Columbia Pictures
Region : 2
Length : 102mins
Format : 1.85:1 enhanced for 16x9 televisions
Sound : Dolby 5.1 English, French
Subtitles : English, French, Arabic
Extras : Lots - this is a 2 disc set
Ming-Na....Dr.
Aki Ross (voice)
Alec Baldwin....Capt. Gray Edwards (voice)
Ving Rhames....Sgt. Ryan Whitaker (voice)
Steve Buscemi....Officer Neil Fleming (voice)
Peri Gilpin....Officer Jane Proudfoot (voice)
Donald Sutherland...Dr. Sid (voice)
James Woods....Gen. Hein (voice)
Keith David ....Council Member #1 (voice)
Jean Simmons....Council Member #2 (voice)
Matt McKenzie ....Maj. Elliot (voice)
Directed by…Hironobu Sakaguchi Moto
Sakakibara (co-director) (as Motonori Sakakibara)
Writing credits
Hironobu Sakaguchi (story)
Al Reinert (written by) & Jeff Vintar (written by)
Jack Fletcher (additional dialogue)
Jun Aida....producer
Michael Hack....supervising producer
Daniel S. Kletzky...associate producer
Chris Lee ....producer
Deirdre Morrison ....line producer
Hironobu Sakaguchi....executive producer
Akio Sakai....producer
Katsuhiko Toyota....associate producer
Original Music by…Elliot Goldenthal Ken
Kitamura (as L'Arc-en-Ciel) Hideto Takarai (as Hyde)
Cinematography by…Moto Sakakibara (as
Motonori Sakakibara)
Film Editing by…Christopher S. Capp
The
easiest thing to say about Final Fantasy is “Why”?
Based on a series of computer games for some reason the creators decided to make
the film totally CGI – Including the people. At least the makers of Lara Croft did not make
that fundamental error.
The story is a mixture of Japanese myth, fantasy and action mixed with a dose of
American cinema ‘sensibility’ – the words ‘sensibility’ and
‘American cinema’ are only found in the same sentence on very special
occasions – Final Fantasy is not one of those occasions.
The backgrounds, the matte paintings, the effects animation, the monsters –
The Sprits – are all excellent – in places works of art. The problem is the people.
The pre-publicity for the film stressed the characters would be more
life-like than any previous animated film.
The publicity was wrong. The
people look like computer generated models – quite frankly looking plastic and
lifeless. Considering the
time and effort put into these images I just come back to ‘Why’?
There are just too many things wrong with the look of the people – the
hair, skin, cloths, the interaction – not to mention that at times they
don’t even look as if they are saying the words you hear – something that
these days is quite unforgivable.
The DVD is a double set – in a strange box, reflective silver with the art
work on a clear plastic surround – a design and production nightmare.
There are myriad extras telling you ‘How We Did It’ – unfortunately
none that even hint as to why they bothered.
Two of the three commentary tracks have the film makers making their
excuses. As one of the tracks is in
Japanese the fun way is to listen to the Americans tell it their way while
reading the English subtitles from the Japanese Director and his two friends.
Its amazing how many times they have different takes on the same scene or
sequence.
The video transfer is quite excellent – equally the sound is as clear as it
should be.
This is one of those films that was interesting to watch and find out what the
fuss was about – but when I give this borrowed copy back I will not be dashing
out to buy my own.
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April 2003