"...it's a good bet that the awkwardness found here will develop into a more sure-footed and imaginative approach in future reviews.."
FF:TSW isnt perfect, but in my opinion it doesn't have his share of shortcomings, it has some, but they are minors, and easy to forgive.

"Viewers can easily guess at the answers to this and other questions, but they're the sort of thing that the movie should have made clear."
Yeah, of course, because you couldn't put on your brain to think about it. It also seems that you failed to turn it on to type your review. So, a pretty good film = 3 ? Very clear, indeed.

Shame on you!

-Quezacolt

PS: People, go see it and make your own opinion =)

First off, I don't understand why you gave Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within a 3. This movie IMO, was a masterpiece. Working off of themes employed by FFVII, I found many of the scenes to be touching. An example of this would be when General Hein allowed Phantoms to infiltrate Barrier City, and New York fell to the invaders. Then later on, after Jane and Neil and that black Barrett wannabe died, Gray and Aki sat silently in the space ship. The silence, suddenly broken by Aki's sobs tore at my heart. Fuck you Nich, if you think I'm a pussy. I found that scene to be touching. When Gray went over to console her, and then the whole kissing bit happened..I found that to be meaningful. The history behind the Phantoms was very interesting, and I found the dream concerning the past of the Phantoms, which was told throughout the movie, to be very interesting. It shows that other intelligent beings are capabale of war, besides humans. The Gaia spirits also drew me in. It made me feel that everything in life is delicate and should be cherished. You idiots who gave it a 3 were probably more interested in finding the bottom of the popcorn bucket, than the movie itself. I am disgusted with your ratings. I am sure an occasional person out there will agree that The Spirits Within was well done. True, some parts of the movie were cliche, but this IS a Final Fantasy related film. Final Fantasy is known for its cliches. What the fuck did you want Nich, something up to par with Hannibal or something? Try looking into this movie and analyzing it. I myself was enlightened.

Let me just end this off by saying Chris, you're a cocksucker and I hope you get hit by a van.

-Bye ^_^ (Mr. Bye)

The movie SUCKED! It was a piece of GARBAGE!* I've picked off better things from my SHOE! Here's why.

1. No swords, castles, or dragons!

2. No Chocobos or Moogles either!

3. People don't hold and touch objects like they should!

4. It's CID, not SID!

5. The Earth is filled with molten magma, not Gaia!

6. Voices and lips don't quite match!

7. Neil's voice was annoying! I heard it was by the guy who played the bum in Big Daddy (or was it Scary Movie? I can't remember)!

8. It's not supposed to be set on Earth, Goddammit!

9. That whole thing about the spirits and wavelengths was confusing and had too many holes in it!

10. They didn't show Aki's boobs! Not even a little cleavage!

11. Hein sucks compared to Kefka!

12. It was too short!

-Kung Fu Dude, who dares you to decode this secret message: Secret Arcade Rotating Cucumber Assigned to Simulate Masturbation

*Say it so it rhymes with "mirage"

The first one is near the beginning, at that scene where "Captain" has to get pulled up by one of the other people in order to escape the phantoms. Now, what's funny about this is how they play it out as being a hypertense situation with some sort of speedy beat and then when his hand gets gripped and he gets pulled up there's this sweeping orchestral score. The problem being that the scene lasts for all of 2 seconds. There was nothing tense about it. Thats some cinematic bumbling.

Then there's the random desire to not allow Gray to say "son of a bitch" when he goes berserk and starts attacking the crab/spider/phantom. Earlier the two comic relief people had already had their fun saying shit. So why can't Gray say bitch?

And finally, there was the last bit of dialogue spoken by Dr. Sid. "Oh, it's warm." That's the BEST. Not only is it the last thing that you will here after watching this movie, but his inflection makes it sound like he had some sort of preconcieved notion that this goo would be cold. Alas, he was proven wrong, it was WARM. Im sure there were a lot more funny things. But this was way too fucking long.

-Brian

-Fares

I was noticing people bitching about your FF:TSW review, so I figured I'd bring this to the collective attentions of you and your audience: a scathing review on Slashdot. JonKatz obviously went into the movie expecting something much different.

The review has problems obviously. Firstly, I never once noticed that the voices were out of sync with the mouths; I think Katz wanted to see that though. He can't get past the fact that this is all computer animation (even though that makes the Phantoms much more believable IMO; you accept more radical things when its in an animated movie rather than a live-action one). Katz penalizes the movie for having lots of "spirit mumbo-jumbo" when CTHD was much more heavy-handed with its spiritual tones.

"The overall affect is cold and fake." Besides the slight error in that sentence (yeah nitpicky I know), I wouldn't call it fake any more than any other animation, and the effect seems meant to be cold, in any case.

And more nitpicky: the movie doesn't take place mostly in a destroyed NYC; it's a rebuilt NYC with a barrier around it.

Bleh, JonKatz spews a lot of crap in any case (as those who read slashdot may know). I think this is the first movie he ever hated, aside from Mission to Mars.

-Chris G

When the first video trailer came out people said: O no, Square is doing a "mainstream" science fiction film and naming it Final Fantasy. Well, we were wrong. The story feels like the story of an RPG and they pull it off fairly well. They managed to present a very Japanese story in an American film without making us (FF fans) look bad in the eyes of the world.

We should be glad. It could have been much worst. At least the movie doesn't suck. I believe that everyone who understood the plot must have appreciated the movie.

-Juan Rivera

The movie did have it's flaws, but I did not think they were as severe as others did. I personally liked the characters. Yes ... Neil, Jane, and Ryan were not fully developed. But then again, they were supporting characters. There was some fire between Neil and Jane that made up for that however, and I really liked their diolouge ... except in a few places. Gray, was not as developed as he needed to be. The thing is, there were some moments with Gray that his facial expressions, tone of voice, and actions that made me believe there was more to him. But again, he was no where near Cloud, Locke, or Squall like he should have been. Aki ... I fell in love with. Tifa and Celes have now moved down to 2nd and 3rd as my favorite female characters. I thought that none of the character flaws were THAT bad. I enjoyed them, even if I only fell in love with one character when I should have loved them all. (I want to be in the Deep Eyes so badly)

Anyway, I will finally get to the point. I loved the movie, but would have given the movie a 4, but I can see why you would give it a 3. Some of my final fantasy friends gave it a 5, while others gave it as low as a 2. My advice to people is to see the movie, judge for yourself and accept it for what it is. A sci-fi/fantasy movie. Yes it is sci-fi/fantasy, but so are all the games. Think about it, the moon and big whale in 4, magi-tek armor in 6, etc. I thought it was a good starting point for square movies. I can't wait to see their next film, I'm sure they will take what they learned here and improve upon it. One day we will see a sci-fi/fantasy film when the oscar for best picture. (I hope)

Anyway, this is already too long and like my other letters, won't be posted. I'd still like to know what you think about my opinion though.

-Chris

It seems to me that you're writing this review as a Final Fantasy veteran, not a movie viewer, which is how you should be reviewing it, otherwise you're expecting too much from the movie. Besides, Square isn't advertising the movie as a movie based on Final Fantasy, their advertising it as a post-apocalyptic adventure, presented entirely in full, realistic CG.

And it seemed to me that the voice actors did a perfect job on their characters, and that the characters themselves have plenty of personality.

That's all. I would have given it a 4 myself.

-3rd

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hate sci-fi elements in FF - I found FF7 and FF8 to be refreshing, with spaceships and the like, and you have to take some leaps once in a while to know where you're going. But when I read in the FF review that the plot is a sci-fi rehash, and on Access Hollywood, it's stated that "the dialogue is stuttering and laughable", I thought: did Square really head up this project? When has FF, despite its older games, ever had terrible dialogue and rehashed plots? Every FF has a very insightful plot that has nothing to do with sci-fi and more to do with emotion and non-tangible issues. I haven't seen the movie yet, but it sounds like Hollywood got the best of them. No wonder all the Square execs are sweating and praying that this movie doesn't tank - if they were so sure, they wouldn't be worried.

-Gunstarheroz

First, you start with Aki, Deep Eyes, and the technology. It all resembles FF6. Aki is almost a carbon copy of Terra/Tina, except her curse is being infected with the phantom thing, and she is obviously the lead of the story, and happens to be female. Deep Eyes really resembles any standard FF soldier group, but let's make it easy and also compare it to FF6. Then, there's the technology..FF6 had machines that somehow used magic, and the movie had machines that somehow detected ghosts and guns that somehow shot ghosts. You can sort of say that the meteor thing that brought the aliens was a little like FF5's, but the whole spirit collection thing reminded most of the crystals, and I attribute that most to FF5, but that could use some work.

There is, however, more of an obvious resemblance to FF7. The biggest being the Gaia thing (Lifeforce?), then the idea of a city attempting to survive in a wasteland of a planet (Midgar?). If that wasn't enough, there's the big Zues Cannon that will destroy the Earth if it keeps being fired (Sister Ray?) and the almost identical ending (what was with that "it's warm.." thing?). I was sort of torn between FF7 and FF8 concerning who General Hein resembles. As a villain in a 2 hour movie, he didn't get much attention, but he still manages to resemble something in FF. I first thought it was Rufus, but it's actually Seifer. He has the same ego and personality that Seifer does, is a militaristic person, a violent person, and just winds up screwed in the head(I found something interesting about that suicide scene). The bigger FF8 influence was the Tear's Point type of alien infestation. Granted, Tear's Point was sort of lame, but angry, dead ghosts of aliens crashing on Earth is like a refined version of it.

Finally, the characters in general, while not given enough time to fall in love with, were still pretty respectable, especially the Neil/Jane thing...shallow, but a bit of a touching end to that. Token Black Guy (I can't even remember his name) could've used more depth, though. There's still the whole love theme to deal with, but that issue has become such a commodity in FF that it's hard to compare it to any one title. I think these comparisons are still open for discussion, but I still wonder how people that enjoyed all this stuff in the games can't atleast appreciate that it's all been collaborated into one interesting movie.

-BurpingCat

Now, I'll try my best to turn this into a "Dear Abby" column...

I really want to congradulate the DA writers for being such gentlemen. I myself do a letter column for a website that I own (a fairly popular Final Fantasy dot-com fansite), and I generally label at least 25% of the letter writers "idiots" or "morons". The "Mailbag" is still one of the most popular features of the site, despite the controversy and arrogance on my part.

In your humble opinion, do you think its fair to mock people when they deserve it? I'd say that many of my readers come just to see the mocking take place. I think I'm addicted to being a jackass, and so are my readers. What should I do? Can anything that feels this good be wrong?

-Signed, Kefka (actually, some arrogant webmaster PRETENDING to be Kefka).

P.S. If you feel the urge to pen a silly response, at least try to hide something serious in there somewhere. Thanks. The GIA rocks, etc, etc.