This is topic Final Fantasy in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Don Anderson (Member # 397) on 07-11-2001, 05:36 PM:
I have never played the game, nor do I know anything about it. But, we screened the print last night and I was totally amazed. I actually hand goose-bumps on my arms. No, the a/c wasn't blsting! This movie is very well written, and the computer generated images are mind-boggling. The bulk of the characters actually looked human. "Doc" was unbelievable, and looked some human that it was scary. I think that the hands and the hand movement were the only way to tell that the character was a CGI. I highly recommend this little gem. 105 minutes of quality entertainment.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-11-2001, 06:24 PM:
The game SUCKS (as do most PlayStation and PlayStation2 games). The movie has no choice but to exceed it!
Posted by JC Cowles (Member # 914) on 07-11-2001, 08:12 PM:
I was pleasantly suprized by this movie. Being from a background in graphic design I had a deep appreciation for this film. I love the attention to detail in the film. I will likely see it again.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-13-2001, 01:01 AM:
I enjoyed this movie. The plot wasn't spectacular and some of the voice acting could have been better, but the graphics were awesome! Although they didn't look as bright as they do in the TV commercials (hmmmm). Sometimes it looked like I was watching a dubbed Japanese movie, though. Was lip sync even a consideration during development? I only saw two or three scenes where I could see aliasing (I was watching in 35mm). But this movie was good if only for the visuals. The guy (Sid) who beared a resemblence to John F Allen was extremely real. All of the other characters were a bit stiff in comparison.The best looking all-computer rendered movie yet! It beats the hell outta Toy Story, etc for CGI.
Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 07-16-2001, 08:56 PM:
Saw this film tonight on an IMAX (oops, sorry)...GIANT screen. Took my son who is an ultra-avid game player. He enjoyed it, but wasn't sold on it. He says Final Fantasy author plots it in his head before writing it. This means he tends to FORGET some of the plot points while actually writing the stories.
As for the lip-sync, I was puzzled by this also. Many of the words looked to be perfect, but other looked WAY off. Then, I started really looking at the picture in detail, and noticed that the characters did not have a tongue! Look especially when a character says a word with the letter "S". Our tongues rise on that letter, and you can see it when people use that sound. These character's mouths were empty, so it looked out of sync when actually the lips were perfect but the tongue was non-existant. I'm sure it would have cost a few million more to animate this. On a small computer screen, you would never see this, but with a 60' picture, the details become more evident.
My son also mentioned that the Sid character was created last, so it a little better than the rest.
As for the end of the movie, it looked to me like Lemon Kynan broke the Sampo again. (That's for all the classic MST3K fans out there!)
Mark Lensenmayer
Posted by Christopher Santapaola (Member # 1015) on 10-28-2001, 11:05 PM:
I just saw this movie yesterday on dvd and I think they must have better matched the voices to the charaters because I only noticed a couple of parts where the lips did not match the sound. I did notice that the tounges were missing but wrote it off as small in comparison to the other detail in the animation. The texturing on the surfaces was especialy nice and seemed pretty elaborate. The story line was excellent if not a bit different from the games (I have only played 1-4 but i beleave it goes up to 9 or 10 now). On a side note the DVD has some excellent features well worth geting but I won't get into that now. ------------------
-Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that walks, and struts its hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.