I hadn't even
heard of this being advertised and really mostly just found out about it from my
friends, and saw it because my brother brought home a copy. But anyway, when I saw it, I thought;
"
Finally. A film
worthy of the name
Final Fantasy."
I realize now why
Spirits Within did not get a very good
reaction from the audience, most especially the
genuine fans of the RPG. It wasn't really because their
expectations were too high, just that, they were
different. Because Final Fantasy isn't supposed to be just an exhibition on CG skills, but something that has a good story with
depth, messages to ponder on, implications that make you wonder about life, the system, and everything else. And
Spirits Within was just not... that.
It was too... American. And yeah, okay, that again, makes me sound like the biased fan that I am, but really, the characters were too
stereotypical, and there were no unexpected twists in the story. Everything was so, nothing out of the
ordinary, that you forget to praise the good
graphics they had.
Now, with
Advent Children, all that changed. Taking aside the fact that I did not
understand the story at all, (but I believe the reason for this is just my ignorance about the RPG) it was really good. The graphics were used in the way they
should be--unlike in
Madagascar, wherein all they made the CGs do were dance that "
I Like to Move It" song, which was hardly funny, meaning it was such a
waste of programmers' skills, in this movie, they had incredible fight scenes, flashback scenes, hi-tech gadgets, psychedelic-looking clouds, and just about everything
complicated you could think of that's related to computer graphics. And it wasn't just the animation that was good.
It had good
dialogue too. Except for the FF7 story-related
gibberish, the characters' remarks and sentiments were said at just the right parts, with just enough emotion and and emphasis, that you'd know that they had good
writers make the story. Nevermind that the voice talents were
not Ming Na and
Ben Affleck; who needs big names when it's just their voices that are going to be used anyway?
If it was made to save the name Final Fantasy, it definitely did it's job. But I think that more than that, it was made for the sake of art. After all, unlike Spirits Within that had a lot of hype, and commercialization, this was something that only the fans of Final Fantasy/Animation would find out about and get a copy of.
What can I say? It was made in Japan.
* This "review" in put in here instead of my movie blog because it's not really a review so much as another testament as to why I like Japan infinitely better than the US. :P 
