AlexBobbs: Well, the story was passable and the dialogue needed a bit of work, but who am I kidding? You're going to see this movie either because of the graphics or because it has the name FinalFantasy attached to it. Well, it more than delivers on the graphics. The humans are incredibly convincing and at times I swore they'd patched in a real actor. There were a lot of very novel ideas that went into the visuals of this movie, and it wasn't until the last segment that the novelty started wearing off. As far as its connection to FinalFantasy, well, there it's a bit sketchy, but I expected that. It certainly tips its hat to the games at many points and parts of the plot reminded me of FinalFantasySix and FinalFantasySeven, now that I've played it, but overall it does not take place in the FinalFantasy universe at all, so don't expect any sword-fights, chocobos, moogles, or airships. Overall, definitely worth seeing for its groundbreaking technical merit alone.
AndrewSchoonmaker: "Doesn't take place in the FinalFantasy universe", he says. ...Whatever that means. :-) It's set on Earth, as many of the FinalFantasy games at least hint at, it's got a story that's thematically somewhere between FF7 and FF8 (IMNSHO), an ending song that's stylistically identical for those of FF8 and FF9, a Cid (sort of), an elite squad of troops, a main character who's *spoiler*, the requisite number of similarities to StarWars (alas, no Biggs and Wedge, though they seem to be drawing on Aliens as well...), a two-minute summon, and every character in the movie who might've joined the party had a name that was four characters or fewer. No, it's not classic FinalFantasy, but it is pretty close to some of the newer games. The graphics are outstanding; the music is forgettable; the voice acting is bad, but unfortunately not so bad as to be classic in the same way that GhostInTheShell or BladeRunner? are; the plot is pretty blah (really, "original story by Hironobu Sakaguchi" sums up the problems, I think); and the characters aren't bad (if fairly stock). Did I mention that the graphics were outstanding? Worth seeing, though if you're not a die-hard FinalFantasy fan, you might want to find a matinee showing. And no, there aren't any damage numbers :-P (though for a lot of the movie, that's actually appropriate...)
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