Final Fantasy rules the theatres!

To most Western countries, Japan seems very far from their doorsteps. Although Japan is technically a nation living in "Western" standards, their culture and habits are really quite different. For instance, although many people are confronted with multinational Japanese firms like Matsushita (Panasonic), Toyota and Sony, there are many things still not yet known worldwide. One of these things are the manga-style animation. You'd say "Hey everybody knows manga", but these usually only include huge international ones like Rorouni Kenshin, Dragonball, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, etc. There are many more of these series, and a huge underground movements exists in Japan.

One of the worldwide famous Japanese products is the Final Fantasy series. This series of fantasy games is probably the longest running series out there today. With Final Fantasy 10 in the making, Square, the makers of FF, probably are laughing all the way to the bank...
Final Fantasy 7, first released for PSX, brought the Final Fantasy scene into a 3D surrounding, and it was the international breakthrough of the FF formula. Fron FF7, Square's talent for CGi graphics cutscenes became apparent. Although the characters were immature "puppety" models, the ending movie of FF7 was widely appreciated. It's successor, FF8 had even more stunning cutscenes. Forget the little cutey characters. Rinoa, Quistis, Zell, Irvine, Selphie, Seifer and Squall. All looked frighteningly realistic. With such excellence in CGI graphics, and the gripping and forgiving Final Fantasy universe, a movie seemed the logical next step.



And indeed. Final Fantasy: The Spirits within is Square's adventure into the movie industry. Of course this would be a great risk. Other successful games series brought into the "non-interactive" scene were dreadful commercial disasters (Chris Roberts' Wing Commander Movie). Another sci-fi full-CGI movie, Titan A.E. also didn't draw people out of their shells. But nonetheless, Final Fantasy managed to get some big names in for voicecasting: Alec Baldwin, Ming-na (Mulan) and Donald Sutherland. Publicity wasn't major, with only a few tv trailers, but every rpg, Square or Final Fantasy fan was of course queing impatiently for this latest FF incarnation.

<Plot Spoiler>
The plot of Final Fantasy: TSW actually is quite straightforward. You have Earth under siege from aliens. Problem is that these aliens are "bio-ethereal" and can pass through anything. The fight against them is a losing one, even though man has created barriered cities that temporarily keep the aliens out.
The key to destroying them is to use the "Spirits". These are fractions of biological waveforms that can be found in anything alive on Earth. But since virtuall all life was exterminated on the first alien attack (34 years ago in the movie), this search is very difficult. The research is led by Dr. Sid and Dr. Aki Ross. The latter is a young woman herself infected by alien bio-ethereal particles. The harnesses 6 of the 8 known fraction of the waveform that can neutralize the alien's existence. But because the waveform is incomplete, Dr.Ross has been steadily losing the battle to the alien parasite and has been having strange dreams on an alien planet.
What's more, not everyone agrees to the usefulness of this research into waveforms, "Spirits" and so on. Military leaders suggest a strike with the orbiting spacegun "Zeus". They claim that upon fired to the impact site where the alien lifeforms originated, the insurgents can be vanquished.
And so Final Fantasy: TSW ultimately evolves into a planetary struggle for survival, a refelction on life on earth and in the universe. Well, come to think of it, straightforward perhaps wasn't the right word to use right here.
<End plot spoiler>



The story itself is quite nice and does make sense. It makes you think about life and the planet we live on. It suggests an unrealistic yet intriguing perspective upon existential matters. Strangely though, Final Fantasy:TSW remarkably resembles the plot of Final Fantasy 7. Replace "Gaia" with "Planet" and "Spirits" with "Mako/Spirit Energy" and you'll see what I mean. TSW is set into a realistic urban setting though, as opposed to FF7, which was a full fantasy world (forgetting about Midgar of course). All in all, the story is in line with Final Fantasy tradition and is quite complex and satisfying.

Main attraction of this motionpicture is of course the visuals presented. These are absolutely breathtaking, and without doubt the best CGI graphics ever. For the first time, rendered human characters looked and felt real. This of course raises the question of real actors being replaced by rendered ones. Although I must admit we FF: TSW just diodn't cross that line, it became dangerously close or even stepped on it. Especially Dr. Sid was incredibly animated. Of course there is Aki, who makes you forget Lara Croft even existed. Putting it in gaming perspective, us gamers can perhaps expect such graphics on our pcs.
Square used nVidia powered workstations to render the scenes in TSW. Quadro DCC, nVidia's high-end graphics adapter is responsible for the incredible visuals. FF: TSW characters are built with up to 60 more polygons than your standard-everyday Quake 3 character. The beginning of the movie, with a scene with combattant marines, seems an ideal setting for a computer game. Think of StarCraft marines fighting each other in realtime...
The reason that I'm so certain this level of graphics will someday hit pc is because the Quadro DCC is just a super-beefed up Geforce 3. And that's why GeForce 3 really is the
nextgen graphics adapter.
In short, the graphics of TSW alone make this movie a must-see for any FF, rpg, pc games and fantasy lvoers out there.



The musical score is a relieve from the traditional Final Fantasy MIDI/gooiy crap. It's ambient, beautifully compased and performed and doesn't annoy at all. While it didn't emotionally crush me (like the opening of any Disney movie, especially The Lion King) is was nice and neat. Voice-acting, as I noted earlier is super. Professional voices expand the credibility of the CGI characters. Also, eah and every soundeffect has been mapped realisticly.I can image that being on heck of a difficult job.

EP sez:

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a true CGi masterpiece and elevates it from any "B" label possibly put on. It is a succesfull production made very professionally and with the single most incredible digital graphics ever. And even the plot isn't bad at all. A must see for any gamer out there.

Links

> Official Final Fantasy Movie Site

> EPS: Final Fantasy Garden
> nVidia's FF Feature Page
> Eyes on FF
> My Final Heaven