Just got back from the prescreening of final fantasy!

[Heifetz]

One question.

Was there magic?


Heifetz

 

[CQuinn]

If you're gonna compare it to the FMV sequences from games you also have to consider that
those are a lot easier to pull off with only a few minutes of actual playing time.

FF:TSW comes close to being two hours of FMV. I was very pleased that they put as much
story into as they did. It's easily on par with Shrek, Pearl Harbor; and from what I
hear, is light years beyond Tomb Raider.

ApacheXMD, the plot may have seemed anime-ish because it was directed by the same
guy (Hironobu Sakaguchi) that was head of production for most of the
Final Fantasy games.

The character rendering was not %100 realistic, but in some instances it was better
with specific facial expressions that many mainstream actors could be.
The problem with the mouths was that they did not create a more detailed mesh to
match muscle movements to, so the mouths were moving correctly, but didn't always
seem to be moving completely. But, there is at least one scene where the mouth
movements could not get any better.

Will this replace real actors? Not a chance. A big part of the reason this film
is so good was because of the performances of the actors who provided voices,
timing, and delivery of lines in the movie. It also helps that someone actually
thought thru the script to make all the scenes work together and make sense in the
end.

It would be worth the price of admission for Steve Buscemi's character alone.

Additional: I'd say there was a little magic. I didn't come out walking on
clouds, but I was completely satisfied with this film.

Nobody mentioned: At the Denver screening we also got a preview trailer for
the Spider-Man film. It looks like it will be pretty cool to.

 

[Aihyah]

whoever compared the cgi to diablo 2 is on some serious crack. I have the collectors edition, so i have the dvd. The fmvs are ok, but no where near the level of final fantasy. Hell, they aren't near toy story. Go look at them again sometime. If you buy the expansion pack you'll notice that the video after act 4 has extreme contrast between the old and new fmv.

 

[ghostman]

I saw it in nyc yesterday. The graphics were amazing. I thought the close-ups and her hair were the most well done parts. It was very natural and realistic. The dream sequences and basically any high action scene were very well done. But I found the character interactions looked too artificial. There were too few facial expressions, so the character's emotions didn't really come out.

SPOILER AHEAD!
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LOOK OUT FOR THE SPOILER!
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I found the storyline confusing and if anyone understood it fully, please email me as to what it was about. Well, I understand the gist of it, but what happened with the last spirit? And why were there 8 spirits? Why did each living being only contribute 1, but the phantoms need 8 to match their wave? Also, can't superimposing waves double waves as well as cancelling them? How did shooting it with the cannon make it stronger? How did she realize they were confused ghosts and their planet was destroyed? How was their planet destroyed? Even though they were ghosts, they were still killing humans, so how different is that from invaders? How did the phantoms get into the barrier and escape their original confinement plan? I don't know, I guess I'm just too picky.
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SPOILER ABOVE!

Still, I'd see it again just for the graphics.

 

[Boogak]

I guess I put it the wrong way. No doubt the CGI in Final Fantasy is of higher technical quality than Diablo2, but I enjoyed the movies in Diablo2 alot more than the FF movie. It had a more "fantasy" feel to it, and I was alot more entertained by the D2 movies than the FF movie. The FF movie just plain has bad acting. Their facial expressions were almost non-existent and their movement is too unnatural. Again, the movie itself is an incredible technical achievement, but I was kinda bored throughout. If the movie was done with live actors and didn't have the Final Fantasy billing, it would've just been another B budget sci-fi flick. My 2 cents...

 

[TheVrolok]

I wanna see it I wanna see it I wanna see it... comes out tomorrow doesn't it? I can't wait. I just hope my theatre isn't sold out by the time I get there.