Danoff
Premium
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- Mile High City
Summary: This movie stunk, avoid at all costs.
********Warning! Spoilers Below *********
Final Fantasy (the movie) was horrendus in so many ways. It's hard to know where to begin. When I was told to watch this movie I was told that it was very good, the animation was phenomenal and it was a good plot to begin with. I will never again listen to any recommendation I get from that person. The animation was decent (not great), but only when there was little or no movement. When you're close up watching people talk, kiss, walk, anything with lots of movement it all went to pot. It especially doesn't help the animation when you recognize the voice of one of the main characters immediately as Alec Baldwin and you can't avoid thinking about how he doesn't look anything like Alec. Every time that character talked I thought of Alec Baldwin in the studio doing the voice.
But these cosmetic issues pale in comparison to the real problem with this movie - the writing. In case you haven't seen this awful film yet, I'll explain. The premise is that dead creatures from another world have come to Earth and they're here and they're killing off humanity. You see, if you touch a dead creature's spirit (or phantom as they're called) your spirit gets yanked from your body and you die. Why? Who knows, just go with it.
So humanity is locked up in these pockets around the globe that protect them from the phantoms. They keep the phantoms out of these pockets using sheilds. If they can stop the phantoms why can't they kill them? Dunno. Anyway the area of the planet outside of these cities is pretty much dead, with phatoms running all around. Going out there is suicide.
There's a bad guy, of course. He's your typical movie-made soldier guy who wants to blow everything up in hopes of saving humanity. His plan is to shoot the crater where the phatoms showed up in the first place, because he happens to know that shooting that spot will hurt the rest of the phatoms. This happens because in the movie the phatoms have a life force that keeps them alive (or undead anyway). They call this life force their Gia. Humans have a Gia too - it's the earth. The bad guy wants to shoot the phantom Gia to kill all of the phatoms. How he knows it will work? Don't know. Go with it. One problem, he doesn't believe in the whole Gia thing. Oh well go with it.
So the bad guy wants to shoot the phantom Gia in hopes of killing them. But of course in movies like this violence is never the answer. So it turns out that if you shoot the phatom Gia you'll probably end up shooting the Earth Gia and that will destroy humanity (go with it). The bad guy doesn't care because he doesn't believe in the universal life force (can't blame him). So he goes off to use violence to solve his problems while the good guys try to find an equally violent, but less obviously violent way to kill off the phantoms. To do this they need 7 spirits (or 8, I can't remember). Why 7 and not 200? Dunno. They'll then use the spirits to create an energy wave that cancels out the phantom spirits and saves the world (that's about all the explanation you get in the movie too).
Eventually we learn a little more about the phantoms via the main character's dreams (they communicate with her). It turns out that the phantoms destroyed their world because they were really violent and ended up dead on a chunk of their world that slammed into Earth. Why death works differently on their world we don't know. On their world when you die you turn into a spirit that kills all living things just by touching them. Must be a cool place to live, or die anyway.
So, as you would expect, the real bad guy isn't the phantoms - they're not responsible for the people they kill, it isn't their fault. The real bad guy is our military who is trying to shoot the ones who are killing us. Those idiots! Don't they know that the right way to solve our problems is assume that the attacker is good and learn how to use its spirit to kill it in a much more peaceful fashion??
So bad guy goes off to shoot the poor helpless phatoms who are killing everyone. Instead he ends up making the phantom gia strong and shooting the Earth Gia (duh, everyone knows shooting a dead Gia makes it stronger, and it kills a live Gia). But that's ok because he's such an insane bastard that he ends up shooting over and over again and blowing himself up. That's the military for you.
The good guys, of course, find their 7th spirit, create their wave, and kill off the poor helpless murderous phatoms much more peacefully and restore the Earth Gia and everything is great and happy.
Ok, kindof a long plot synopsis, but that's not where the problems stop. The dialogue and storyline were so god awful that I found myself either correctly guessing exactly what was going to happen next or laughing at the sheer stupidity.
There was nothing redeeming about this movie. The message was bad - violence is only good if it isn't obviously violent, military people are stupid, closed-minded, and evil, all living things are connected via an Earth spirit... which is blue. The dialogue was bad. The animation was bad. The storyline was entirely too predictable. The movie took huge leaps and made little sense.
And, perhaps the worst offense of all, the main girl looked a little like a guy.
********Warning! Spoilers Below *********
Final Fantasy (the movie) was horrendus in so many ways. It's hard to know where to begin. When I was told to watch this movie I was told that it was very good, the animation was phenomenal and it was a good plot to begin with. I will never again listen to any recommendation I get from that person. The animation was decent (not great), but only when there was little or no movement. When you're close up watching people talk, kiss, walk, anything with lots of movement it all went to pot. It especially doesn't help the animation when you recognize the voice of one of the main characters immediately as Alec Baldwin and you can't avoid thinking about how he doesn't look anything like Alec. Every time that character talked I thought of Alec Baldwin in the studio doing the voice.
But these cosmetic issues pale in comparison to the real problem with this movie - the writing. In case you haven't seen this awful film yet, I'll explain. The premise is that dead creatures from another world have come to Earth and they're here and they're killing off humanity. You see, if you touch a dead creature's spirit (or phantom as they're called) your spirit gets yanked from your body and you die. Why? Who knows, just go with it.
So humanity is locked up in these pockets around the globe that protect them from the phantoms. They keep the phantoms out of these pockets using sheilds. If they can stop the phantoms why can't they kill them? Dunno. Anyway the area of the planet outside of these cities is pretty much dead, with phatoms running all around. Going out there is suicide.
There's a bad guy, of course. He's your typical movie-made soldier guy who wants to blow everything up in hopes of saving humanity. His plan is to shoot the crater where the phatoms showed up in the first place, because he happens to know that shooting that spot will hurt the rest of the phatoms. This happens because in the movie the phatoms have a life force that keeps them alive (or undead anyway). They call this life force their Gia. Humans have a Gia too - it's the earth. The bad guy wants to shoot the phantom Gia to kill all of the phatoms. How he knows it will work? Don't know. Go with it. One problem, he doesn't believe in the whole Gia thing. Oh well go with it.
So the bad guy wants to shoot the phantom Gia in hopes of killing them. But of course in movies like this violence is never the answer. So it turns out that if you shoot the phatom Gia you'll probably end up shooting the Earth Gia and that will destroy humanity (go with it). The bad guy doesn't care because he doesn't believe in the universal life force (can't blame him). So he goes off to use violence to solve his problems while the good guys try to find an equally violent, but less obviously violent way to kill off the phantoms. To do this they need 7 spirits (or 8, I can't remember). Why 7 and not 200? Dunno. They'll then use the spirits to create an energy wave that cancels out the phantom spirits and saves the world (that's about all the explanation you get in the movie too).
Eventually we learn a little more about the phantoms via the main character's dreams (they communicate with her). It turns out that the phantoms destroyed their world because they were really violent and ended up dead on a chunk of their world that slammed into Earth. Why death works differently on their world we don't know. On their world when you die you turn into a spirit that kills all living things just by touching them. Must be a cool place to live, or die anyway.
So, as you would expect, the real bad guy isn't the phantoms - they're not responsible for the people they kill, it isn't their fault. The real bad guy is our military who is trying to shoot the ones who are killing us. Those idiots! Don't they know that the right way to solve our problems is assume that the attacker is good and learn how to use its spirit to kill it in a much more peaceful fashion??
So bad guy goes off to shoot the poor helpless phatoms who are killing everyone. Instead he ends up making the phantom gia strong and shooting the Earth Gia (duh, everyone knows shooting a dead Gia makes it stronger, and it kills a live Gia). But that's ok because he's such an insane bastard that he ends up shooting over and over again and blowing himself up. That's the military for you.
The good guys, of course, find their 7th spirit, create their wave, and kill off the poor helpless murderous phatoms much more peacefully and restore the Earth Gia and everything is great and happy.
Ok, kindof a long plot synopsis, but that's not where the problems stop. The dialogue and storyline were so god awful that I found myself either correctly guessing exactly what was going to happen next or laughing at the sheer stupidity.
There was nothing redeeming about this movie. The message was bad - violence is only good if it isn't obviously violent, military people are stupid, closed-minded, and evil, all living things are connected via an Earth spirit... which is blue. The dialogue was bad. The animation was bad. The storyline was entirely too predictable. The movie took huge leaps and made little sense.
And, perhaps the worst offense of all, the main girl looked a little like a guy.
...but yes, the storyline was a little too "Captain Planet" (read: extremely aggro-environmentalist) for me, too... although I never really thought about the hypocritical genocidal subtext till you mentioned it. 👍
), but that's just because I think the CG were pretty cool, and its' experimental concept was kind of interesting. Big name actors doing the voiceovers were kinda neat, too. 
It'll have to get a lot of good reviews.
