Final Fantasy is a computer generated
nearly photo-realistic sci-fi adventure. It
involves some nonsense about spirits, reviving
Gia and aliens on a post-apocalyptic (yawn)
Earth. Though how the air was breathable in
a world without oxygen providing life was not
explained.
Final Fantasy was made by the
Japanese with a huge nod to the good-money-paying-mugs
- sorry movie-goers - in the west. This is the
movies greatest strength and greatest weakness.
The the greatest weakness of the western influence
was the seen-it-all-before hollywoodisation
of the movie. For example, the now-compulsory
phrase "gotta get outta here" was
used about ten times. "We gotta get outta
here!" "Get us outta here!" "Lets
go!! "I can't get you outta there!"
style conversations riddle the action. The greatest
blessing of the western influence was that the
graphics didn't have that Manga look. Thank
God. The manga look is weird, cutesy and anaesthetic
to my English eyes.
Having said that, the graphics did have a bit
of an eastern feel to them, they were free of
the Disney/Pixar-like cutesiness. Again, Thank
God!
The lead role, Dr Aki Ross, was played, interestingly,
by an "actress". And she *was* cute,
especially when she furrowed her eyebrows -
that made her so sweet! Amazing to think that
such a wonderful lass has no heart, no mind,
that her body is emptiness attired in an ephemeral
polygon shell. She has the most expensive hair
do in history. Hair is complex stuff, hence
hard to animate. Aki's hair alone took a third
of the rendering time of the whole movie, and
god knows how much R&D and animation. It
looks
real.
It was weird seeing chemistry between two realistic
- yet artificial - human leads. Their chemistry
beat what most recent Hollywood "actors"
can concoct hands down (
Evolution
anyone?). Love, it appears, *is* something you
can simulate on a computer, at least in this
context.
Final Fantasy is so bloody sterile.
That lifeless, apocalyptic look is soooooo boring!
You could see why this was appealing (in terms
of effort) for the film makers though. A scorched
desert is far easier to render on a computer
than a living forest.
Some of the visuals were novel, but the story
didn't grab my imagination, the movie didn't
hold me emotionally. They obviously got the
computer to generate the script too. But the
CGI visuals are a novelty, at least now in 2001,
no doubt they'll age horribly over the years.
The CGI visuals, especially the CGI humans,
are the only reason I went to see Final Fantasy
in the first place, and came out thinking -
ho hum.
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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Refreshingly, most of the cast die, including
one of the leads. This is something that
American-fueled Hollywood corporations
shy away from now, even for horror/thriller
genres (for an example of this, see my
review of Jurassic
Park III) for fear of overturning
the accursed feel-good factor. American
producers/audiences are wimps wanting
happy ever after endings. Anyone care
to guess why most Hollywood films are
so breathtakingly predictable?
Meanwhile the end showed the bird of prey
(how the hell did that survive on a lifeless
planet?) flying over a river, but the
land still looked arid. Was I missing
something here, shouldn't there have been
thriving forests and lush grasslands?
Maybe the budget ran out. So Gia was not
resurrected after all!
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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Aki wins the Oscar for best Actress. That would
be nice!
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