How bad was FF:TSW?

[edczxcvbnm]

I thought it was a horrible movie and one of the worst I have ever seen...maybe not that bad but it was close.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

It was almost almost good.

[Night_Sword]

OMG!@$!^! How can you say that. Best movie EVER! Bordering on the lines of such greatness as Pokemon (The movie) and the neverending story.

[Kurohime]

Dude, man... I LOVED the movie. :P Seriously.

I just have the feeling that if it HADN'T been called Final Fantasy, we wouldn't be bashing it so much. Then again... would any of us had seen it if it wasn't called Final Fantasy?

Grr... *goes to harass Roy again*

Anyway, I liked TSW.

[crono_logical]

It was almost good Graphics were a plus side to it, even though it cost Square a lot Although we'll might be seeing games on the PS2 or maybe PS3 with similar graphics sometime soon anyway

[Prodigy]

I thought it was a great film.

[Blackmage]

The only good it did was raised the standard of computerized graphics. I must say that Sid looked pretty close to being real. Other than that though... Meh. I'd much rather see...darn near anything than this.

I still think that Square should've made one of the FF's into a movie for this instead of TSW. It would've been muuuuch much better.

[crono_logical]

FFs have too much storyline to cram into a film, I feel, plus you lose the interactivity and probably much of the soundtrack from the game too

[Sephex]

Ha ha ha! Why the hell didn't you tellme about this thread! I will vote...it was almost good. I thought it was...kind of bad but if they made some adjustments to the movie it would of been cool.

[Big D]

Instead of "Final Fantasy", it should've been called "Final Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction" (let's hope it's the final one of those, too), because that's all it was, except for some downplayed spiritual overtones which were lost on many audiences.

Virtually no 'fantasy' in it. Unoriginal plot, unoriginal soundtrack, unoriginal movie in virtually every way, relying on the animation to sell tickets.

The FF games demonstrate that Sakaguchi can write and direct some very original stuff. Shame he couldn't be bothered doing so for the big screen.

I think I know the biggest problem, though. With TSW, they'd planned to create a realistic simulation of lifelike characters. Something original, different from other movies. However, during production, Sakaguchi kept dogging the animators, insisting that the characters and scenes look like they're from a 'real movie' - not 'real life', but as artificial and airbrushed as regular cinematic fare. Instead of simulating real life, TSW simulates a simulation - the artificial worlds created by Hollywood. That's why it was doomed to critical failure. All the 'movie' traits are there - characters with perfect hair and skin (even after life-threatening calamities underground), pointless lens flare effects (mimicing an inherent fault in real-life cameras), and lacklustre directing which was made to look as though the camera was limited by gravity, pulleys, physical constraints which apply in the real world.

There was so much potential to be revolutionary, but it was squandered. An original plot, world and style would've helped to no end.
Sadly, it wasn't to be - instead we just got a computer-generated replica of something we've seen too many times.

[Shadowdust]

I thought it was a great movie. Different things are good to different people. What more can I say?

[Prodigy]

Some interesting points Big D and I agree to an extent.

Nevertheless I don't think that story was THAT unoriginal. It hasn't really been overdone. It was enjoyable to watch and that's what makes a good film imo.

Also the soundtrack - it's absolutely fantastic. I went out and bought it quite recently and have listened to it a LOT.

[Boko Mog]

It was ok. I didn't really like it that much. The animation was good of course, but the story was lacking strongly.

[Big D]

Originally posted by Prodigy
Some interesting points Big D and I agree to an extent.

Nevertheless I don't think that story was THAT unoriginal. It hasn't really been overdone. It was enjoyable to watch and that's what makes a good film imo.

Also the soundtrack - it's absolutely fantastic. I went out and bought it quite recently and have listened to it a LOT.

I actually liked the film, and its story and soundtrack, I just feel that it could've been so much better if they'd only tried. Instead of being "brilliant", it was just "OK", something that won't stand out from the crowd too much.

[Garland]

It's a good movie, but a bad Final Fantasy. Some people go on about the philosophical things that define a "Final Fantasy". Sakaguchi and co do it in the DVD extras. That's fine, for an elite few, most of whom are Square employees. Unfortunately, Square assumed too much of its audience. Most of us aren't deep. We didn't go to the theater to be enlightened on Sakaguchi's thoughts on spirituality. We wanted to see moogles, chocobos, a lead with a sword big enough to evoke Freudian comments, and a little bit of magic. We got none of that. TSW is an above average space drama, with alot in common with the Alien franchise. It could have done well to advertise itself as one. To do otherwise would be like making Star Wars Episode 3, and titling it Lord of the Rings 3. Two totally different things. Sure, both were epic, but you're just going to anger everyone.