "Joke Outtakes" are a series of "bloopers" that runs for almost two minutes. "Compositing Builds" shows the details of all the animation elements for one scene in the film.
The original opening that is included is very different from the scene that opened the film. Aki's dream is different, Aki's design is different, and she also already knows what her reason for the dreams are. Personally, I think the opening scene in the actual film is much better than this. "Aki's Dream" takes all the footage of Aki's dreams and puts them together into one continuous piece. "DVD-ROM Content" explains the DVD-ROM content on the DVD. Also, there's a hidden video of the characters from the film dancing to an instrumental of Michael Jackson's "Thriller."
The 3D animation in this film is very well done; there were times I had to remind myself the characters on the screen were animated, not real people. The film has pacifist themes, and military solutions tend to be either futile or are only temporarily effective. The film is also very pro-environment. The film tells a decent story, and is worth adding to your DVD collection if you enjoy this kind of a science fiction story.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Underrated gem of a film Dec 08, 2008
Final Fantasy has long been a watershed videogame series since its start, but did not get its due praise in the United States until series' first foray into 3D territory with its seventh installment, Final Fantasy VII. seeing the game's worldwide success, it didn't take long for Hollywood to start looking for a way to capitalize on the Final Fantasy name. A Final Fantasy movie was announced and went into production.
With the exception of Final Fantasy X-2 and the series of media based on the world and characters of Final Fantasy VII, each game in the Final Fantasy franchise bears all-new characters, settings, and stories, though themes and aesthetic aspects do recur throughout the series. And The Spirits Within carried on this tradition. This of course garnered criticism, since fans of the games preferred to see some of the characters and settings they loved from the games on the big screen (this complaint was remedied by the release of fanboy-friendly film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children a few years later). But from a storytelling standpoint, creating a story completely independent from the games was likely the most logical choice in order for the film to appeal to a much broader moviegoing audience that would likely be unfamiliar with the games. And since each game in the series takes hours upon hours of gameplay to complete, being able to encapsulate one of the games' stories in a 2-hour film would be impossible. The film also received criticism from "old school" Final Fantasy fans because it shared science fiction elements similar to some of the more recent installments of the game series rather than the medieval "sword and sorcery" elements of the franchise's earlier games. Some even complained about the film's overall lack of magic and monsters, aspects found in all of the games.
The film is set in the year 2065. Strange ghost-like alien creatures called Phantoms have seemingly invaded Earth, sucking the life force from anyone and anything they encounter. The planet is reduced to a barren wasteland, and humanity's remaining survivors fortify themselves within cities protected by enegry barriers to keep the Phantoms out. Aki Ross, a doctor working for the military and her mentor Dr. Cid work to complete an energy wave that will eliminate the Phantoms without the use of force, but the trigger-happy General Hein believes that the only way to defeat the Phantoms is by firing all available weaponry at them, even it may destroy the Earth in the process.
Though the film took several years and $140 million dollars to make (due to the fact that the technology used to make the film wasn't created until the movie went into production), the film only made back rough $40 million of its budget and is considered by some to be one of the biggest bombs in film history. Reviews were tepid, though some, like reknowned critic Roger Ebert, applauded the film's attempt at telling a deep story and melding of Westerner and Eastern philosophy and storytelling. The film's lukewarm reviews may have to do with the film's plot, which centers around the Eastern philosophy of the "Gaia Theory" that Western film critics and moviegoers were mostly unfamiliar with. The film's photorealism also came into question, since characters would look startling real at one moment, then more like dolls the next.
The Spirits Within marks the first time CGI (that's Computer Generated Imagery) was used to create deatailed, photorealistic human characters, right down to Aki's hairs. It also marks the first time (and as of the moment this review is being written, the only time) a Final Fantasy story is set on Earth, though a futuristic Earth. previous works in the Final Fantasy franchise were set on fantasy planets that were Earth-like in nature only. Our Earth was likely used at the film's setting so it would be unnecessary to explain a whole new world to the audience.
Though it is remembered by many as a failure (the film production company created by the game developers to make the movie went bankrupt from the $100 million dollar loss), it is much easier now to look back on the film as one of the better films to be made from or inspired by video games, and to appreciate it for its technological achievements and its attempt to tell a very un-Hollywood kind of story.
 Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within [Blu-ray] Sep 01, 2008
Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within [Blu-ray] (Purchased on 12/26/2007) This movie look great on Blu. Far better than the DVD version. only complaint I have is there is a decent amount of grain. For a CG film I expect no grain at all.
Pretty good Aug 08, 2008
This is a really nicely done CG movie. The visuals are amazing. It's a pretty entertaining movie because of the CG alone. It does get a little slow at times though. Even the first time I saw it, I found my mind wondering during some of the slow scenes. Some people don't like the fact that this movie has nothing to do with the games but it didn't bother me cause I'm not a fan of the games at all. I don't understand why a game where you put in commands and watch the action rather than do it yourself, is so popular. But that's a whole different story. Anyway, if you can get this movie on sale, like I did, then it's a good buy.
0 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Not bad... Jul 13, 2008
It's why SqareSoft failed and got bought be Enix, but I like the movie. Graphics are still impressive, the overall plot is good, though some of the dialogue is redundant, stupid an unnecessary.
|
| | |
