I'm going to see Final Fantasy tommorow.

[I.R Joey]

Expect a review from me very soon.

[Frozen]

Indeed, do let us know- I saw it last week and loved it! I'm curious to know what anybody else thought of it!

[The Mad Hatter]

I hated it. The characters were one-dimensional, the dialogue was horrible and the spiritual stuff was just damn hokey.

...or maybe it's because I'm a fan of the video games, and have come to expect good dialogue and spirituality that's less ludicrous.

[sun]

[ I saw it last week..It was an very good film, outstanding special effects, the animation is very lifelike, unfortunately, it looks like it will lose over 100 million...No one is seeing it. See it in a theater while you can...They story is downbeat, not strongly written, but easy to follow. Upbeat ending leaving us with some questions....It is a visual masterpiece, some scenes are as good as any animation done. But I doubt Sony will ever spend big bucks on animation again, if the projections of their loss are correct.. After Titan AE lost the big bucks over 100million, 20th Century Fox closed down its animation department. Good luck to all, ps. the animated lead female character is really done like she is alive, and she is quite attactive.... old toon guy.

[Frozen]

The animation was indeed superb - but I still think there's a long way to go with lip-synch! Having just typed that, the thoughts just occured - was it produced in Japanese and then dubbed into English? Please forgive my ignorance! If that is the case, then it would explain why the lip-synch was so bad!

The thing I found strange about the film was seeing somebody who didn't look like James Woods talking with James Woods voice - the same can be said for Buscemi and Sutherland...

[Nightflower]

I think it was done for English. The story was a little hokey but I expected that...sheer eye candy, baby :) There weren't many people in the theater when I saw it though :( so I heard the sequel they were planning ain't going to happen.

After its release, there were a whole slew of articles saying how we're so great at animation now, we can replace live-action actors and put them out of work. I think that's just stupid. First of all, they had that argument five years ago, when 3D cgi animation was just blossoming. Secondly, we think very highly of ourselves. Final Fantasy was the *exception*, not the standard, and it used up a lot of money to produce. It was great animation, sure, but I could still tell it was cgi and not live-action. Finally, as sad as this is, people *need* the lives of celebrities. They *need* gossip and scandal, and what outfit some actor is wearing for the next Oscars. I mean...suuuuure, you could animate Aki walking down the red carpet on a big TV screen in some animated gown, but...it's not the same.

[Frozen]

Quite right, Nightflower - and well said! Going off topic for a moment Nightflower (cool name BTW...) - what's your Avatar..?

[Nightflower]

Originally posted by Frozen
Quite right, Nightflower - and well said! Going off topic for a moment Nightflower (cool name BTW...) - what's your Avatar..?

Hehe, thanks :) *blush* Just something I drew. It's on the picture of the main page of my webpage

http://www.sixies.org/users/nightflower/nfmain.jpg

[Jowy Blight]

...or maybe it's because I'm a fan of the video games, and have come to expect good dialogue and spirituality that's less ludicrous.

Same here hatter. But you can't expect them to make the movie as good as a game, after all if they tryed to fit in all the things that make the game great, it would of been over at least 10 or 6 hours. Yes, the dialogue for the movie was really weak, and they took somethings from FFVII-FFIX. The movie did seem more eye-candy then movie, I mean they spent so much time making Aki's hair look real. They could of used that time to make the story a lot better.

Some of the movie kinda reminded me of Starship Troopers. The whole thing with there lips, was pretty bad. I don't think people yell with there mouth's half open, do you? But overall, The movie wasn't too bad.

[The Mad Hatter]

Let me just add that I thought the movie LOOKED great. The detail was amazing, and much of it was extraordinarily lifelike. I could tell that it cost 100 million.

But I'll have to agree with Nightflower... we've got a LONG way to go before CGI actors replace humans. First off, as good as Final Fantasy looked, it didn't yet get 100% lifelike. The lip-synch was off, and sometimes the hands seemed a little stiff.

Furthermore, to get the level of realism in FF, imperfect as it was, required an insane amount of time and resources. Not everyone will want to spend that much money just to replicate something that can be done by flipping on a camcorder and shooting. At the very least, it's going to take another decade before artificial humans become convincing enough and cost-effective enough to slip into the average movie.

[redDragon]

I saw it last month, I didn't like it, kinda disappointed but a bunch of people had told me that it wasn't great. Beautiful animation, the plot sucked, corny lines.

I don't think I noticed that the lip-synch was off.