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Review
Archives
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Today's
Date is:
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Final Fantasy:
The Spirits within
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Reviewed
by: |
Justin
Sallows |
| Genre: |
Science
Fiction |
| Video: |
Anamorphic
1:85:1 Widescreen |
| Audio: |
Dolby Digital
5.1, Dolby |
| Language: |
English,
French |
| Subtitle: |
English,
French |
| Length: |
1 hrs 48
min |
| Rating: |
PG-13 |
| Release
Date: |
October 23rd,
2001 |
| Studio: |
Columbia/Tristar
|
| Commentary:
|
2: 1-Co-Director
Motonori Sakakibara, Sequence Supervisor Hiroyuki Hayashida,
Sets & Props Lead Artist Tatsuro Maruyama, and Phantom Supervisor
Takao Noguchi (in Japanese with English or French subtitles).
2-Animation Director Andy Jones, Editor Chris S. Capp, and Staging
Director Tani Kunitake. 3-Isolated score with commentary by
Composer Elliot Goldenthal |
| Documentaries:
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Interactive
Documentary "The Making of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within."
(30 min.) |
| Featurettes:
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"The Gray Project" animation
tests (5 1/2 min.), "Matt Art Explorations" (6 min.), Compositing
Builds (7 1/2 min.) |
| Filmography/Biography:
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Character and Vehicle
Profiles |
|
Interviews: |
None |
| Trailers/TV
Spots: |
For Final Fantasy, Starship
Troopers and other films, as well as 4 1/2 min "making of" for
trailer |
| Alternate/Deleted
Scenes: |
Joke Outtakes (1 1/2
min.), Original Opening (4 1/2 min.), Aki's Dream |
| Music
Video: |
None |
| Other:
|
Several Easter
Eggs, Editing Workshop, Boards/Blasts (1 hr. 20 min. +3 min.)
|
| Cast
and Crew: |
Mingh Na,
Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Ving Rhames, Steve
Buscemi |
| Screenplay
by: |
Written by:
Hironobu Sakaguchi, Al Reinert, Jeff Vintar |
| Produced
by: |
Jun Aida, Michael Hack,
Daniel S. Kletzky , Chris Lee, Deirdre Morrison (I), Hironobu
Sakaguchi, Akio Sakai, Katsuhiko Toyota |
| Directed
By: |
Hironobu
Sakaguchi, Motonori Sakakibara |
| Music: |
Elliot Goldenthal
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| The
Review: |
This film
got a lot of heat when it came out for not having a well developed
storyline. While I'll agree the characters could have been a
little more developed, I have to say that I really liked this
film, and I thought it had a really cool story. Maybe people
felt kind of hokey watching the end of the film with it's environmental
message. In any event, I was thoroughly entertained. Let's talk
for a moment about the special effects. As it is entirely computer
generated, the entire film is a special effect, and a very good
one at that. This is simply the most realistic computer graphics
we've yet seen, far surpassing Shrek and Toy Story in detail.
You will begin to forget the true nature of the images and believe
in the story but for one annoying detail. Although the body
movement was based on motion-capture, the faces were entirely
hand animated, and it shows. There is occasional flashes of
genuine emotion, but these characters expressions are completely
lifeless. As a result, everyone looks as though they are walking
around in a daze, and you want to slap them out of it. As I'm
listening to James Woods voice throw a fit, I can't help but
be frustrated watching his character stand there without so
much as a head turn. There's no rage in his eyes, there's no
passion in his face. This problem continually took me out of
the movie, and may be a reason it only grossed one quarter of
its cost in the U.S. and closed the doors of Square Pictures.
That's kind of sad because despite the facial animation, this
is a fantastic fledgling effort by Square. I can only imagine
what their second film would have been like. The story begins
with Dr. Aki Ross who, after a freaky dream sequence, enters
the ruins of New York City. This is a great showcase for the
strongest element of the film, the mind-blowing backgrounds
and overall environments. Her head-light cuts through the darkness
and sweeps over car wrecks and smashed buildings. This scene
reminded me of Escape From New York in it's tone. She fires
some sort of flare in the air and sparks rains down around her.
She continues her search, consulting some sort of tracking device.
Every so often she fires the gun, and we soon find out why.
When the sparks fall the last time, they touch the bodies of
transparent beings and light them up. These are monstrous beasts
that begin to pursue Aki. Just then these intimidating robot
creatures appear out of the sky, firing some sort of plasma
at the ground which forms a barriar which cushions their fall.
They immediately begin to attack the creatures and reveal themselves
to be marines in armor. They assist Dr. Ross in her search for
a plant growing in the city. She finds it, collects a sample,
and they barely escape with their lives. It seems that the planet
has been invaded by these "Phantoms", and Dr. Ross has discovered
a way to fight back, which involves 8 spirits. The plant was
the 6th. The Earth's forces have amassed a stronghold within
a barrier covering Manhattan, and are developing their own weapon,
a giant laser orbiting the Earth. These two beliefs clash, leading
to an invasion of the colony by the Phantoms and mass destruction
and death. The visuals in these sequences are both creepy and
awesome. |
| Image
and Sound |
I
must say that I was expecting a little more. I don't understand
why the digital files were not used in the transfer process.
Grain is clearly visible in many dark sequences, and shadow
delineation is truly awful in others. In this way shading is
not seamless and flowing as you would expect, but instead banded
into different lightness of color, like you would see in a cutscene
in a video game. Also edge enhancement is quite visible. This
simply was not necessary, and I think the inclusion of 3 commentaries
and a long sequence of "blasts" accounts for a lack of space
to adequately compress the video. For the most part the image
looks good and has good color balance, it could have been so
much more though. The audio is a different story. It is quite
full and immersive. |
| The
Extras |
Disc 1 has an hour and twenty minute
work-in-progress such as we saw on the "Heavy Metal" DVD.
This is really a cool way to watch practically the whole film.
The picture is constantly switching between storyboards, rough
animation, refined animation and final animation. During all
of this, you can enable a director's commentary, or a scene-specific
subtitle with information. This last option is for uber-geeks
that want to know backstories for all the hardware and the
society as whole. This is along the lines of a Star Trek technical
manual. One good thing is that it pops up in large boxes on
the screen (kind of like pop-up video), so you're not racing
to keep up with text zipping by on the bottom.
The first easter egg appears on
disc 1. Go to "DVD-ROM". Highlight the back symbol, push up
twice to see the famous picture of Aki in a swimsuit, along
with other outfits. Disc 2 is the real meat of the set. It
begins with Aki playing a scene, then having her walk off
the "set" afterwards to see the replay. You then go to a menu.
Two sections apear "Play Documentary" and "Highlights". From
the looks of it, you'd think there is only the documentary
and chapters, you'd be wrong. Before we get into it, I'll
show you the second easter egg. Highlight "highlights", then
push right then down to see storyboards of the excised "dinner
scene". The Documentary is truly an awesome experience and
actually is interactive. During playback, icons appear a la
the white rabbit. Press enter and watch extra material on
the topic the documentary was exploring at the time.
As a bonus, during the extra scenes,
sometimes a blue sphere apears in the upper right indicating
an additional commentary track for that segment. This does
not appear during the regular documentary so don't strain
your eyes looking for it. This documentary, and in particular
it's multi-layered format, offers a rich telling of the films
birth. Laced with interviews, conceptual drawings and animatics,
you really get a feel for the process. It's a little weird
that the entire thing is in a frame and there's dance music
through most of it but it works very well. I like the idea
that I may want to revisit the documentary, or show it to
someone else and being able to decide how immersive I want
it to be. Disney tried something similar with The Emperor's
New Groove, but it didn't work nearly as well Now with Final
Fantasy (and to a lesser degree Snow White) we're finally
getting to the heart of the amount of interactivity DVD is
capable of.
The other stuff isn't nearly as
cool as the documentary, and consist mostly of bullet-point
gravy. Character Files and Vehicle Scale Comparisons feature
a female voice over describing the subject complete with backstory
and in the case of vehicles, specs. The good thing is the
cool concept art displayed. these are only about a minute
each. The next easter egg is in the vehicles section. Highlight
the arrow at the bottom of the screen, then press right twice
for more vehicle concept art. In Character files, highlight
the arrow, press right, then left for more storyboards. The
"Final Fantasy Shuffler" isn't, in my opinion, as cool as
the editors on MIB or Die Hard because there aren't any alternate
angles. Still, it's kind of fun to make characters rant for
no reason, and delete exposition. The trailer exposition is
mostly the trailer, with a couple of quick inserts of the
editor talking about how important a trailer is "yawn".
"The Gray Project" is an animation
test with roughly drawn characters which do not appear in
the final film. Since there's music and no dialogue, we have
no idea what is going on in them. Still, better to have them
than not...I guess. More Boards/Blasts is the "pagoda" scene
done in the same way as on the first disc. I couldn't tell
you why it's not included there. Matt art explorations is
actually a pretty cool little featurette detailing the matt
art process. The joke outtakes are mildly amusing, but don't
compare to A Bug's Life or Toy Story 2.
I particularly like the one where
the guy trips and accidentally shoots Aki in the back, then
panics and runs off. The compositing builds show, layer by
layer, how shots were created. This is semi-interesting, but
was well covered in the documentary. The images fly by so
quickly it kind of gave me a headache. I'd hate to see what
would happen to an epileptic. The original opening is a nice
addition and answers one of Eberts questions he asked during
his initial review. He wondered how people could shoot ethereal
beings. Aki discusses the development of a new weapon and
shielding which harms the phantoms. The new ending is much
better however. Aki's Dream is really superfluous. We've already
seen every frame of this in the feature. It's just her dream
segments butted up against each other. If you were itching
to see this, and don't want to hit the chapter skip button,
Square pictures had you in mind when they developed this DVD.
At the bottom of the second page of highlights, select the
animated icon at the bottom for hilarious Michael Jackson's
Thriller spoof. For the final easter egg, go to the DVD-Rom
section, highlight the arrow, press up, then right for even
more storyboards.
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| Commentary |
Whew!
Is anyone still reading this? In case you are, I'll just say
that both the Japanese and American tracks are great. These
were both recorded before the film was finished so they were
all basking in their glory, although the Japanese crew was laughing
and having a blast. I loved how they kept poking fun at the
movie. It was funny how the Director had to keep explaining
what the sequences were about to the animators. They'd go "OOOOOOOOH
now I get it". Priceless. Both tracks are a good mixture of
technical "how to" and enjoying the action onscreen, a discussion
about the formation of the story and characters, etc. I frankly
didn't listen to the music only track with composer commentary
because I could care less. Sorry to fan's of those types of
things. I'd probably listen to one for Star Wars or something,
but it just didn't stand out enough in this film to warrant
1 1/2 hours of my life. |
| Final
Words: |
I really like this film. If I have
to cringe at the facial animation, then I can rejoice in the
fantastic realism of the environments and the eerie phantom
sequences. If you are at all a fan of animation, then Final
Fantasy is not to be missed. I'm so glad this film got such
a great DVD release. Plan on penciling yourself in for "Final
Fantasy Day" if you intend on watching it all in one sitting,
maybe squeezed in between "Star Wars Day" and "Snow White
Day". Happy viewing!
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