Final Fantasia 2001 -
July 17, 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.
If only I could have someone else write this and put my name on it... hmm...
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Couldn't think of anything to write about in intro tonight, so I picked up F-Zero on the GBA, and spent a pleasant half-hour getting my ass handed to me on the Expert Bishop circuit. The fact that I could just plug in and play a game like that with no real after effects (aside from a tendency to calculate velocity vectors in my head) brought me to the obvious conclusion that RPGs should be more like that... which lead me to the not-so-obvious conclusion that they shouldn't be.
I'm not real big on definition wars, but perhaps there should be some categorization indicating that playing Skies of Arcadia is an entirely different experience from playing Super Dodge Ball - one's a quick, meaningless fling, the other's a serious commitment, and not something you do for a cheap thrill. An RPG or any heavy story-based game is a journey, one where the characters are different people at the end, and maybe you are too, if it's really good. Lots of people have said they want RPGs where the gameplay's as fun as Tetris, but for the most part (MGS2 aside, maybe) I don't think that's possible, or even desirable, any more than I'd want to be able to pick up The Stand and have an immediate blast reading about Captain Trips.
That's not saying gameplay shouldn't be fun, but it should probably be the fun that you have in mastering an intricate skill, something the rewards determination and patience rather than just plug and play mayhem. Vagrant Story, FFT, a handful of others - that's what I'm looking for out of RPG gameplay in the future. And now we get to see if that's what the next generation decides to serve up.
And major spoilers for The Spirits Within ahead, be warned.
Onward.
| More than meets the eye |
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I wasn't expecting much from the FF movie at all. I was basically expecting Titan A.E. + better visuals. However, I had stayed away from all media and information concerning the movie because I wanted to be surprised. I rarely watch TV, so I had only saw he unimpressive commercial once.
As soon as the movie started, I was mesmerized.
I hadn't really looked at any movies on the internet showcasing the visuals, so the mere awesomeness of Aki blinking took my breath away. The movie only got better and better as it went along, with somewhat stereotyped characters but an awesome world accompanied by awesome visuals. It hit it's high point for me when Aki was alone with Grey in the elevator, and they were fighting. It seemed REAL. It almost scared me to think such realism could be produced by animation. I was infatuated with Aki from then on. (I wasn't in the beginning, though, because at first she looked to me like a slightly female Laguna Loire, anybody notice this at first? Oh well, it seemed she got more womanly as the movie progressed)
I also really liked it when they were going through the desert, and the Ryan Whittaker said "My father's somewhere in here....." You didn't know the exact details of the "Phantom Cleansing" wars, but you got the idea. The only time I really began to dislike the movie was after General Hein dropped the shields on the city and the FF team was trying to escape. "It's out of batteries, go find a battery!" Man that was BORING. So were the character deaths that followed. Ryan Whittaker's death was the worst. "Auughh." he shouted as he shot the machine gun vainly into the spirit. This wasn't no Cuba Gooding Jr. from Pearl Harbor, that's for sure.
Did I mention Grey's voice sucked HARD, and I think Alec Baldwin shouldn't be allowed to act? His voice was WAY too old for his character, and it didn't look right. BAH!
Towards the end of the movie, all my friends wanted to get up and leave. This shocked me, because I thought the movie was incredible and wanted to keep on watching it. After it was over, I was the only on the of the 5 other friends that saw it with me that liked the movie. Everyone else's opinion was "it sucked", or "it really sucked", or "Square should be crucified". Naturally, I was horrified that I seemed to be the only one to enjoy it. They claimed the plot was retarded, and if they wanted to see a GHOSTBUSTERS flick they'd rent a Ghostbusters flick. They also asked why it was named Final Fantasy, when there were scant references to the videogame series the loved. I ignored all their criticisms and simply basked in the afterglow of the movie. (Although they did make a good point about the aliens being GHOSTS from another planet, LOL)
- Shake
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I kinda liked that the alien spirits were something so straightforward as ghosts; it set up an interesting moral chaining effect that gave the movie a bit more heft in hindsight. Their self-destruction had ramifications far beyond their own world, but the fact wasn't hammered home via tedious expository sequences, just left there for you to consider on your own. Add in little details like Ryan's comment about his father, or Aki's story about the 5th spirit, and you start considering how subtle Sakaguchi actually is, in contrast to how obvious everyone's accusing him of being.
| Fear the hardcore, my friends... |
| Double Agent Dude,
My take on the Final Fantasy movie? My friends and I dressed up as FF7 characters, and got to the theatre an hour early just to flaunt our ever-so-spiffy costumes. But we were utterly disappointed at the movie itself.
The 'Final Fantasy' Title wasn't deserving of this movie. There was no magic, no summons, no chocobos, no moogles, I could go on.... Basically the only way that the movie ties into the games is that the characters all had 3 or 4 letter names. (In the original FF, characters could have any name up to 4 letters) Of course there was the theory of Gaia, known to FF7 fans as the life stream... After the movie I sat there, WAITING to hear the FF theme. If somehow, during the credits, Square had worked it's famous Final Fantasy theme in, everything would have been okay. But alas, no FFtheme. *sniffle*
Although let me say, that at times I forgot that I was watching computer animations. Backgrounds, textures, even the people from a distance looked so real. And notice Sid's diary and the back of General Hein's picture had text in English? I just assumed it would be in Japanese.
Oh, and the plot... If the entire Deep Eyes Squad hadn't been wiped out, maybe Grey's death would have been more noble, more shocking. But now wasn't the nifty phantom thing in Aki? So why didn't she die? They should have used a phoenix down on Neil though... he was the only one in the movie who had a slight sense of humor. Grey shouldn't have died either. <_<
Does anyone remember Charles? Way before the movie came out there was a picture of a head, deemed 'Charles'. In commercials, there was this head... presumable that old dude Charles.. but where was Charles in the game? Just a thought...
In conclusion, I just think that the eagle flying at the end of the movie should have been a black chocobo, thank you.
~Heather
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Charles mutated into Sid somewhere along the way; likewise, IIRC, Grey's character design gets unfairly criticized for looking like Ben Affleck, since early character designs of Grey hinted at his appearance long before anybody knew what the hell Good Will Hunting was. And just to complete my nitpicking, Aki's phantom problem was cured as soon as they assembled the complete countermeasure, so there's no plot hole there.
As for the rest, I'll just say that I was quite pleased not to be burdened down with such traditional FF trappings. Don't get me wrong, if Square makes a second movie that borrows more from FFT than from Aliens, I'll be right there in the theater enjoying rendered Chocobos and Leviathan summons like everyone else, but few things would have ruined the (very Final Fantasy, at heart) theme of the movie more than archaic magic popping up all over.
| For completeness sake |
| To all Final Fantasy fans in America that is including you, Chris.
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/go?path=/movies/boxoffice/story&general_id=7692
Only $19 million in 5 days? "Cats & Dogs" over Spirits Within? Shows how you ignorate American Final Fantasy fans are thinking their percious movie will conquer the whole United States. Don't give me weird excuses like "I knew it will not do well over here, but in Japan it will be better appreciated" or "Square and Sony (Columbia Pictures) will take in $110 million during their box office run when the movie is released in Japan." Seriously, do you guys think it will actually past "Mononoke Hime" to be the top grossing movie in Japan or gross over $70 million only in Japan? I don't think so. Will they make profit off of this highly budget movie only during their box office run worldwide? I don't think so. With video sales? Most likely. I get to my point: $quare and Final Fantasy are overrated and Square/Sony have to suffer for this. MWAHAHA
The Final Fantasy Hater. Go Dragon Warrior!
|
Let's have a sanity check here, folks - by modern box office standards, $20 million's not great, but it's not bad either, by any means. Square may not break $100 million in the States, but they'll probably break $70 before it goes out of US theaters entirely. And yeah, I think they'll make that much again over the entire Pacific Rim and Europe, so they'll make their money back before they have to start worrying about video sales.
As for the rest of it, I think you're attacking arguments nobody actually made. But if you want to talk Princess Mononoke, that movie got slaughtered over here too, which gives all the proof anybody should need that quality doesn't always sell.
As for Dragon Warrior, if you'd like to make a prediction about how well that vaunted series will do in the US, please, be my guest. It'll put TSW to shame, I'm sure.
| Final Fantasy fans suck, but in a different way |
| I personally loved the movie. Yeah, granted there were problems with it. But they didn't ruin the film. The end was awesome. And I loved Aki.
But that isn't the topic of my letter, it's the fan-base. This doesn't include everyone, but I think in general ... Final Fantasy fans suck. When Tomb Raider was comming out, all the Lara Croft fans I know couldn't wait. And all saw it opening day. When Final Fantasy was on the horizon, all I heard was "NO! They can't do that! Only the hardcore fans can know about Final Fantasy!" And then there was much wailing and screaming about how it was sci-fi and not fantasy. The biggest slap in the face was the pathetic 11 million opening weekend. Granted, some who saw it didn't like it and some really loved it. But how can you judge a movie BEFORE it comes out? How can you saw, "Square is desecrating what they have created?" again, BEFORE it came out? I don't understand this. I personally could not wait. But I read some letters in DA that just blasted Square for making a movie. Yeah, it was no where near as good as the games. But it was good in itself. I'm confused. I hope Square just rakes in the cash in Japan ... otherwise, I doubt if we'll see them make another film. And if they do ... will they release it in North America??
Last and brief topic. FF was not understood by the majority of non-FF players. The critics did not catch the concept AT ALL and just blew it off as "spiritual nonsense". I find it sad that people can't just lose themselves for an hour or two and enjoy something that is outside the "norm".
Quick question. Where you dissapointed that there was no magic? I wasn't.
A fan of the Deep Eyes
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Think about it for a second: $20 million dollars at an overly generous $10 per ticket gives us about 2 million people who've seen the movie so far - that's the entire FF fan base and then some. As with the games, people may bitch and whine and moan all they like, but a surprising number of naysayers put up their money when push comes to shove. We've done our part for the film, that's certain... it's just too bad most of the rest of the country didn't feel like following suit.
| Behind the polygon mask |
| I've seen the Final Fantasy movie twice now, and both times I've done something that I promised myself I wouldn't do. You see, I'm actually in the 3D animation field, working on my master's degree with the same core application that was used to do the movie. While I've seen mostly praises regarding the actual CG of the film, it really bothers me when letters come up nitpicking small, trivial animation quirks get criticized. As you can probably guess, rendering in 3D is no easy task.
Most people don't realize just how difficult it is. In the first scene after Aki's dream sequence, she caresses her face with her fingers. That alone is simply incredible, as interpreting the collisions of objects is nothing short of frustrating.
There's one scene that is just General Hein laying down a small glass of alcohol. The alcohol forms realistic reflections on the table that he sets it down on. From a technical standpoint, that just boggles the mind, especially when you understand the theories behind 3D lighting and raytracing.
Even mere walking is more difficult than most people will ever realize. I'd just like to point out from someone who sees this movie more as a collection of NURBS and Inverse Kinematics solvers, that the movie is more than beautiful. It's downright incredible.
--Needle (Two letters in a row? Preposterous!)
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It's true that, good as the press for the graphics has been, a lot of the real technical marvels in the film still aren't properly appreciated. Everybody loves Aki's hair, but nobody noticed that we got some very realistic zero-g work without having to put an entire sound stage on the Vomit Comet, for instance.
I think people expected near-perfect facial expressions from the movie, which is fair in some respects but not in others. After all, if Toy Story's characters can have expressions that perfectly match what they're feeling at the moment, why can't Final Fantasy's, especially if they can be made to look so much more realistic than Woody and Buzz. On the other hand, the emotions in Toy Story are far more simpler and pure than what the Final Fantasy characters feel; it's easy to put a hangdog expression on Slinky Dog's face, but what should Ryan's face look like when he's talking about his father? Does anybody really know? And then you've got the expression of pure hatred and determination that Hein shows when he realizes he can still make it to the Zeus cannon... nobody's ever gonna be able to tell me Square didn't nail that one.
| 133t |
| "...he's a savvy judge of what's good and bad in a story, and until games can put up
something to convince guys like him, they really have no grounds to call themselves
"art" in the first place."And you critizised GamoGo! for being elitist.
/Joel
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What can I say? If it's a crime to respect the opinion of established, professional entertainment critics with years of experience more than a group of entrenched gamers who value niche credibility above all else, nolo contendre.
| "Any sufficiently advanced technology..." |
| Seeing as how I managed to miss the Saturday edition of the FF movie
letters column by a whole two minutes after I got back from the theater,
I might as well take this opportunity to chuck in my $0.02. Keep in
mind this is a loan, not a gift. I'll expect prompt repayment, and I do
charge interest.
Since the visuals discussion horse has long been diagnosed as dead via
savage beating, I'll skip right to the story. Namely, the whole
metaphysical spirits thang. Now, I'm no big fan of that kind of thing,
but I don't mind it as long as it's handled well. And in FF:TSW it
definitely could have been a lot worse. The number of "wannabe
philosophical" and all around strange long rants were kept to a minimum,
thankfully, keeping the ideas fairly fresh and interesting throughout
most, if not all, of the film. The biggest problem I had with it was
less the spirits stuff itself, and more how it fit in (or failed to)
with the setting. The story took place in a literally technology
dominated further Earth (one of the coolest aspects of the film was,
IMHO, the high tech equipment, like the green goo bricks used to soften
landings and the stylish computer displays). The spiritual and magical
aspects of the story seemed entirely out of place, if not ridiculous,
against that backdrop. Remember the scene where the gaia goo was
uncovered? I almost laughed out loud at that point. It jutted out like
a third wheel, in a way it might not have had the movie taken place in a
totally fictional world. You know, like FF7. Oh, and just to end this
section on a happy note, the phantom origin bit was pretty damn interesting.
Unfortunately, remove the metaphysical aspects, and what you have is a
story practically carbon copied from any number of the dozens of B
sci-fi movies of the past few decades. You know, aliens invade Earth,
arbitrary far-fetched-and-contraversial scientific discovery holds hope,
but the evil military bozos decide to use brute force method which
amazingly makes monsters stronger, scientists rush in and save the day.
All of the most overused sci-fi plot devises, wrapped in one neat little
package. It's exactly what the move "Evolution" was making fun of.
Then there's the characters. While Aki and Dr. Sid were decently done,
it seems that with the movie's time limit they were pretty much the only
ones the development team could do. One hour and thirty minutes is a
much tighter schedule then forty hours. As a result, the Deep Eyes
Squadron was all but barren of all personality beyond the usual cliches.
That in itself wouldn't have been so bad had they just been confined to
the comic relief bits and action scenes, but when the melodramatic death
scenes reared their ugly heads, they just fell apart. As for General
Hein, well, he wasn't bad. Had the villainous aspects of him been
turned down a notch, and the sympathizable ones gotten more attention,
he could have been one of the best in the cast. Oh, well.
Overall, FF:TSW was a decent flick. It won't be winning any awards any
time soon, but it's well worth a look, and about as good as us Square
nuts could of expected
Talen |
Take a look again. Those "green goo bricks" were the same energy that the phantoms themselves were made of, ditto the stylish computer terminals, settlement shields, and nearly every other piece of technology in the movie. When you consider what the film's actually done, it's a pretty impressive and original vision of the future, one that's ultimately just as fantastic and unbelievable as hooded white mages and horned summoners.
And opinion on the good General seems to be mixed - my date couldn't believe that someone like Hein could have made that rank, and kept saying so throughout the entire movie, but I thought he was frequently the most understandable and best-fleshed out characters in the entire film. Even things like his mocking of the Gaia theory aside, vengence is a far easier motive to understand than whatever was pushing Grey to sacrifice himself in the final moments.
| Neil and Jane, sittin' in a tree |
| Chris,
I've read that many people thought that the characters from Deep Eyes in TSW didn't have enough background on them. I thought they had a good amount considering that they were supporting characters. Did you notice the way Neil and Jane's comments bounced off each other? Neil said he was working on getting a girlfriend/wife and Jane just happened to be in the shot. I liked how after Neil died and Jane emptied her clip into the Phantom she didn't try to run away. She just lowered her gun and accepted her fate. Almost as if she couldn't live without Neil? Maybe I'm looking into this too deeply. Then there was Ryan's line when Deep Eyes went into the wasteland to get the 7th spirit. As they were looking at all of the corpses he said that this was a team sent in to eliminate the Phantoms and that his father was somewhere in there.
Another thing. If you were being chased by Phantoms why would you get into an elevator?
~Matt
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I thought that Jane's surrender had less to do with losing Neil, and more to to with a general, almost Zen-like acceptance that there was no way out. And you're right, it is admirable that each of the Deep Eyes members, despite their stereotypical natures, had at least one redeeming moment where they became a little more than two dimensional. On the one hand, I can appreciate Nich's comment on Saturday that it would have been nice to see a quick Atlantis-style backstory moment for each of them, but in another way, it seems fitting that each character briefly alluded to otherwise unexplored depths. After all, in a war that's destroyed half the planet, isn't it fitting that even the tragedies of people we know go mostly unappreciated?
Closing Comments:
Turning our attention to Square's other recent venture now: the Final Fantasy Chronicles. I'm sure everybody and their dog can write a huge amount on how wonderful either or the two games included is, but I'd like you to try something a little different: in a letter, compare and contrast the two games by picking a favorite title and arguing for one over the other. Sure, they're both great games, but with one representing the beginning of Square's SNES run and the other the end, I think it's fitting to see what people prefer from each title, and how they rank against each other in the end. Adios for now.
-Chris Jones, for your Deep Eyes only
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