Final Fantasy movie WHAT!!!

[End of line]

Went and saw the Final Fantasy movie and something caught my eye.
Consider this though, they had used powerful computers to manipulate each one of Aki's 40,000 hairs (which looked quite awesome as did the heat trails from the various craft's jet engines)
((jet engines,is there nothing they can't do))HA!
So you get the idea that these putas they used were like, really powerful and the artists were extremely skilled.

So why weren't there any emotional expressions on any of the faces(well the army lady did show some weird form of anger when she was blasting the aliens in the hanger just before she died)
Why were they all dead pan and why did the real actors play their characters same?

PLS XPLAIN
I mean look at the expressions in 'Toy Story'
and 'A Bug's Life' so don't tell me it was too complex to show emotion. 40,000 individual hairs!!!
OMG! OMG! Corbi Corbi mah man!
mental note: should use that as my signature.
mental mental note: that's a scary thought,a mental note.
And speaking of mental notes...
EoL.

[LuxoJr]

From what I know, or think I know...

The hair was computer controlled, which makes sense, because physical effects can usually be emulated with (complicated)mathematical processes.

The faces were hand animated. Problem was, as I see it, Square had created such detailed models that viewers were expecting these characters to behave as realistically as they appeared visually.

Final Fantasy made a huge technological leap. Computer animation is still a reasonably new technology when you consider that 2D animation has existed for over 50 years. Humans have never been animated in feature films to appear exactly like the real thing.

Now that we've suddenly got the technology to make humans appear pretty damned real, animators haven't adapted to this new visual style - they're still used to audiences being aware that their characters aren't living actors. Maybe in a few years we'll stop going to animated films being aware that they were created with computers.

Who cares, though. If Square spent less time on the technology and more on story they'd have made a better film. Final Fantasy will look dated in a few years, and the story won't be enough to hold it up as a good film.

[ August 31, 2001: Message edited by: LuxoJr ]

[End of line]

I agree about the story and the lack of depth in the characters.
10/10 for the visuals though,woo!
I was just a bit shocked at the lack of development in the characters, it definately looked way out of place.
When they match and\or surpass the brilliance of 'Akira' ,that'll be unjarded.

But as you pointed out LuxoJr ,it's thier first attempt and it can only get better.

[LuxoJr]

Yeah, Akira was amazing. The DVD's just come out, too - with a bucketload of extras and new voices, I think.

On a side note - I read that Aki means 'Autumn' in Japanese. Hmm...

[ August 31, 2001: Message edited by: LuxoJr ]

[Danny]

hehe, given the standard of acting these days, i don't expect it would have been much better if it were live-action...

in general, i thought the expressions were quite good, if you consider that the faces n Toy Story and A Bug's Life were cartoony faces, which are a lot easier to twist into expressions that realistic faces. one thing i thought was incredibly badly done, however, was when they tried to make that heroine woman cry. that was HILARIOUS! they just couldn't do it at all, could they?

oddly, i thought that the two main characters [the heroine and her loverboy] were actually the least visually believable, since they looked too spotless and perfect, whereas the other characters [particularly Dr. Syd] were almost real, with *shock horror* Imperfections!

[End of line]

Yeah, I had to take second looks at Dr.Syd because he looked like the real deal.

[Lampion]

yeah, Rettick, I though the same thing in that scene. I mean, at first I though: wow, this girl can really express emotional feelings better that many real life actress, but suddenly I realized that she was just a bunch of pixels, and that made me smile (I just coudn't laugh because the theater was crowded and I didn't want to bother anyone).

[Danny]

i mean, you can't really blame them for deadpanning it: they're just voice actors, they get paid bugger-all for it...

[LuxoJr]

Yeah, everybody in the cinema laughed during that crying sequence. The one where Aki's talking about the 7 year old who was 'ready to die,' right?

The other embarassing parts were that army guy's stupid jokes. When he was finally killed, the people at the back of the theatre cheered.

[ September 03, 2001: Message edited by: LuxoJr ]

[Danny]

that guy would have been funny if the director people hadn't made it so painfully obvious that he was meant to be...

[Osiris The Fleech]

I probably will never see that movie, so can someone tell me about the seven year old girl story?

[Lampion]

Its hard to tell about that, Osiris. You'll have to see by yourself to understand.

[Cloverfield]

I'm not sure what kind of audience you were with Luxo Jr... but I've seen it 14 times now, and not one time did anyone laugh during that scene or cheer when anyone died (even the session I was at with a group of rowdy teenagers). I guess it all depends on what type of person one is and what they laugh at.

Whereas I still would argue w/ those who hated the storyline (no, I'm not going to do that, as I've done that before)... I do agree on the lack of emotion area. A couple of examples always spring to mind on this, is after everyone is killed and Aki and Grey are on the ship and also when Aki is coming out of the crater at the end, each time she should actually be "crying"... but you don't see any tears in her eyes or anything to indicate this. Just a kind of blank expression.

The movie actually goes off here this week so I'm not sure what I'm going to do now... I'm trying to track down a VCD copy of it, as it's still a few months until the DVD comes out. I only have 2 more times I can see it.

Abe Babe...

[ September 03, 2001: Message edited by: Abe Babe ]

[LuxoJr]

It wasn't a rowdy audience - in fact, there were a fair few parents with kids. Weird.

Anyway, the people laughing at the back were in their mid 20s or so. While they were the really obvious ones, many other people sniggered during sad moments.

Then again, when I saw the Munch's Oddyssey gameplay footage during last year's Melboure Film Festival, people were laughing so hard at the bit where Abe tosses the slig into the grinder that I couldn't hear the film itself. PS2 shots of that bit in FF8 when Squall and the generic-timid-girl are dancing had people laughing harder than the backseaters during FFTSW.

Having looked at that audience before I went in, you wouldn't have expected such a reaction. Nobody seemed rowdy (there's that word again) enough to give such a violent response.