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Final Fantasy Movie Trailers 186

Posted by emmett from the this-is-just-too-cool dept.
Splitzy writes, "Square has finally released the site for the Final Fantasy movie. It includes background on the movie, and two short trailers in Quicktime format. You can check out the site here." The movie was first mentioned here a while back, but Hooboy, this looks like a good one. Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi and Peri Gilpin? It's a far cry from FFIII on my NES.
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Final Fantasy Movie Trailers More

Final Fantasy Movie Trailers

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  • Final Fantasies... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, after Final Fantasy III (japan) the Final Fantasy Series became really linear in terms of story line. And yes, there are an absurd number of them, but the one thing I liked about the final fantasy series is the fact that Square pretty much comes up with a new world and new story line. The link between the Final Fantasies aren't that great. They have some of the same creatures (like chocobos), the same magics/abilities and the same main game engine (ie over world map, active battle system). Besides that (seems like most of them game though, doesn't it) it's generally different. I mean, the world and storyline of course and in each one square tries to throw in a tweak on their engine too. Ie Junctioning Guardian forces, materia, the Final Fantasy V class system.

    The one thing I'm worried about though is the quality of the Final Fantasy stories and characters have been dropping. I didn't play all the way through Final Fantasy VI (or III in the united states) but I've heard that was the best of them. Anyways, I feel that the Final fantasy stories have been getting worse and worse (from VI to VII from VII to VIII). Hopefully though, they'll stop that trend with this movie since they aren't restricted by having to change a story into a game.

    And if they don't, we'll still be treated to some unparalleled eye candy.
  • Yeah, yet another thing that /.'s authors should try to remember...
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
    Stop the MPAA [opendvd.org]
  • no why would anyone want to improve their purity score? ;)


    "Trust is a trick that dogs play. They don't want you to know how delicious they are."

  • If you like CG in movies, check out the Dinosaur trailer at http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/dinosaur/480. html

    I don't think you will be disapointed...

    PS: Please, keep down putting '@' everywhere. It makes you look like an '3l1337 D0ob'.

  • Dinosaur is afaik *not* a full cgi movie. There are a lot of live action segments in it as well, and the two have been combined.

    for an example, look at much of the vegetation and particularly the splashing water when the egg-thief is running away, over the stream.

    frankly i'd be happy with it if there were no story - just a 'documentary'. hopefully the story angle won't screw it up.
  • Ah, but you forget about the power of TRON, my son.

    (actually, TRON doesn't count; the movie was written before the video games, but the games were done before the movie was - that's why the grid bugs play a mildly significant role in the game, and appear for 1.3 seconds in the movie...)
  • >ead their discussions about bounce, squash,
    >stretch etc.

    Mmm. Bounce.

    - Glytch, who is praying that the Squaresoft CGI folks are consulting Gainax artists for the upcoming movie.
  • I played it way too much so my guys where way too beefed up. I had KOtR, but didn't use it because I knew it was cheap. Instead I had two players with 4x cut materia each hitting for around 9k per swipe consistently, that's around 36k per player per turn (the other would use mime), I turned sepiroth into swiss cheese without even using much magic at all.... and having the final attack phoenix combo up to level 2, I had no fear :) I guess my point is that damn I love actually kicking some ass in a game, NOT getting my ass kicked. That's why FF serious is addicting for me and a lot of other people... no one likes to lose... Can't wait for that movie though, wish they'd put out a "real" full length trailer :)

    ---
  • Didn't he work for Marvel in the mid to late '60's? (Last time I read them)
  • I can feel the wrath of /. right now :) But it's handling fine.

    Just one note. Any loss of realism in the picture is due to my fault while compressing the final jpg image. I made it a point to have as less compression as possible.


    --
  • I went to see Toy Story 2 a few weeks ago (it was great), and saw the trailer for that Dinosaur film. I almost puked - something about the flickery, jerky motion and the huge, slightly fuzzy screen... Anyway, that trailer was followed by one for another film - Chicken Run [chickenrun.co.uk]. No fancy computer graphics here - pure plasticene. It looks brilliant. It's from Aardman [aardman.com], makers of such wonders as Wallace and Gromit and Rex the Runt.

    Ford Prefect
  • I kinda doubt they hooked up a bunch of little white balls to the actress's eyelids to do that...

    (Then again, I might be wrong..)
  • They're doing a new Dune movie right now. TV mini series. 6 parts. Each about an hour. Productions shots look rather good. Have a look. [sf-fan.de] Babelfish-alert!
  • Most of my friends love Final FAntasy, are looking forward to movie, etc... although they seem unimpressed by the trailer.

    I had the game for the NES, but I hated it. I just couldn't get into it.

    Perhaps this means I'll be the only who likes the movie then... I'll be watching simply to see the awesome effects/quality.

  • The final fantasy games are not sequels of each other, each game is different.
  • I agree. The original poster says that he thinks the stories are getting worse even though he admits he never even played all of them. I have been a huge Final Fantasy fan ever since the original for the NES. I've played through I, IV (II in the US), V (using a translated ROM), VI (III in the US), VII, and VIII, most of them multiple times. So I think I know I thing or two about Final Fantasy. Let me tell you: it get's better every time. Yeah, VI was great. It's definately one of my favorites (and I've played through it more times than I can remember), however I think the plot of VII is even better (although the characters aren't quite as interesting). It's certainly more original at least. VIII is a bit different in that it really tries to base itself on a love theme. Sure, there were some relationships in some of the other games, but they never took the kind of center stage that the relationship between Squall and Rinoa takes in VIII. Now, some people may not like this game as much as VII, but it's still good and I think it contains some of the most memorable moments of and Final Fantasy game.

    Anyway, it all boils down to personal preference. You might like one game more than another, but I don't think any fan of the series would say that any of the games are bad, or that there has been a downhill trend. Whatever, I forgot what my original point was. But hey, I love FF, and I am really looking forward to this movie.

    I completely agree about the Uematsu thing. He is an incredible composer. In case you're wondering I'm enough of a FF freak that I collect the soundtracks for the various games. There that good.
  • Its true, the movie is being made in english with the lips synched to the english actors and dubs built in and all... I find it kinda funny that our friends in japan have to watch the badly dubbed movie now, lol...

  • actually, Square's said on previous occasions that they're doing all the textures themselves. They've got the motion capture and voice acting thing going, but there still is quite a lot of stuff being done by artists so I think this qualifies as computer-generated.
  • I know what you said was ment to be a joke, but just to elaborate on it...

    The movie is being aimed at americans and being made in america. I heard James Wood is signed on to lend his voice talents.

    I am very excited about this. I think the next time i am in hawaii (i live there when not at school) i am going to try and stop in to see this movie being made.
  • This and Titan A.E. are the movies I'm really looking forward to this year.
  • If it's rendered on a computer, then it's CG.

  • and that's why God invented mimes and then animators strapped some mo-cap equipment on them.

  • Everyone's talking about the clips having good animation. All I saw from them was 2 camera pans and a blinking eye. Not enough to tell if the animation is good. The images look photorealistic, but they didn't show enough to tell how good the animation is so stop comparing it to Pixar stuff because their animation is truly amazing.

  • Really? Try out Selphie's Limit Break, "The End". It'll kill just about anything, except the very very last boss.

    But that's cheese fighting anyway. :)

  • You know, despite the fact you're an anonymous coward, I have to agree with you. FF is pure fluff. Why I should play eight or nine games plus--which are all the same thing every game--is beyond me. The sad thing is...FF has lots of room for improvement, yet since the initial release of the first nothing's improved. And IMO, the first one sucked as well.
    In short, it seems it's all recycled. It's just the first one modified for the second, modified for the third, modified for the fourth...I doubt Square even gives a damn what the plot is, as long as people keep buying it.
    And they are pissed at Nintendo? Throw me a frickin bone here. If I were Nintendo, I'd have kicked Square's ass long ago.

    I don't know...I still worship the first Zelda ^_^

    miyax
  • Come on, guys (and girls.) I got a good laugh out of this. If you didn't, that's fine, but this is definitely not a "troll." Sheesh.
  • Don't forget the classic "The Last Ninja", which spawned The Last Ninja 2, The Last Ninja 3, and Ninja Remix (a rerelease of Last Ninja 2 with an added intro and different music).
  • Maybe he played the Japanese FF3 then :) Here is a little Table for Japanese and US FF games:

    Japan US
    ________ ________
    FF1 -NES FF1
    FF2 -NES
    FF3 -NES
    FF4 -SNES FF2
    FF5 -SNES
    FF6 -SNES FF3
    FF7 -PSX FF7
    FF8 -PSX FF8

    They really confused things by skipping so many numbers in the US :) And I know NES in Japan was Famicom, and same for SNES, but this is simpler :)
  • Well this won't be FF9, this will be a non-interactive movie.. But that was an excellent summary of the FF series.. I'm a fan of the series in any case.

    Of course, in the united States it went Final Fantasy, then Finaly Fantasy II And then Final Fantasy III, and then Final Fantasy VII and then VIII, you have to get the japanese/translations for the REAL 2,3, and 5 :) Or bye the Anthology in the US for V....
  • I'm usually not one to wander off-topic, but I hate Xenogears more than any other game I've played or book that I've read. Through the first 68 or so hours, it is the deepest, most involved story I have seen in a video game. You really feel like you are affecting these peoples lives, even if the game is static and linear. Then all of the sudden near the end of the game, instead of doing things yourself, you are told what goes on and what happens. UGH!! This is quite possibly the most frustrating game ever. To be so good to invest so much time into it only to have the story taken out of your hands. If they were going to try this kind of story telling, they should have put it at the beginning, where we hadn't gotten spoiled by such a great game.
  • The stories haven't been getting worse at all... If anything, Square's doing a better job for each one and hiring better writers. The plots aren't cliched, even though it IS the 8th game in the saga. (Okay, the entire "Save the world from plot device X" is getting a little tired, but these games aren't little stories, they're EPICS).

    And I believe most geeks on here would agree with me that working for Square now, developing games on the PS2 (linux based, remember?), would be a DREAM job. Now if I could only become fluent in Japanese. And C.

    Personally, all I'm hoping for is that Uematsu is doing the music for the movie, although they have one hell of a tag team between him (Final Fantasy series) and Mitsuda (Xenogears, Chrono * series)


    _____________________
    .sig Instructions
    step one: place .sig here
  • Uhhh, no offense but what do you mean no magic in the Conan movies (or Ladyhawke for that matter)? Wasn't James Earl Jones character some evil magacian in the first one? And that Chinese guy in Conan the Destroyer was a magacian also. As for Ladyhawke the whole movie was based on the spell that turned them into a hawk and a wolf during different parts of the day. And I agree... they were decent movies. I hope that this lives up to the hype.

  • And of course, the BBC has already come out with a brilliant documentary on dinosaurs, featuring a clever blend of CGI & puppeteering.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs [bbc.co.uk]

    It's not how much crap you create with the tools, it's how you balance them out to get quality results. TheBench.org, anyone?
  • Actually, they aren't all like that. Terra and Celes are arguably the protagonists of FFIII(American Numbering System). Celes ends up with Locke at the end, (what a waste, Setzer was much cooler!) and Terra is alone at the end. Of course, it's tough to use the term protagonist with an interactive game with multiple sub-plots and characters, I'm simply using the fact that in FFIII you start out as Terra in the main world and Celes in the world of ruin.

    Actually, the game that I'd compare to FF VII is Phantasy Star II, in that Nei reminds me of Aeris both in the fact that she's only partly human and she gets killed(;_;).

    Of course, it is true that the plot of most RPGs (RPGs that have plots, that is) tend to involve either the horrible evil villain who is going to take over the world or the villain who is going to destroy it. So, there are some similarities in that way, between Kefka and Sepiroth. But then, aren't a lot of epic plots like that? Certainly the Star Wars series seems to fall into the same catagory...

    If you want to try another J-RPG series, you could try Lunar. Lunar:SSC is coming out for PC (though not for Linux, darn it!), I like the Lunar series as much as the Final Fantasy series, myself...

    For more information about the Lunar series, consult Working Designs [workingdesigns.com]

  • Question:

    Doesn't the fact that Slashdot is called "News for Nerds," right in the logo, perpetuate the nerd stereotype for Slashdotters? (Hey, I had a co-worker jokingly say "Oh, so you are one of the nerds, eh?" But I don't see how anyone who has seen every episode of Dr. Who and collects Role Playing Games could be considered a nerd, anyway.)

    Besides, I'm sure lots of Penthouse centerfolds play D&D, so who needs the Playboy ones (well, at least that's how it is in the alternate universe where I'm from... I notice things are different in this one...)

  • If we are going to go into anime, I might as well mention this one:

    Final Fantasy: Legend of the Four Crystals [yahoo.com]

    Unfortunately, I haven't seen it... because, as Chris Peterson would say, "I'm not made of money ;_;"

    I kind of like the Fatal Fury OAVs and Movies, too...

  • Actually, you missed the fact that he will be assisted by a phenomenally mechanically gifted man named "Cid".
  • They have similar styles of story, but it's not always the same. I suppose if you boil them down to the extent you did, yeah the protagonist (or at least one of the major characters) is a brooding silent type, there's often a triangle (though they've become more pronounced lately, and VII had two overlapping triangles), and the world needs saving. But, hey, if you're going to be a real hero, saving the local village of 50 people just isn't as impressive as preventing the world from exploding...
  • For those who want the entire collection from beginnign to end, FF2 can be found online in translated ROM format. Be warned, the translation sucks. Bad. But, you can play. FF3 I have not seen in ROM format before, but there are a lot of groups working on translating good RPGs into English, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone it doing it. You can get FF5, either in translated SNES ROM format (better translation, much more playable) or in the Playstation FF Anthology collection. Of course, you can only legally get the rom if you have the original cartridge blah blah delete in 24 hours blah blah.

    I just want to know why there are more (english) Final Fantasy titles for the Gameboy, than there are for any other system. There are four (FF Adventure 1-3, FF Legend) for the GB, and at most 3 for any other (SNES, with Mystic QUest, FF3, & FF2; PSX, with FF Tactics, FF7, and FF8)?
  • Here's a comparison of the different incarnations of Final Fantasy:

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 1 (Famicom)
    US Title: Final Fantasy 1 (NES)

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 2 (Famicom)
    US Title: Not Released

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 3 (Famicom)
    US Title: Not released
    (now, hold your horses, keep reading)

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 4 (Super Famicom)
    US Title: Final Fantasy 2 (SNES)
    (Note: The US version is substantially different that the Japanese version)

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 5 (Super Famicom)
    US Title: Final Fantasy Anthology (PSX), under title Final Fantasy 5. Has been spruced up with some added scenes and CGI. First time released in US.

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 6 (Super Famicom)
    US Title: Final Fantasy 3 (SNES). Also under Final Fantasy Anthology (PSX), under title Final Fantasy 6. Has been spruced up with some added scenes and CGI.
    (IMO, the best of the series... I haven't tried the anthology version, though.)

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 7 (PSX)
    US Title: Final Fantasy 7 (PSX)

    Japan Title: Final Fantasy 8 (PSX)
    US Title: Final Fantasy 8 (PSX)

    I know I'm leaving out Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Final Fantasy Tactics, and others. I'm not sure what their equivalents are. Also, don't ask for dates... I don't know those, either.

    If you want to play any of these games nowadays to experience them, you must either find a way to get one of the originals, or use an emulator, and download the ROM image of the game. I cannot tell you where to get either, because use of emulators has been determined to be illegal. All I can say is if you're reading this, you are smart enough to use a search engine.

  • At least that's what the scuttlebutt on the various CG mailing lists I'm on is. Not that the guys at Squaresoft aren't total badasses anyway, but motion captured animation is a pretty good way of getting all the subtle nuances of things like human movement. AFAIK, it's being modeled, setup, and animated in Maya and rendered by Pixar's PRman.

    $.02,

    Brian
  • Hrmm...well i don't work at square so I can't argue definitively, but just because I said Pixar don't infer Toy story. Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman is afaik the Hollywood renderer of choice...it's good stuff(tm) if you can figure out how to write shaders for it. Look here [pixar.com] for more info on it. They may well have written a custom renderer to do things that PRman doesn't do well (like raytracing), but AFAIK they're using PRman for most of the work. I'd love to read that interview with the producer...got a URL?

    -Brian
  • Hello everybody,

    I guess this is a good time to ask:
    What Linux player can play those trailers? I looked on freshmeat and all but I didn't find one that didn't crash on these .mov's.

    Some pointers, urls would be greatly appreciated.

    Roland
  • Actually in some cases they throw the data out entirely. most motion capture systems suffer from jitter as well as other errors. Kaiser-Wallsach (sp?) was the company behind the CG for the new spiderman ride, they originally had actors doing the motion and captured the data. They had so much trouble working with the data that they ended up tossing it out the window. In fact the only case where motion capture seems to have worked really well was in the ghost catching [cooper.edu] performace at cooper union
  • And once more, the fact that Apple has no desire to really support Open Source (save when it benefits them) denys an entire section of the Internet access to the movies.


    Has anybody converted these clips into something that can be viewed under OS's other than Windows or Mac?


    Somewhat off-topic: re: Burning money on Open source: how about licensing the Sorenson codec, and making an Xanim plugin?


    Perhaps a jihad is needed against Apple and Sorenson...

  • Since someone has to say it every time,
    Sorenson is called Sorenson because it is NOT Apple's. It is a means of compression rolled into QuickTime 4, as it totally puts most others to shame. As for denying an entire section of the Internet these movies, what happens if they put them up as .mpg's, as you'd likely prefer? Bigger size, longer download, and only people who have their browsers properly configured will have them open up right. Face it, the choice is between QT4, Real (ugh!) and WiMP. Once again, if linux users want progress, don't rail against the closed-sourcedness of QuickTime; ask politely for a player for linux, and maybe it will show up someday.
  • Final Fantasy games are about as low on the "interactivity" scale as one can get. The games are completely linear in plot, and really are just "movies" that the "player" adds to with a few choices of which weapon to use, or which chocobo to breed.

    I don't see why it wouldn't translate into a great movie. It would save me all that wasted time trying to kill the giant spider, or march perfectly in the parade.

    Don't get me wrong, it's a superbly designed game, but it's really not any sort of mental challenge, and there's no "role playing" involved (despite what it says on the packaging).
  • Ultimate means final. You DID know that, right?
    --
    The other side is crowded. The dead have nowhere to go.
  • Um since when were limit breaks cheats? And all the components for weapon construction i.e. Lionheart, were easily obtainable during the course of the game
  • Uhh the last boss in FF8? Piece of cake, simply obtain the Gilgamesh card and turn it into 100 holy war drinks. Won't even get scratched. Like the previous poster said, FF games are only as hard as you want them to be. Oh and as for any "super overly-powerful attack" Squall's limit can do some 200,000+ damage So can Zell's Selphie has "The End" etc..etc..
  • uh, wait just a minute there man. What about the conan movies and ladyhawke? surely those were good, i know i liked em, although they don't have elves, dwarves, and magic, they are still good movies!

    "The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other poor sons-of-bitches die for theirs." --George Patton
  • I see both of your points, but I would consider your opinions uneducated. You see, I got into Final Fantasy back when it was released for the nintendo. Not many people knew about it at the time, as it was the last hope for a fledgling software company (hence the name), but a friend and I spent all our time together with it until we each beat it. Then II (IV in japan) came out for the SNES, and I was thrilled. The storyline was a bit linear, but it was great to see such a title in 16-bit glory. Then III (VI in japan) came out and it was even better as a flexible storyline was added to those incredible graphics.

    Now that the FF series is on the playstation, I don't give it much attention. It seems that being put on a media built for mass storage has turned it into just that - a game with more FMV then there is gameplay. Sure the spells look nice, but do they really have to take several minutes to complete?

    It kinda saddens me to think that FFVII and beyond is what the public thinks of the series, not the classic games of lore that I still have fond memories of. I suppose it's great for Square, since many more people are playing it now, just as many more people play Q3:A than people played Q1, but to me it has lost a bit of class.

    Hacksworth
  • Maybe I shouldn't admit this on a public forum, but I still watch the Conan movies anytime they come on TBS.

    But you're right, fantasy movies tend to automatically suck for some reason.
  • for this! I've played (and own) several ff's and I've been counting the days till something like this happened. I really hope they get ahead of schedule, cuz it seems like a good promise of Square. I can only hope they don't bomb it, though. Many videogame transformations to movies have failed (anyone remember street fighter?) but I think (and desperately hope) that it will be pretty good.
  • But that was an excellent summary of the FF series

    Ummm....I was *joking*. I made that summary up from my limited experience playing FF VII. Are they all like that?

    Frightening.

  • I think all the FF after 3 for the Snes where stupid... they all got away from the Midevil Times, where magic and swords ruled the world, and kings and evil races Corrupted the towns.

    And... from what I have seen most movies made
    from video games have been flops:
    Street Fighter
    Mortal Kombat (best out of the bunch)
    Mario Brothers
    Wing Commander

    -> Never Trust a Skinny Cook!
  • I'm unable to view the trailer, but is this animated or live-action? It seems to me that this movie should be done in a completely-3d animated way, considering the game's recent reputation for glitzy graphics. Or shouldn't it? Anyway, they're going to need a considerable amount of animation in it.

    "The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
  • Considering that the girls of FF just seem to be getting cuter and cuter, I can only wonder who's going to be in the movie! :o)

    ICQ: 49636524
    snowphoton@mindspring.com
  • Do you havve any idea how long those idiots at Disney have been working on that damn thing? Since 1994 at least! and how over budget??? GOD what a mess that is.... As for FFTM I'm actually surprised that the thing is going to make it out the door. I never heard anything good about the progress of that thing.. I think Pixar made TWO, count them TWO full length CGI films in about the time it took those idiots over at Square to make ONE. Of course the never made one before... Well for all the time, money and effort they put into it, it better be good!
  • Actually, I don't know how far youve gotten in FFVIII but the majority of the cast were friends in their youth, including major villians(Seifer and Sorceress Edea)

  • These were more like nano-clips.

    If New Line ever decides to put the 2 minute montage from ShoWest the other day up on http://www.lordoftherings.net [lordoftherings.net], then *that* could be considered a trailer. But only because it contains actual footage that will not hit the theaters for 21 months.


    Dracos

  • demiforce.parodius.com has the translation patches for both ff2j and ff3j. Both are pretty good as far as the translation goes. You may have to come up with your own roms though.

    the gameboy final fantasies really aren't; the final fantasy legend games are actually the first three Saga games, whose snes incarnation, romancing saga 1-3, was huge in japan but unreleased over here. we've gotten the saga frontier games, which at least superficially resemble the gameboy ones. Square changed the name no doubt to prosper off of the success of the final fantasies on the bigger consoles. Final Fantasy Adventure is really titled Seiken Densetsu- you might know its sequel named as Secret of Mana. The sequel to secret of mana, seiken densetsu 3, was also fan-translated, and very well at that- do a search for it.

  • Uh.... we live in really hard times? Yes, so much worse than when millions of people died fighting the Nazi's. Or when the population of Europe dropped by a third during the black plague. Or when thousands of Americans were shipped off to fight a war they didn't want, only to be spit upon when they came back home. I could give so many examples of just how much things sucked at just about any other point in history also.

    Face it, things are pretty good at the moment, comparatively. Don't believe the doom and gloom of a media who wants your attention. Try not to look in old 50's sitcoms for the perfect society which never actually existed.

    There's nothing wrong with escapism. To say that a topic on Final Fantasy shouldn't be approved because there might be children reading is just rediculous.

  • Alright, here's what I know...

    Although...if more people would be informed...I could have used my moderator points!! Sigh...Anyway, the guys at Square use motion capture to get a general idea of what stuff should look like...then replicate it without using any of the mo-cap data. I read this from an article in a gaming mag somewhere, where they interviewed some of the CG guys on the Square Hawaii staff. (For those who don't know...Square, the mother company is in Japan...Squaresoft and Square/EA are HQed in Costa Mesa, and the hardcore animation staff and bigwigs are in Square Hawaii.) He also went on to say that while they get many influences for their characters, no character is really based off of one particular person. (I heard that Squall was supposed to be a combination of Leo DiCaprio, the lead singer Teru, from the J-Pop band Glay, and a few other people...Maybe that's why his dialogue is bad...) Anyway, I believe this one is true for about 95% of the characters...

    I wonder if I'm going to be able to get into an advance screening of this, or if my old cronies ar going to be bastards about this one...

  • Well your are correct, all if not most of the backgrounds are live actions plates and all other thing (dinos and FX) were composited over them. Though plates were digitally manipulated and digital matte paintings were used.

    This year at SIGGRAPH (the premier event in Computer Graphics) they will have a course on the making of Dinosaur. Here is the course list for anyone interested:


    SIGGRAPH 2000 Courses [siggraph.org]

    Last SIGGRAPH they actually had a panel [siggraph.org] where one guy from Disney showed some clips of the work in progress. Interestingly enough on that same panel there was a guy from Square that also showed some clips from the movie: one was a something like a space station blowing up, the other this big huge Harrier like ship (probably the one pictured as the first prop), landing on a deserted street at night and blowing trash and a car away because of the exhaust vents. Looked pretty good IMHO. One more reason to go to SIGGRAPH, you never know what cool things might one could look at.

  • Oh, man! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Man if it's even half as good as the Super Mario Brothers Movie, it'll be...dumb...

    But wait, if it's even half as good as "Wing Commander"...oh, that sucked, too...

    Not a good track record so far...

  • Don't even try to download the files if you aren't on Windows or Mac.
  • Will there be a Cid? I'll be pretty let down if there isn't.

  • BitwizeGHC dun said:

    Final Fantasy deliberately borrows many storytelling elements from the "Star Wars" movies; apparently Sakaguchi and his buddies are real SW fans. The plots smack strongly of Star Wars: young boy with sword and moppish hairdo meets girl, destroys villain and evil force, saves world.

    Oh, it's incredibly obvious. Hell, at points it's downright blatant that they're SW fans.

    Among other things, in every Final Fantasy game since at least FF5 or FF6 there've been two characters named Biggs and Wedge (for those who remember A New Hope aka the "original" Star Wars, Biggs and Wedge were wingmen with Luke Skywalker). Specifically: FF6, in the beginning of the game; FF7, they were AVALANCHE members; FF8, they were opponents with rather serious delusions of grandeur :). If THAT isn't just a wee bit of a Star Wars in-joke, I don't know what is. :)

    (I will resist the urge, by the way, to make bad jokes here about Han Solo naked and petrified. ;) Besides, someone already DID that joke already. :)

  • These clips use the sorenson codec, which is the basis for quicktime 4. Unfortunately, the sorenson codec is closed source, and if you want to use it, you have to pay an insane amount of money for it. Thusly, there are no players for linux that can play this format yet. Sorry.
  • Actually, I recall reading in an interview with producer Hironobu Sakaguchi that Square had their own rendering software written specifically for the movie. There is a LOT of money in this flick (I'm assuming from Sony/Columbia/Tristar, who is publishing,) from the $11 million custom built studio to the render farm in a Honolulu office building facing the ocean. This movie Toy Story look like Pong.
  • The beauty of Final Fantasy is that the stories differ from one to the next (as well as the world, characters, etc.) they won't be trying to fit a video game story to a movie. Besides Square has some of the best video game writers anywhere, combine that with the fact that this will be the most life-like CG animated movie it is sure to be a geek favorite.
  • Oh, come on! That is the most childish RPG I've ever tried!

    Nobody and nothing ever dies, there's nothing remotely resembling an adult plot, all the main characters are children, and it's very easy (it takes a long time, and there are a lot of little details you can learn, but it's still easy). Everything about it suggests that it was made for children.
  • You don't need to worry about it being dubbed or subtitled, as long as you can follow English movies fairly well.

    REMEMBER, the movie is being produced in Hawaii with the voice actors being mostly English speaking individuals. I just feel sorry for the poor folks in the nippon, I mean, they're not used to doing half the translations and localizations we have to do to be able to watch their anime / play their games. Then again, for that same reason, I'm not ALL that sorry for them. :)



    _____________________
    .sig Instructions
    step one: place .sig here
  • Actually, I don't think the play balancers counted on you getting Kotr before you'd beat the game. Most everyone I knew beat the game in "the proper" order. Just because you hit a weak spot in the play balancer's list doesn't mean the rest of the game is a movie. I was about level 70 going into Sephiroth and it took me 2 hours to beat the guy before him. (In one sitting, one battle) I finished the game with two guys dead and one hit point on RedXIII. I doubt I'd call that a movie.
  • The Japanese FF3 was for the NES (well, Famicom). Are you trolling, or are all your punctuation keys sticking?
    --
  • The movie is all CG rendered. No live-action here.
  • POKEMON! Come on, why didn't anyone remember this? Its recent and successful and all (tho that doesn't mean its good, the ending is just horrid)...

    For those who don't know or are misinformed, Pokemon started as a gameboy game. A roleplaying game with a very unique playing style that was not made for children. Then they made a cartoon from it and after that the hellstorm of Pokestuff began. Lots of people think the childrens cartoon begat the gameboy game, but no, it was a non-childrens game which begat a childrens cartoon. Sort of like Ghostbusters going from a good adult movie (sex, living nightmares, etc, I think that qualifies as an adult movie) to a childish cartoon...

    Esperandi
  • Even though I haven't touched a Phantasy Star since II, the first two were so good and so far ahead of their time that I can't help but think highly of the entire series. For anyone who hasn't experienced the majesty that is Phantasy Star, there's a pretty good page with screen shots, tips and spoilers of all the games at The Phantasy Star Pages [phantasy-star.net].
  • As far back as I can remember, I have been a fan of fantasy literature. During this time period, I don't believe I've ever seen a pure fantasy movie that was any good. Now all of a sudden we have a Final Fantasy movie, a Dungeons and Dragons movie, and a Lord of the Rings movie coming. If only one of them is good, I will be the happiest little camper you've ever seen.

    -Now vilified fantasy nut
  • Will there be a subtitled version, (with subtitles in blue boxes), so ican feel like i am playing a FF game?
  • I'm glad to see they finally decided to stop kidding themselves that FF is a game series anymore and just call it what it has been since FF7: A MOVIE. Don't get me wrong, I love the FF series...up to FF6. FF5 ROCKED (especially once I got a translated version, then even better (aside from slowness) on PSX. FF7 though, it just wasn't a game (for long enough). It was downright annoying (frustrating even) to go through Midgar holding materia without being able to even use it until a bunch of annoying plot devices were out of the way. If your gonna let me hold it, let me fucking use it! It was even worse if you played your ass off (strategy guides are for sissies) to get the coveted Gold Chocobo, because as a reward for being such a hardcore player, they ruin the rest of the game for you! Nothing can stand up to Knights of the Round except the weapons (like Emerald was even hard or fun). WTF is with Sephiroth biting the dust after ONE KotR summon?!? Once you had KotR you could walk through the world fearlessly, so it became a movie. FF8 was worse. Graphics improved and gameplay took a blow. Hell, it had a cool battle system, but what good is that? All it does is make you want to fight all the time and beef up your character until you realize that you are so powerful nothing can challenge you. So again, it turned into a PSX movie. FF7 with 3 discs and FF8 with 4, and FF3(FF6) STILL HAS MORE GAME TO PLAY IN A TINY CARTRIDGE!!

    The movie ought to be really good, they've had enough practice on the PSX.
  • In a response to what someone said earlier, this movie will be very great, even if it isn't interactive. Most of the interactivity of the final fantasy games is just random battles, and other essential (directed) fights. You could in no way alter the way the story was going to end up(ie, kill a main character, fall in love with the wrong teammate). Now, if any of you(and I'm sure there are many) have played/seen Final Fantasy VIII, you'll agree that the story(yes, along with the fabulous animation)really made the game. It's story line is, by far the best of any recent game that I've played. Square Productions pride themselves on the good stories they produce. It's because of the story lines that the Final Fantasy series is still around(and will stay around for a long while) and popular. They will not disapoint.

    Along with the Lord Of the Rings and Titan AE, this is one movie I can't wait to come out.


    http://www.dtheatre.com [dtheatre.com]

  • WARNING! Contains spoilers if you still want to discover FF4, 5 and 6.

    I think they all got the best stories.. now think about it..

    Final Fantasy IV

    The big whale that goes to the moon

    The mystery of the crystals

    The underworld people

    Cid sealing the gate to the underworld

    The airship battles

    Final Fantasy V

    The first and second world merging to form a third one. OMG that ruled

    The mystery of the crystals

    Gilgamesh

    The crashing asteroids

    Final Fantasy VI

    The double personality of Terra

    Magitek

    The esper dying at the end, and you seriously worry that Terra will die too (great moment)

    World of ruin, and again you seriously wonder what happened with your friends

    Celes trying to suicide right after world of ruin (great moment)

    The opera

    Locke trying to save Rachel (great moment)

    The three balancing statues before world goes to ruins

    I just love being plunged in a real fantasy world, it seems to me that FF7 and FF8 are just too human for my taste. Final Fantasy should forever keep the Life theme, which is, let's not forget it, all about the best gift anyone can get (ok I got sentimental on that last one) :) Also, FF6 has that magic touch where we get to be attached very tightly with every characters, I don't remember any other game that did this as strongly as this one.

  • If final fantasy comes out next year, will it be outdated already? Disney has Dinosaur, also a full cg movie, and imho, it looks more impressive than the work done in final fantasy. The movie will be released memorial day and you can see the trailer (in quicktime) here [apple.com] .. This is a Disney produced and released movie, by the way, it has nothing to do with Pixar. It's their animated summer blockbuster this year..
  • Real Men watch the hex dumps, who needs colorful pixels?

  • Sign of technology to come (Score:3)

    by S. Allen ( 5756 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @08:28PM (#1219467)
    Fast-forward five years when the processing power exists to render this stuff in real-time and combine it with stories generated on the fly... there are already computer programs that can write short stories which are indistinguishable from that of humans. Custom movies rendered on the fly tailored to your wishes that know how to push all of your emotional buttons. What tactics will the MPAA use against this technology? Will they hold the licenses to all the good digital actors/personalities. Will they club us to death with patents? Food fer thought.

  • Close up of FF girl (Score:3)

    by doomy ( 7461 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @01:00PM (#1219468) Homepage Journal
    Hello,

    Here is a mirror [169.197.10.178] of the character face (See how detailed it is).

    NotE:, I'm on DHCP, my ip might go off any time. So pls mirror and post below.

    Enjoy!
    --

  • Hmmm (Score:3)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @08:20PM (#1219469)
    I'm a bit worried about the story for this movie, the FF games have had stories comparable to novels while the brief diddy on the site doesn't lend itself well to a story. I'm going to go see it either way. I am impressed with the 100% CG animation of the movie, George Lucas eat your heart out. I think it would be really funny to find out it was rendered on a processor farm on PS2s. As for translations (into Japanese among other languages) I think it might be possible to re-synch the lips to the other languages if Sony wanted to spend a few bucks to do it. Pixar re-rendered Bug's Life to fit into the 4:3 aspect ratio for the videos, Sony could do something similar so it won't look like a bad kung-fu movie. I say they should have the blue text boxes in any case!

  • Another Mirror (Score:3)

    by gimpboy ( 34912 ) <john.m.harroldNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:47AM (#1219470) Homepage
    Trailer A [uark.edu]
    Trailer B [uark.edu]



    john

  • Re:must...resist...urge...to...moderate...trolls (Score:3)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:09AM (#1219471)
    It is entirely done in the style of the Full-Motion-Videos of Finaly Fantasy 7 and 8 (though the graphics are better than either game). I donwlaoded a smaller trailer long ago and it was really quite impressive. They have gone all out on this one, with real people wearing little devices and moving around to give data to computers as to the most realistic way the characters should move. You should research a bit more on it. This is one of the most anticipated mvoies in a long time for me..
  • They have gone all out on this one, with real people wearing little devices and moving around to give data to computers as to the most realistic way the characters should move.

    That's called "motion capture," and while it's a great way to get gross movements into your animation, it actually requires quite a bit of work to achieve truly top-flight results.

    Animation isn't about exactly replicating natural motion; otherwise you'd just dress a bunch of actors up in silly suits. The movements of animated characters are carefully exaggerated to elicit an emotional response; hang out on animation mailing lists for a while (www.hash.com) and read their discussions about bounce, squash, stretch etc.

    Once the motion capture has "roughed in" the character's motions, the animator will often go in and DELETE much of the information to achieve an economy of motion and a stylistic edge to the animation. That's why good animated characters can seem so supernaturally graceful and natural... someone busted their ass to get it done!

  • Movie Plot (Score:3)

    by Digital Mage ( 124845 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:44AM (#1219473)

    So will the plot of the movie be similar to the game where the main characters spend 40+ hours leveling up and searching continent after continent for the mythical 'Purple People Eater' so that they can obtain the one spell/weapon/item that will actually keep them alive when they encounter the main villain?

    If so count me in! I mean, it just won't feel like a Final Fantasy movie if it doesn't have these elements.

  • Hot d@mn (Score:4)

    by Toodles ( 60042 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:21AM (#1219474) Homepage
    I've been following this one for a while. For those who didn't know, it's all CG, and it makes Pixar look like South Park. These aren't cartoonish, this are realistic enough to blow your mind. There was a video in Japanese I watched that showed both the antagonist and protaganist of the movie in action, and they almost look realy. You looking for freckles? They're there. Veins in the eyeballs. SOmething like 5 simulated muscles move when they blink. Absolutely amazing.

    Oh, and FF3 didn't come out for the NES. If you mean the english FF3 (FF6 in Nippon) it was for the SNES (Super Famicon in Nippon). FF1 (english) and FF2(Japanese) were for the NES.

    Check out the tribute movies on http://squaregamer.com . It has some of the highlights of all of the FF series in CG, set to a cool Offspring single. For those of us who went through and know just how cool the Opera house scene in FF3 was, you'll appreciate it.

    Toodles

  • Re:Damn the system... (Score:4)

    by A Flaming Peterson ( 160316 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:19AM (#1219475)

    you posted this just to raise your slashdot purity score... didn't you... ;)

    --

  • How CG is CG? (Score:5)

    by TheDullBlade ( 28998 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @01:48PM (#1219476)
    When you digitize real world textures, laserscan objects to get surface meshes, and motion capture the animation, is it still really CG? Or just digitally altered?

    A lot of human effort besides mouse/keyboard/monitor interactions went into producing these images. Simply calling them "computer generated" is like calling rotoscoped cartoons "hand-drawn animation".

  • Re:Overload! (Score:5)

    by Catch22RG ( 71033 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:24AM (#1219477)
    In the days before Final Fantasy, Square was barely getting by. Eventually, they decided that they would devote all of their resources to their next game in hopes that it would be truly spectacular. If it failed, however, they were through. Hence the name "Final Fantasy".

  • Overload! (Score:5)

    by gclef ( 96311 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:08AM (#1219478)
    Dear lord, there are going to be more of these than there were Halloween movies. What are they up toby now? Final Fantasy VIII? I can see it now:

    Final Fantasy XXVII: This time we *really* blow up the world! Our hero, a misunderstood youth with a mysterious past, is caught in a web of conflicting powers, ending in a spectacular fight to save the world, and his own soul! Complicating his struggle is the love triangle between him, the tomboy friend from his youth, and a flirtatious, mysterious woman who will play a large role in the future of humanity. Don't miss this latest installment of the saga for the survival of humanity!

    Did I miss anything in the plot summary?

  • Mirror (Score:5)

    by ObligatoryUserName ( 126027 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @11:13AM (#1219479) Journal
    The first clip is mirrored here [ign.com], and the second one is mirrored here [ign.com].

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