CG with a side of Shinto dogma -
February 20, 2001 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot.
There is more in heaven and earth than can be discussed in Sakaguchi's
movie... I hope.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
I originally had some discussion here about how what we've been hearing
about the FF Movie relates to Neil Gaiman's thoughts on translating
Princess Mononoke, and the differences between US and Japanese audiences.
But it didn't end up making any sense - just read
the
interview yourself
and come to your own conclusions.
Onward.
| Some things just don't
translate well |
| Chris-
So, a guy gives a bad (yet only mildly
coherent)(how's that for card-stacking?) review to a
rough preview of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
First off, as someone with knowledge of the movie
making process and someone with frequent experience in
3D media, the comments made by the reviewer at
aint-it-cool-news don't worry me. The animation isn't
done, there are pieces that aren't fully rendered, and
final adjustments need to be made. With some movies,
adjustments are made until a week before release.
Secondly, the reviewer complains about the plot
and equates being "Japanimation-y" with being "full of
'metaphysical crap.'" This movie is a Japanese movie.
For marketing reasons, it will be opening in America
first and will target the American audience, but it is
still a Japanese movie. Final Fantasy games are full
of this "metaphysical crap" (Isn't it a rule that we
have to save the world in a fight to the death in
another dimension?) and there's not much complaining
over that. But can this movie appeal to the
non-RPG/Anime-acquainted crowd. That is the true
question. Take Bill, the average Newspaper Movie
Reviewer (Who gives four stars to Titanic), and sit
him down in front of Neon Genesis Evangelion and he's
not going to get it. But I'm glad that Sakaguchi made
the plot into an anime-style story. Because taking
something that is strongly Japanese-stylized and
making it into an American-style movie has a bad track
record. Must I mention Godzilla?
To sum it up: His review should worry no one.
-VinceXII the Movie Buff
|
What's a little worrying about this letter is the unspoken assumption that
the unwashed masses are incapable of understanding "Japanese" media like
RPGs and anime. Bill, the average Newspaper Movie Reviewer likely gave
Titanic 4 stars not because of the sappy, cliched romance, but because it
is, from a purely technical standpoint, excellent movie making. Bill's
probably seen more pretentious symbolic crap in his film school days than
any of us ever will or should - he just hasn't been brought up to believe
that a long metaphysical rant just before the final boss means something
is really deep.
The big problem here is that the FF Movie does look to be
strongly Japanese, except that it's targeted towards the US and US
audiences (and hopefully US tastes). This isn't a favor Square's doing us
out of the goodness out of their hearts - they need to make money off of
this thing, and they'll make far more if it's a popular movie in the
States than if it's a popular movie in Japan. Of course, it'd be great for
it to be hugely popular on both sides of the Pacific, and there's no rule
that says a movie can't be artistically excellent and massively popular at
the same time. (Hang on, I'll think of an example sooner or later...)
The great irony here is that Square seems to be doing with the movie
what many accused it of doing with its PSX games - relying on great
graphics to sell a crap plot. I strongly reject the idea that the games
were put together in that manner, but I can tell you that if Square does
try that with the movie, they'll crash and burn quite spectacularly.
| Trust no one |
| Chris:
I have come to the conclusion that nobody's opinion is worth a damn. Not
even mine. Especially not mine.
I entirely wrote off Paper Mario as crap, long before it came out. It was a
judgment based on: being tired of Mario games, cynicism about Nintendo, and
a vague mistrust of all things 2D. Ed's review is good. In fact, the GIA
reviews in general are the best I've seen. But that review would never have
changed my mind. Why? Because "what those facts mean about the quality of
the game" aren't "obvious" at all. Game attributes that I have historically
enjoyed A, B, C, and D tend to add up to a game I'd rather pour hot coffee
in my eyes than play. Likewise, features that I am certain will suck both
individually and collectively A - D all too often add up to the game I spent
24 hours in the last 72 enjoying (Paper Mario).
I am coming to believe that it's all a wildly subjective crap-shoot, where I
can't even reliably mistrust my own opinions, let alone anyone else's. So,
the review of the FF movie doesn't just fail to distress me--it fails even
to register. It's not that I'm not interested. It's just that I am no longer
capable of believing that anything anyone says isn't wrong, most especially
this part I'm saying just now. Besides, all those movies that strangled on
the gratuitious metaphysical stuff are secretly, shamefully, and against my
better judgment, very likely to be my favorites.
--DarkLao
P.S. Are you really sure you want to lose the philosophical stuff? Maybe
Rand should have junked all that Objectivism crappola that Atlas Shrugged
got bogged down in. Would've been more entertaining as a romance, eh?
|
Just to be clear here: Atlas Shrugged, and the rest of Ayn Rand's
work, is complete crap, with or without the philosophical rants. If the
FF Movie is anywhere near that level of atrocity, I'll fly
to Japan and personally perform a mercy killing on Sakaguchi.
It is the case that the charm of some few games can't adequately be
expressed in words - I can't defend Saga Frontier 2 against most of the
charges leveled against it, nor can I clearly express why I think it's
such a great game... but it is. At the same time, I completely disagree
with the idea that it's impossible to describe all, or even most games in
a review or critique. A review may not be able to nail down your personal
opinion on a game, but it does provide an excellent base line for
comparison. Chrono Cross and FF9, for whatever reason, didn't blow me away, but
they are excellent games, and their respective reviews describe why. That
review of the FF Movie is not the final word on the work, as the reviewer
himself kept pointing out, but I do think it's an accurate guidepost as
to what we can expect from the film.
| Self hatred on a
hemisphere-wide scale |
| Hey Chris!
When I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the first time, it was at
the Rotterdam Film Festival.
Immediately at the beginning, it happened. Li Mu Bai was talking about
his meditation, and said that it somehow felt wrong, and someone behind me
sniggered. Then, with the gravity-defying action scenes, more people
sniggered. At the end, the entire audience sniggered at Li Mu Bai's lines.
I hate us westerners for our down-to-earth attitude. Everything that
happens in any media HAS to be taken literally, and if that's just not
possible, we don't even take it seriously anymore. We think symbolism is for
religious nuts.
So you can imagine my complete dismissal of the article about The Spirits
Within's test screening, as it is obvious this man wouldn't know suspension
of disbelief if it punched him in the gut.
Sir Farren, the anti-empirist. |
Suspension of disbelief is one thing, and symbolism is something else.
Both are alive and well in Western art - they're just much, much more
subtle than you might be used to seeing in anime or RPGs. (For example,
look at the Lord of the Rings cycle - far from being just a massive
fantasy adventure, it's also a massive meditation on good and evil, largely
from a Catholic perspective. Doesn't mean Gandalf stops every five minutes
to defend the doctrine of Papal infallibility, tho.)
On the contrary, I'd say CTHD is one of the best possible examples of
how to do Eastern beliefs right in a movie. Mu Bai is governed to
his very core by his beliefs and training, but he almost never explains
why this is the case - instead he shows it, in every possible frame,
just by who he is and what he does. The battles between Mu Bai and Jen say
volumes about the tradeoffs between freedom and responsibility, far more
than could be said in any 10 page rant on the subject. The movie's done
well in the US precisely because it manages to say what it needs to in an
entertaining, invigorating way, without beating it's audience over the
head.
And I'm truly sorry you saw the film with a bunch of jerks in the
audience, but both times I saw the film, I can say the sniggering ended
fairly quickly, and by the end of the film you could have heard a pin
drop.
On carpet.
| Just keep telling
yourself it has nothing to do with FF |
| Like everyone else, I will watch the movie.
But it will not be Final Fantasy that I watch.
It will be a movie created by Square called "The
Sprits Within".
-Det |
Good idea, I may have to try that myself.
| Gotta catch 'em all,
redux |
| In the words of an anonymous GIA staffer...
"'Must find eight phantoms'? Great, just what we need -- tired RPG cliches
played out on the big screen!"
That was said around the time of the first trailer, and this test review
just further confirms what I've been fearing: Square isn't writing a movie,
they're writing a two-hour RPG script (which is what a thirty-five hour RPG
script looks like without random battles. *rimshot*).
Seriously though, most anime and RPGs suffer from what I like to call the
"Nastasha Factor," after the pacifist Weapons Specialist from Metal Gear
Solid. Nastasha, for those who haven't played the game, was the type of
woman who, when Snake picked up a mine detector, would immediately bombard
him with statistics of children killed by land mines each year in
third-world countries. It's about as far from badass as you can get, and
destroys a large part of the game's mood and tone.
This is a problem in much of Japanese story-telling (or at least anime and
games, genres whose authors never seemed to learn "show, don't tell."). I
can say I'm disappointed, but I can't say I'm surprised.
- Andrew |
Too true... except you always had the option of just not tuning into
Nastasha's channel if you didn't want to hear from her. We have no such
luxury in a movie.
I'm a little hesitant to endorse your last paragraph - it's not that I
don't agree with you, but rants are so much a part of RPGs and anime that
I'm not sure you can have one without the other. Sad to say, if you have
any kind of restraint or subtlety in communicating the theme in these
genres, you may not really still have an RPG or piece of anime left.
Still, I'm not willing to give up just yet... maybe they'll make an FF
Movie 2 and put Matsuno in charge of it, or something.
| How high is your
tolerance for metaphysical crap? |
| With all of the hullabaloo going on about reviews,
I suppose providing a review of the Final Fantasy: TSW review would
not only be redundant, but would grate on peoples nerves as well. Too
bad!
1: The first major flaw that I saw with this persons review of the movie is
that he's constantly comparing the film to other Sci-fi movies. He walked into
that theater thinking "I wonder if this is going to be like Blade Runner, or
maybe more like Battlefield Earth". You not only belittle the movie by comparing
it to other films, you put yourself into a mindset with expectations of how everything
is going to be placed, demeaning the personal value of the movie. Unfortunately, this
is probably the only way that you're going to let millions of people who weren't at the
screening know what the movie was like. It's too sad that comments like those are
going to demoralize potential viewers into the same attitude.
2: One [censored]ing statement about the game series. the reviewer failed to
mention that the "hit video game" that the movie is based on features plotlines
overflowing with "'metaphysical crap.'" Not only that, but said series is one
of the best selling Video Game franchises of ALL TIME. People sure must like
this metaphysicla crap.I know, in order for this movie to make its (obscene ammount
of) capitol back it has to appeal to the moviegoing public, but that doesn't mean that it
has to be shallow and soley about pyrotechnics and explosives. And the whole part
about eastern movies not ready for America? Look at the 10 Academy award
nominations for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (beautiful flick, if I may add a random tangent)
3: a previously stated point, but I'll feel free to reitereate: If you tell
someone that something's supposed to be photo-realistic and as lifelike as
non-life can get; they will intentionally pick it apart to find its flaws, however
small that they may be. Not only removing the viewer from their temporary
suspention of disbelief, but also jeprodizing any sense of awe at what the art
_does_ accomplish in the way of realism.The reviewer does verify the roughness
of the cut, but ends on a not-too-optimistic view of the movie. A big no-no if you
want to enjoy anything about the film.
All of what I said could be wrong. Hey, I wasn't there. What this goes to prove,
I suppose, is exactly how a gamer will defend something they know next to nothing
about because they feel it as an extention of themselves: they connect with
it, feel it, and know it. The next person to tell me that games aren't an artform
and that gaming isn't a subculture of ts own gets a swift kick in the ass.
PISCES- who will wait in line for FF:TSW longer than he waited in line for
Episode 1, just to get a healthy dose of that old-fashioned Squaresoft "'Metaphysical Crap'"
|
1. Nearly every piece of art ever created has to contend with
preconceptions, assumptions, and inevitable comparisons. It's the job of a
truly great artwork to leave all that in the dust... and the remainder don't
have the right to complain otherwise.
2. I don't think cause and effect has been proved with regard to
metaphysical crap and RPGs - the default assumption seems to be that the
metaphysical crap is what sells the games, but perhaps said metaphysical
crap is actually preventing the games from being even more popular. After
all, I don't remember what each individual character said to Kefka before
the final battle in FF6, but everybody remembers his retort to all
their platitudes.
3. I don't think you can blame the reviewer in any way, shape, or form
for commenting on the roughness of the cut, since he made such a big deal
over how stupid it was to be showing it this early to begin with. The only
thing I can point out is that I believe lip synching is one of the last
things that's done to animation, but I could be mistaken about that as
well.
In short, I agree with your desire to defend the film, but just
wanting something to be good doesn't mean it will be, or is.
| Cynic's corner |
| CJ,
Did we honestly expect any better from Final Fantasy: The Movie? It's just
a $180 commercial in my eyes, one that I'll end up seeing just so Squaresoft
won't go bankrupt. But frankly, it was a bad idea from the very beginning.
Think about it: does this movie have any other edge than the whole
photo-realistic CG angle?
-Red Raven, hoping Square learns its lesson
|
Dunno if I'm ready to be that down on the film yet, and after FF8 I
think there was good reason to be hyped about what Sakaguchi might be
capable of... but you may be right. All we can do now is wait and see, I
guess.
Closing Comments:
That was kinda depressing - doing an autopsy on a movie none of us has
actually seen yet. But what's this column for, if not for such occasions?
For tomorrow's topic... well, I'm kinda worn out this week, and I'm
hoping people'll be able send in some good reader suggested topics for
Thursday. And for now, I think I'd just like to toss out a fluff topic: out
of all the RPG characters you've seen, which have worked the best for you?
Who was the bravest hero, which couple had the best romance, and who was
the most believable, when all was said and done? See you Wednesday.
-Chris Jones, knows nothing
about philosophical ranting, obviously
|
