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Movie Review: Final Fantasy

I didn't really give this one the greatest chance - I went already feeling tired, and did actually fall asleep in the middle of it, although not for long. I also had my prior associations with Final Fantasy in my head for quite a bit of the movie, which didn't help. I felt like the movei did live up to the game, though - a silly mystical plotline that didn't make much sense, some awesome looking sequences, some not-quite-right sequences, some heroic actions but the main character being unable to die. The aliens were pretty cool looking, especially when they killed. Lots of the technology was pretty good looking, and the people were very lifelike when they weren't moving. The movement wasn't too bad, but some walking and closeups of hands and things were not so good. And there seemed to be a lack of facial expressions throughout the whole thing - no tears, no smiles, no laughter. It was creepy watching when they were talking. I don't think that helped my emotional identification with the characters. But the backgrounds were usually awesome, and they did some very cool birds. But I never got sucked into the story, so I was very conscious of the computer generated effects the whole time - I couldn't just sit back and appreciate them for their beauty, there was always an aspect of "that was pretty neat they could do that." And they even had good hair in some shots! So close, and yet so far. I wasn't sold on the cinematography, either. There were no really awe-inspiring shots to me. It will be interesting to see how much money it makes - I feel like it will probably be a disappointment, which will continue to doom cool animation projects in this country. And leave us with things like Osmosis Jones. Ugh.

The spider-man trailer was a little disappointing, too. The helicopter in the web was dumb, and the web swinging scenes were not jaw-dropping. It didn't make it seem fun and exhilerating. But we'll see. Try to keep expectations reasonable...