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Finale for Final Fantasy Studio 162

Posted by timothy from the roll-credits dept.
polar_bear` writes: "Looks like the folks who animated 'Final Fantasy' are on their way out of business. Salon has the scoop. Despite being visually stunning and fairly entertaining, it didn't manage to bring in enough bucks to cover production -- even though Aki Ross was hot enough to make Maxim's 'Hot 100' for 2001. Square Co. is looking for a buyer for the Honolulu-based movie production unit. Anybody have several hundred million dollars I could borrow?"
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Finale for Final Fantasy Studio More

Finale for Final Fantasy Studio

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  • Takeover (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SonicRED ( 15265 )
    Perhaps it was just me, but animation-wise I found this movie much more impressive than Shrek or Monsters Inc. There's an extremely talented group of people working for Square and as far as emotion and complex human animation goes I think they are currently the best team.


    My guess is Pixar and or PDI are going to be looking very closely at acquisition.

    • Re:Takeover (Score:4, Insightful)

      by yeOldeSkeptic ( 547343 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @10:14AM (#2945949)

      Perhaps it was just me, but animation-wise I found this movie much more impressive than Shrek or Monsters Inc.

      If by impressive you mean impressive technically, then yes Final Fantasy is light years ahead of Shrek and Monsters Inc.

      Unfortunately, technical production is only one minor aspect of a movie. Plot and story comes first. Aki Ross is a lovely lady but her idea of Gaia and those ghosts simply sound too New Age to me. I didn't like it at all.

      Shrek is a fun movie with good music, a compelling plot and a cast characters that are very memorable. I heard that Dreamworks's technology is capable of matching the textures of Final Fantasy but backed off from applying it because they want the movie to have the character of a traditional animation. They focused on the story rather than the technology.

      I too was impressed by the CGI of Final Fantasy, it was breathtaking, and I firmly believe that this is where animation and movie making will go. But I also found out I enjoyed Final Fantasy more if I shut the audio off and concentrated only in watching Aki Ross's beautiful face and fluid movements.

      • It looks like you here are still confusing issues. You say "plot and story comes first" and then "Gaia and those ghosts simply sound too New Agee to me." The two things are unrelated. Just because you allow things to hold imprints within your mind, allowing the basic underlying theory to be written off, and thus the plot by simple cultural misprogramming is absurd. Your first statement is true, but the 2nd has only anything to do with your personal opinion.

        And the music for Shrek sucked.
        • actually, overworked cliches and triteness can kill a plot.

          Now, the notion that Shrek had good music is a fallacy that dismisses the whole post.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • You missed the point of the comment you were replying to.

        The original poster said that a company like Pixar might want to acquire Square Pictures for the technical expertise and equipment. That has nothing to do with the plot of this one particular movie. Plot has already been discussed in other threads.
    • I thought the modelling and texturing was very impressive in FF, but the character animation, the actual gestures and body motion, was much better in Shrek.

      This was the biggest flaw in FF IMHO, the characters looked wooden, their faces seemed rigid which led to very impressive stills but when they spoke or 'acted' you knew you were looking at CGI, the facial muscle controls just weren't there.

      • Re:Takeover (Score:2, Insightful)

        by _Tzzu_ ( 555214 )
        True, the facial animation in FF was fairly poor (unless Human emotions only range from "Angst ridden" to "Stoic" and "Agressive" to "Angry". The only time that I remember a character smiling (Dr. Cid) it looked more like he was having a facial spasm. However, the body motion was leagues ahead of Shrek. The body movement of the characters (humans especially) was downright frustrating in Shrek. The princess especially - given that she's a main character I expected much more. Even if they were going for a cartoon look, instead of realism, it still came across badly. That said, I still enjoyed Shrek more - although I don't believe that it was good as most people have made out. FF just didn't have a very well realised plot. At best it was cliched, at worst it was ridiculous and/or ambigious (although it tried to pass these off as "mystical"). I'm all for films that make you think, but this one just was badly scripted. Essentially it came across as being written by a game studio, rather than a film company. I kept expecting the characters to move onto the next puzzle. "OK, we have to deal with the alien menance. But first let's get past this jumping sequence with moving platforms!".
    • The characters were certainly the closest to synthespians that we've seen yet - on that level it was incredibly impressive (although watch the forearms of the characters - at least twice I saw flat sides to their arms! :-). On the polygon-count level, it was great.

      Unfortunately, the animators were complete crap - it made Dragonball Z and Scooby-Doo look realistic! Facial expressions don't work properly, every character waves their arms around wildly in an unrealistic attempt to compensate for this, and none of them move realistically. Animated characters moving like humans works, and animated characters with super-realistic gestures also works. But humans (and they are superficially human) moving with super-realistic gestures just makes them look like bad amateur actors, and that was how the whole film felt - a bad amateur film made with a good computer.

      My guess is that the computer team would be a benefit to any animation studio. But the guys actually responsible for character movement, and ESPECIALLY the 1st-grade scriptwriters, should be dumped on the unemployment line, and good riddance to them.

      Seriously, I'm glad this has happened, bcos after FF I would NEVER spend my money on another film by those ppl, unless like the entire world said it was good, and even then I'd be unsure if I should risk my money again. A film is far more than just a polygon count, and that is all FF could offer.

      Shrek OTOH showed that animation could be fun, witty, intelligent and appeal to agegroups other than kids. Antz started it - that was pretty good - but Shrek went one step better and really nailed it. The best example is that with Shrek you don't notice how good the animation is, bcos you just believe in the characters - with FF you were sat there thinking "well, at least the pictures are technically good".

      Grab.

  • damn (Score:1)

    by nempo ( 325296 )
    damn, I really liked that movie, was kinda slow in the end though.
  • I liked that movie. It looked fairly good, and the plot wasn't all that bad. It would have been nice if they could have stayed around to make a sequel (not that they would considering they lost money).
  • First let me say that FF has been a great thing. But why did they have the whole org on an island in the Pacific? I know the travel costs must have been stagering not to mention the cost of living that all the people had to adjust for. I understand that you attract good people to good places but this is a bit excessive.

    Enough said!

  • Maxim Poster (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hangdog ( 8755 )
    And for the true "collector", this poster [ebay.com] is a must have!
  • Wife and I just watched the DVD last night. It was a very well spent 17 pounds. Stunning and at the same time artisticly impressive animation and a very interesting idea in the plotline. Some of it reminded me Akira, but this one (FF) clicks much better with me, it makes more sense.

    What can I say, I like it very much. They did a fantastic job and deserve more success for it.

  • No Soul (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Faeton ( 522316 )
    It goes to show that however remarkable a technical achievement it may be, FF:SW totally lacked the soul needed for animated features.

    They should have taken lessons from Pixar.

    • It definitely shows that people can connect and identify a lot more with fewer polygons that are more expressive and emotive than they can with near-photorealism that just isn't all there.

      The biggest strike it had against it was that, while films like Shrek, Toy Story, and Monsters Inc. were cartoons with cartoon plots and cartoon characters, this was the first 3D anime, with an anime plot and anime characters. This is asking for poor levels of acceptance, especially with an American audience. Not that there is no American anime following, that couldn't be further from the truth. But mainstream moviegoing Americans don't have anime-goggles they can put on to watch this film through... They're either going to watch it through cartoon-goggles, video-game-movie-goggles, or sci-fi-goggles, and its likely to fail them in those capacities.

      • Re:No Soul (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MtViewGuy ( 197597 )
        You are correct in your assessments. The movie had a plot that wasn't exactly acceptable to American audiences used to animation more in line of the old theatrical shorts done by Disney, Warner Brothers, MGM, etc. or the feature animation style that Disney pioneered.

        It's this same resistance that was the reason why Atlantis: The Lost Empire didn't do so well, compared with with other recent Disney animated features like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King.
    • I thought that the movie had more soul than most of what Hollywood puts out these days. The characters were not remarkably complex but there were subtle interactions between the characters that let me know more about them than was explicitly said.

      On a side note, the DVD of Final Fantasy rivals Star Wars 1 to show off what a good DVD player can do. Audio isn't as good but the visuals are astounding.
    • > It goes to show that however remarkable a
      > technical achievement it may be, FF:SW totally
      > lacked the soul needed for animated features.

      I agree. The visual effects were stunning, but I felt short-changed in the story department. It felt like they were trying too hard to make the story "big". You can't carry a movie by the visual effects alone. It reminds me of when I visited England and got to see the the Tower of London (or wherever it is that they store all the royal jewelry and related). When one first walks in, everyone is reduced to a slack-jawed yokel at the impressive array of gold and gems. After about ten minutes, however, I found myself bored at looking at the 100th diamond encrusted crown. It's funny because any *one* artifact would have caught my attention for a while, but when you stick them all together, the effect becomes numbing.

      Visual effects in a movie can be the same way. At first, you're like, "wow! that looks real!", but after a while the eye candy becomes weary, and a good plot needs to keep you interested for the remaining 1.75 hours.

      After I saw the movie, I thought they would have benefited from just extending the plot line of Final Fantasy VIII to a full-length movie. The cuts scenes from that game were engaging and the character development was really good. The result would have been a lot more exciting.

    • I think the problem Square faced was making people really care about the charaters before the 2 hours leading up to the climax was up. In FF7, for example, when they do the whole search for Cloud thing, it's all about the "life returns to the planet as energy" theme. This parallels the final scene in FF:SW. The difference? I actually cared what happened to Cloud at that point. The point is, Square usually has hours upon hours to build up your liking of a particular character, but with a film that time was cut fatally short. They really needed to pay attention to movies like Star Wars which make you feel like you've known Luke, Leia and Han for your entire life within minutes - then the whole plot (which also could have been improved) would seem a little more worthwhile.

  • Poorly animated. I don't know how many casual viewers picked it up, but the animation just wasn't working in the movie. It might have been too much reliance on MoCap, but whatever the case, it was really distracting for me.

    Quality animation is something you can't buy, even if you can afford the levels of detail that Final Fantasy had.

    I think the reason it didn't do well was that the plot was just too "hunh?" for the average person to enjoy. Its sad to see this happen, they were really pushing some limits.
    • The trouble was that the animation was inconsistant. There were some points in the movie when you had to look very closely before you could say "this aint real!" and then other times you went "oh dear..."

      This was due to the fact that they went back and re-rendered some scenes towards the end of production, but I guess they had to have a point where they drew the line.

      Why no-one else is picking this company up is beyond me. There's this idea that all CG movies have to be for kids and Square were the first to actually try and break that mould.

  • Chalk it up the the high cost of bad writing.

    Typical Hollywood job, too much emphasis on wow star power and glitzy animation, not enough on a decent story.

    • It wasn't just bad writing that dragged the movie down, it was bad directing. Personally, I chalk it up to the arrogance of Squaresoft that guy who writes and basically directs their video games, Hironobu Sakaguchi, could be equally adept at directing a movie. The man had never directed before and it completely showed in scenes that were supposed to show dramatic tension but came off as awkward. Note the scene at the beginning where Baldwin becomes apparently infected and collapses. The scene moves so fast that before you can say WTF? he's back to normal again. Instead of playing it safe with familliar characters that would draw an audience from anyone who had ever played the game series, Square continued to do what they had done for every Final Fantasy series prior. They reinvented the wheel in hopes of making a better wheel, but in this case they learned that making a quality movie requires more than their time-tested video game formula. I would chalk it up as: 1. Disloyalty to the fans in making a movie that while thematically similar is for the most part dissimillar to the video game series as far as monsters, music, villians, characters, worlds are concerned. All material that could have made this a familliar Final Fantasy movie was wasted. 2. Confidence that a man who creates good video games maketed primarily towards younger Japanese could make a $100 million+ feature marketed primarily towards mainstream US audiences.
  • I really like The Spirits Within, it has it's problems but it deserved to make money.

    The worst thing is that this will probably put the big studios off making serious feature length CGI films for the time being (and unfortunately the big studios are the only ones in the financial position to make such films, as FF:TSW proves).

    Oh well, we are stuck with Toy Story and A Bugs Life for a while.
    • The worst thing is that this will probably put the big studios off making serious feature length CGI films for the time being.

      Are you kidding? Many of the CGI movies do great. Take a look at Shrek or Monsters Inc. They did very well and a Shrek sequel is already off the ground. Both of those movies made tons of money, the problem with FF was that it had a poor script.

      • It's quite sad there isn't more of a market for poorly scripted mega-million-dollar movies. What is wrong with these crazy Americans not going to see a movie targetted at .01% of the country that has played ever FF game a hundred times over?

  • doomed from the start (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @09:52AM (#2945908) Homepage
    They overspent on everything...

    Studios on Hawaii, the most expensive state for anything in the United States, Sure.. It's a nice perk to offer great surfing 24/7 but over doubling the cost for everything used in your operation for that one perk is plain stupidity. Yes, they did some awesome renderings.. but they could have done them in Iowa or Kentucky, or anywhere else that would have lowered their operating costs significantly would have.

    nothing to see here but another example of how not to run a business.
    • It would've been considerably easier to lure hot CG talent to make the movie if the studio was in hawaii, as opposed to being in the middle of a corn field...
      • only stupid CG artists... you can rent a mansion in Iowa and afford 4 Bmw's for the price of 1 bmw and a studio apartment on Hawaii..

        Only the stupid flock to pretty places without weighing the living costs... example? Everyone in the valley.
    • "Studios on Hawaii, the most expensive state for anything in the United States,"

      IIRC, the cost of living in Japan and Hawaii are about the same. Both places have to ship everything in. And Hawaii is physically half-way between Japan and the contiguous US, so people from either country have similar travel times.

      Not to mention, with the Hawaiian population being what it is, they're far more likely to find bilingual help (English and Nihongo) there locally than any place else in either Japan or the US.
    • Yes, but what a dream! What a chance to do something cool in a great place to live! I mean, if they had just spent a bit more time on story development (or hired some clueful writers) they might have been a success. That's a chance worth taking... There's a lot more to work than being in some dark office in frickin' Iowa (apologies to any of you who are there...) San Francisco is an incredibly expensive place to live/work, but it's worth it to many of the tech companies based there.

      Anyone reading this who lives in Hawaii and is a programmer? I'd cut my pay in 1/4 to be you, I don't care. Living in Hawaii and programming like my man Phillipe Kahn is freakin' cool.

      "Build something innovative that solves a difficult problem and you will have something.
      Most of the long-term successful companies were built on those terms."       -PK

      -Russ
      • It is called "sunshine dollars" and if you are currently working in Silicon Valley you can expect your salary to be reduced by at least 75% if you come to Hawaii and cost of living will remain the same or probably go up. Hawaiian business is about tourism, the need for computer people is miniscule, the hotels don't need much and most of them are part of a chain with mainland IT anyway -- but everyone wants to live in paradise. Low demand, high supply == crappy pay. I grew up in Hawaii and had to leave in order to make a living as a computer guy. I'd move back in a heartbeat if I could maintain a semblence of my current standard of living, but as long as computers are my profession, it ain't going to happen.
    • Yeah but the Japanese are all about Hawaii. I don't mean that as a bad Pearl Harbor joke. Tons of Japanese live there (relatively speaking) and visit there all the time. Business-wise it probably was a little retarded, but there was a pretty good reason for it.

  • Maya = $$$$$$ (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Warped-Reality ( 125140 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @10:02AM (#2945930) Journal
    Yeah, and i belive they bought 200 copies of Maya Unlimited, which goes for around $16,000 a copy... 200x16000=$3,200,000 - ouch! (unless they got some kind of bulk licsence deal, even then it would still be expensive)
    • I wonder how thoes licences will transfer? Sure, you can buy the studio for a few million, but then having to re-purchace Maya would double the cost.
  • Solution: They should put it up for sale on eBay! With all the junk I've sold on there in the past few years, they should have no problems unloading a sophisticated production studio!

    :)

  • Aki Ross Porn (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They should learn a lesson from the internet and produce porn. I can attest that Aki Ross has helped me thru more than one lonely night. I can guarantee you they would have an excellent market for it in japan and most likey america.

    • Re:Aki Ross Porn (Score:2, Interesting)

      by alvi ( 95437 )
      Well... here's something funny: In this article [post-gazette.com] they even go as far as to claim that CGI-animated porn may turn the whole sex movie making industry into a victimless crime since nobody is going to be exploited by the process.

      Hey, it's just a link. Not my opinion.

  • betting the company (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 )
    I guess this is what betting the company is all about. It is always better to have a large reserve. I forget what the odds are, but I seem to remember that most movies seem to loose money.

    There is also the hollywood system that ensures that even the most wildy successful movies are never documented as having made a profit [homevideo.net]. Although there are rumors of changes [cfo.com] that will improve things. Ofcourse, if you screw up, you merely make sure that someone else gets all the profits [mecfilms.com] after you have done all of the hard work.

    The really important question, of course, is why this happen doesn't to Microsoft? bet the company and loose, that is.

    • of course, I found this document after I had posted the story, more clearly illusatrating the point.

      Garrison v. Warner Bros. [courttv.com]

      The world of motion pictures is "a never-never land of illusion," according to this class action complaint brought against the major studios, referring not to the movie magic that has made Hollywood famous but to the bookkeeping techniques that may be unique to Hollywood studios.

      The suit was filed by the heirs of Jim Garrison, the late New Orleans District Attorney, who wrote "On the Trail of the Assassins," the book that inspired Oliver Stone's film, "JFK."

      According to the Garrison estate, the film has earned over $150 million for Warner Bros., the studio that distributed the film, but has still not shown a "net profit" in which the Garrison estate is entitled to share.

      This complaint goes into the history of Hollywood's allegedly "creative" bookkeeping practices, from the days of the nickelodeon through the "Golden Age" and the modern era where major stars have the clout to share in the gross revenue of a film, avoiding the studio's allegedly problematic definition of "net profit."

      The parent company of Warner Bros., Time Warner Inc., is a part owner of Court TV.

  • We knew this was coming. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    way back when [arstechnica.com], they said "it's the last movie we'll ever make" because they're so over their budget.
    -ac.

    (this was from here [slashdot.org].)

  • It's the story, stupid! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Sunday February 03, 2002 @10:51AM (#2946054) Journal
    In animation, the story is more important than everything else put together. If you don't have a compelling story, $150M of computing horsepower can't save you, they just make for a bigger crater at the end.

    Look at the astonishing Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius It was made for a tiny fraction of what was spent on Final Fantasy, and it looks terrible in comparison -- but the story is fun and engaging. It's made over $76M so far at the box office. DNA, the company that made Neutron did it all with off-the-shelf commodity hardware and software, so they could do it quickly and inexpensively. Rugrats in Paris and Beavis and Butthead were similarly successful with really pretty awful animation.

    I really think that the demise of Square USA's studio should be applauded rather than mourned, because it shows with unmistakable clarity that it doesn't take a hundred million dollars to make a movie; and that spending that kind of money doesn't guarantee success. Corporations can't buy success -- it has to come from individual storytellers. I can't think of a more empowering, encouraging message.

    thad

    • Re:It's the story, stupid! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sg3000 ( 87992 ) <sg_public AT mac DOT com> on Sunday February 03, 2002 @12:27PM (#2946405)
      > Look at the astonishing Jimmy Neutron, Boy
      > Genius It was made for a tiny fraction of what
      > was spent on Final Fantasy, and it looks
      > terrible in comparison -- but the story is fun
      > and engaging.

      Yes, I believe that is known as the "South Park effect". So, to be more interesting, the Final Fantasy movie either needed a better plot or a lot more foul language.
    • I highly disagree. Square made some decisions about the kind of movie they wanted to make, and didn't realize it wouldn't make any money. It's a serious, relflective movie without a happy ending. The art direction was amazing. The designs, the sound, everything was very, very amazing. Go see it again, and don't pay attention to the half-translated dialogue, or the plotline that was crammed into a 2-hour format awkwardly. Jimmy Neutron will be a happily forgotten memory in 10 years, but Final Fantasy will be a part of CG history forever.
      • Aw, face it, it was a piece of crap. Absolutely tasteless, and even the action was un-forceful - these beasts looked like holograms. When a troll attacks the company in LOTR, I can suspend disbelief to some extent and *feel* a mountain of muscles carrying a 2-ton hammer looming over me. FF was like watching somebody watching a laser show in WB theme park, or something. As for the ending, I wouldn't know, I couldn't stand it by the time it got to the middle and walked out on it. You have to understand, it's very embarrassing for me to say that it took me almost an hour to figure out this movie is worthless. I do solemnly hope nobody I know reads this. :/
        • This would be a spoiler, if there was anything to spoil.

          If you've seen the end of FF7, you've seen the end of FF the movie. I swear they just took that video and re-rendered it at a higher resolution.
    • I wish the film industry would get through its tiny skulls that spending mad money on effects, locales, and star power do not a good movie make. A good movie is usually at its heart a well-told story. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I don't understand how with all that money flying around they can't see fit to find a decent, coherent script. It can't possibly be that hard. Maybe if they cut back on the coke and whores they could do a better job.
      • Why do some many otherwise clueful people think that the film industry defines "good" in any terms other than "in the black"? If a movie makes money, that's a "good" movie. And, as much as we wish it weren't so, special effects, locales, and star power get Joe Sixpack (or more likely, teenage girls) out there to watch the movie.
        • Perhaps some movies slip through into profitibility based on effects alone, and there are plenty of movies with good stories that get ignored. But those are they exceptions. Certainly a moderate weakness in one department can be compensated by strength in the other, to some degree, but that only goes so far, and that's not how making a film should be approached. True, if you throw enough money at promotion, any movie can have a good opening weekend, but you can't expect more than that. Because movies fail based on their weakest link - be it story or effects or acting or whatever. If you're going to spend boatloads of cash on a movie for incredible special effects, hire hundreds of people and work for years at a time, and ignore the relatively cheap but essential matter of a decent script and delivery, you're stupid. Simple as that. You've failed for the most obvious of reasons, and blew millions of dollars in the process. What other possible explanation could you have?
    • You start off heading toward the obvious (but very good) point that a good story is necessary for broad-based success no matter what else you do. But then you wander into the tired, predictable slashdot anti-money, anti-corporate, power to the people diatribe that also predictably misses the point: you have to match your product to your market.

      You certainly *can* buy success, but you have to know where to shop and how much to spend -- though I'll admit that no success is ever guaranteed. You have to spend your resources appropriately for the market you're targeting. If it's a niche movie, you can focus on the niche and scrimp elsewhere, but then you'll have to keep your expenses low enough to be recovered from the niche. Nobody else will be interested.

      If you're targeting a broad audience, niche value -- like a new CG medium -- won't work. A broad, diverse audience demands something of universal interest. Tell them how to get rich, or stay young forever, or lacking that, tell them a good story of universal appeal. If you scrimp on the plot -- don't hire proven screenwriters, or buy the rights to a proven story, or at least thoroughly test the plot you've come up with against a diverse audience -- then you may have a fatally flawed business plan, regardless of what else you do.
  • Title pretty much says it all. The rendering looked great I thought, animation wasn't so fluid and quite poor in parts but worst of all the script and storyline were absolutely terrible. The movie deserved what it got, if it wasn't for the small bit of wow factor in watching the well rendered scenes I would of shut it off after 10 minutes.
  • These kind of characters are really low cost between casts. I think the project tried to do too much at once. Instead the characters should be maintained and developed in a separate company while movie making and and marketing should be business as usual through for instance Pixar and agents. This way the characters could continue to evolve independently of certain movies success or failures. MPEG-4 animations extension will help boost this when (/if) those will be released.
  • John Romero's Ferrari Testarossa, or Square's movie division?


    Decisions, decisions...

  • Call it capitalism... (Score:3, Troll)

    by mcarbone ( 78119 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @11:11AM (#2946115) Homepage
    Really, Square Studios made a terrible movie. A terrible, terrible movie. Sure, it had some neat animation, but FX and looks can't carry an entire movie (e.g. Tarsem's The Cell). While audiences are often wowed by tricks and effects, they are truly looking for a good story and interesting characters (even if sometimes it seems like they are not, e.g. The Mummy).

    I think it is important, when making a breakthrough film in FX, to couple the oohs and aahs with a damn good story (see Terminator 2, Toy Story, Star Wars, Titanic, etc.). For some reason Square Studios thought they could throw together a script with a boring, nonsensical plot, flat characters, and mediocre dialogue but that it wouldn't matter because the movie looked like one long cut scene from a Final Fantasy game. Well, I think we all knew even before we saw this movie and when we saw the trailer that it would fail in the end. Who would go see it except a few fanboys (and they spent soooo much money on it)?

    I think it relates to the game industry as well. There are games out there that have revolutionary graphics, sound, and control but unless they are overall good games with a good story, no one will care in the end. Black and White had revolutionary AI, but I got bored playing fairly quickly. FF8 had revolutionary everything but was just plain not fun to play.

    So my whole point is: I'm really glad that Square Studios is no more -- they don't deserve another chance at making a film, as their first indicates a lack of ability. And so they don't make the evolutionary cut and hopefully some new studio (maybe even influenced by Square's awesome animation) will pick up the ball and actually make a good animated movie with human leads. Here's to that.
    • Saying that Square Studios failed because of a "lack of ability" is not (IMHO) quite correct. Sure, the script blew more goats than goatse.cx, but the animation and modelling was VERY good. I'm in the 3D multimedia industry, and I have yet to see anything that comes even close to the photorealism introduced by Final Fantasy. The film was a technological tour de force, if perhaps a bit overspent (diving trips in Hawaii to study bubbles? Ever hear of a bathtub?) The facial animation could've been better, but I've never seen textures that realistic in a CG feature film before. Aki Ross has pores, for Pete's sake! That's attention to detail!

      That being said, I felt very disappointed by the film's script and ultimately think that FF is a poor movie. It still occupies a slot in my DVD changer, but mainly as a reference disc more than a piece of entertainment. Much like many /. programmers out there, the animators have to build what they're told to build by the script writers (a.k.a. project managers in dev circles) and they're not responsible if the script sucks. Blame Hollywood for allow such dreck to pollute what looked to be the most visually revolutionary CG or CG-assisted film since Tron.

      Square should be held (ahem) squarely responsible for the hideous screenplay, but do not disparage the incredible animators and programmers involved in the project by blaming them for said script. The artists were told to paint a bad picture, and they painted a bad picture in the most beautiful fashion they could. My hat's off to them, and I hope they don't stay in the unemployment lines long.
    • The Mummy? Yeah, all the animation was good...until the end, when the most important CGI character, the Scorpion King, managed to look like a lump of turd. Sorry, but they could prioritise a little more. And, while I'm here, it probably flopped not because it had a rather flat storyline,(people would only figure that out after the film, methinks...) but because of the predjudice us gamers get! If we venture outside we get insulted for being geeks with no friends, yada yada...(admit we play Final Fantasy, for example...) Square Studios just did it on a bigger scale. So...good idea, bad plot. I thought the animation was really good, just.. all brown. And some of the animated people's movement really freaked me out). We could all sort of see it coming.
  • Final Fantasy was a game turned movie. It would have been a big hit had it remained a game. It didn't fail in theaters because it was an art movie trying to get a point across that no one got, it was a block buster that busted. They could have saved some money and just taken tiles from FF1 to tell their story like they do at 8-bit theater [nuklearpower.com].

    Seriously they threw millions of dollars into FF:TSW only to learn that movie going audiences don't go for "My name is Daryl, I'm a dancer" dialog and delivery reminicent of a student directed documentary about red blood cells. There were scenes of the movie that looked like a live action sequence, these usually took place inbetween scenes where you could actually see the character or the character was talking. I love seeing James Woods in movies, he has definite style when he delivers lines and when he is intense you can tell he is being intense. There was NONE of that in General Hein. Neil didn't exactly fit in with the image you associate with Steve Buscemi's dialog. More effort was put into realistic hair movement than realistic portayal of emotions. Same for the story which was weak at best. They could have just used the story from FF6 it would have been ten times more involving and probably got them a couple million more dollars. Due to Square fucking the donkey with FF George Lucas is going to have a much tougher time pitching his load about replacing actors with computer models. I think this is a good thing (even if actors aren't pushing technological limits) because I want to see a movie with more substance than freckles and relistic moving hair. When Donny died in The Big Lebowski you feel at least a little remorse at him dying. When Neil dies in FF:TSW you're lucky to notice. That's not going to sell movie audiences.
  • Also, "Final Fantasy" may be in competition for the first-ever Academy Award for a feature-length animated film, to be presented in March. Nominees are to be announced Feb. 12.

    First of all, Beauty and the Beast was nominated for best picture in the early 90's, and it was a feature-length animated film. Second, if they are talking about winning best picture, does anyone really think that FF has a chance in hell? It won't even get nominated for anything aside from FX, maybe.
  • The box failue of the movie results this. The movie was well-made, but it didn't catch the heart of all FF-fans because they attempt to mimic the elements that can be done in non-CG movie. We enjoy FF series for its story completely escaping the real world, but this movie more like a CG-version of Alien(s) to me. :/
    • If this movie had actually used all the FF elements I wouldn't have cared about the plot. I would pay the ticket price again and again to see the following things on da big screen:

      1) Bahamut SWOOP
      2) Chocobos run to the chocobo theme song

      (and best of all)

      3) Someone summon Shiva!

      It was Square's unscrupulous use of the FF name, betraying their loyal fans that hurt me, more than the stale subject matter, awful plot, unnoticeable music etc.

      graspee
  • OK, John Cameron got away with spending $200 million to make Titanic, but...

    If I recall, the break-even point for a movie is ticket grosses that are twice the cost of making the film.

    That means $300 mil in this case. $290 if you want to be picky.

    Big studios can take that kind of chance because they hedge their bets over multiple films. Even then, they don't do it any more often than they have to.

    A little one-flick house?
    Suicide or glory. Not much in-between.

  • The lesson here is simple. If you neglect the story, people will notice. When are filmakers going to give the public enough credit to understand that we actually do appreciate a good story? Dress the movie up all you like, but we can smell commercialism a mile away. Never, never, never neglect the story. If it won't make a good book, it'll suck as a movie.

    When filmmakers understand that, we'll get better movies and they'll make more money.
  • instead of a "click to continue" movie

  • FF in name only... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gnovos ( 447128 ) <gnovos@NoSpAM.chipped.net> on Sunday February 03, 2002 @01:58PM (#2946770) Homepage Journal
    My problem with the movie was that there was the *name* Final Fantasy, but had none of the elements of a typical Final Fantasy game. Where were the swords? Where were the airships, the "Guardian Forces" or "Aeons" (or whatever they are called), where was the magic? The Chocobos?
    • It had a Cid/Sid counterpart. And IIRC some of the spirit beast looked a little like chocobos... check really hard. They'd move pretty fast so you should use the DVD and playback at 1/8th speed. BTW the Gaia theory reminded me of FF7 that energy they were tapping to make materia etc... sure they didn't have magic, but that general reminded me of kefka from ff6. I watched it three times myself only once in theatres. There are a lot of worse movies made in hollywood today.
    • >My problem with the movie was that there was the *name* Final Fantasy, but had none of the elements of a typical Final Fantasy game.

      it did! certainly with the later games:

      * tiresome characters
      * tedious, long, non-interactive plot sections
      * confusing battles
      * too many 'save' points
      * astonishingly predictable plot
      * no relation to anyone else in the FF universe

      it was spot on for another final fantasy title!

      bungatron
    • I haven't rewatched the movie to confirm it, but
      a friend told me the Chocobos could be seen as
      insignia on some of the characters uniforms.

      That and Cid/Sid are the most consistent extra
      themes of final fantasy titles.
    • The Chocobos?

      On Aki's pyjamas...

  • how it all came together - from a 3d person's POV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_tallman ( 544786 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @02:06PM (#2946802)
    I am a 3d modeler/animator by trade and I have to say that Final Fantasy is exactly what I've been waiting for. Too many 3d animation movies are geared towards kids because of the cost of making one of these films. They only way they can guarantee that a 3d animated movie will cover its costs is by developing it for the largest market available - children. The 3d environment offers something that no other medium offers - photo realism without the constrains of the physical world. Stop animation comes close to this but in the end you're still held back by having to support your model's weight through trickery. The 3d environment can be a place for the wildest fantasies we can imagine to be visually realized. Unfortunately movie studios still have to be worried wether or not the main character will make the side of a Burger King cup.

    I think Final Fantasy fell flat in the method that they used for animating the characters. Traditional 3d animation studios such as Pixar and Dreamworks videotape the actors saying their lines. The actors' key facial poses are then incorporated by the lead animators into the library of expressions. When you watch Scully from Monsters Inc. smile; it looks and acts like John Goodman for a reason. This also helps the character fit the voice. The Final Fantasy team had three actors fill the shoes of one character. The voices were done by the big name actors (ie Steve Buscemi), the body motion was done with motion capture for the most part, and the facial expressions were done by the lead animators looking at themselves in mirrors. The characters fall flat, to me, as a result.

    I would really like to see some sci-fi or horror brought to the screen via 3d animation but for now I think we're stuck with whatever fits on a Happy Meal. Our only hope is mid range budget studios similar to those of the 70's that produced great original horror movies such as "Phantasm" and 'Night of the Living Dead". They are the only film makers with enough freedom and money to do what they want, and do it well.

    • I appreciate your view point on problems with the animation (which you hit dead on), but I think the real reason the characters fall flat is the script. The characters don't do rational things; there is no well-established motivation for their actions; there's no way to get to know them becase none of them actually have an arc. A great script with less-than-perfect animation would be no problem. Great animation with a less-than-perfect script is what the movie was.
  • What utter bullshit. Yes, the studio is bancrupt, but that's not because the movie wasn't succesful. The movie netted a total of 104 million dollars, not counting the DVD sales. That's NOT an unsuccess.

    The studio failed as an enterprise, because their costs exceeded their incomes, but their product is succesful nonetheless. I predict DVD sales will keep generating significant money long after the close of the Hawaii studio.
    • The movie wasn't bad.

      I really enojoy the movie but the story line and the acting is childish and silly.

      I want to see a CG movie with a story line and acting (talking,...) like Deus Ex, for mature audiences. Thoes movies would be more succesfull.

      I'm disapointed to read this news.
    • What utter bullshit. Yes, the studio is bancrupt, but that's not because the movie wasn't succesful. The movie netted a total of 104 million dollars, not counting the DVD sales. That's NOT an unsuccess.
      ----
      http://us.imdb.com/Business?0173840

      Budget: 137M

      US Box Office: 32M

      Where did you get the 104 million from?
  • Must have been a different movie than the one I saw.
  • The movie fell flat for me for two reasons: 1)The recognizable voice actors... Although James Woods can deliver a good performance, it was dificult for me to associate his voice with the character he played. (It wasn't Richard Briers in Watership Down, folks... Suspension of disbelief didn't work.) Same goes for the rest of the well-known cast (Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland, and Peri Gilpin). 2) The animations of facial expressions were unbelievably flat. This is "state of the art" animation? The zombie-like faces were even more of a jarring contrast with the idiosyncratic voice acting.
    Overall, the animation is quite beautiful. The Aki dream sequences are visually stunning; however, they would have done far either hiring unknown voice actors or making an effort to capture the facial expressions of the actors emoting.
    Despite its flaws, FF is far from a death-knell for CGI characters. Many of the scenes rendered have a photorealism that's staggering. But more work needed to be done on personalizing the animated characters in FF. Even the ever-loathsome JarJar Binks in The Phantom Menace showed more life and character than any character in FF(and the proof of this is the nigh-universal desire to swat the long-eared, mush-mouthed amphibian like a bug).

    Damn if Aki doesn't look hot, tho. ;-)

    -Ringthane
  • CG = Computer Graphics
    CGI used to mean Common Gateway Interface.

    What does CGI mean when related to graphics?
  • I've seen a lot of negative comments in this thread, and it saddens me.

    I'll agree FF wasn't that great, in fact the storyline and characters just plained sucked. But saying they deserve to close and they don't deserve the chance to make another movie is going way too far.

    In making FF they showed the world it could be done. Yes it sucked and cost too much money, but it looked (very) good doing it. Someone had to do it first, and they did. Granted, some other breakthrough movies managed to actually make money (e.g. the 100M$ Terminator 2), but they didn't. Too bad for them because they'll be gone soon, and too bad for us because someone needs to be pushing the envelope.
  • I think that FF the movie was more of a Proof of Concept. Being so, most proof of concepts don't make much in teh begeining but only later, so if Square was to only hang on to it and work out a better story for another movie...

    Anmd besides i think culture may play a part in what went wrong because in Asia, a cartoon usually means action, like most of all the anime (Godzilla?) but in the west, a cartoon is funny, and even more so since all of what came out of CGI anumation (think Pixar) are funny cartoons. So maybe a near true to life action CGI movie just didn't sink very well on round 1.
  • Back in my short-lived anime fan days, I loved watching fan-made parodies of robotech, etc. Fans would splice together different scenes and redub the voices and music- with vastly different results.

    This could probably be done with FF. Change the music (techno or Wong Faye from FF8), alter the story to make it less "far fetched" and introduce a few more traditional fantasy elements. Since the whole movie is digital, a whole new movie could be made with a few strategic alterations.
  • and make porno, real cheap! No more Jenna Jameson!!
  • Personaly, I thought the the movie could have been good, if they had appealed to the Final Fantasy fans and not to every one else. One of the great things about the FF game series, is you can play one of them without ever playing any of the others and it will make sense. Most people couldn't have made heads or tails of this movie without knowing the mentality behind the Final Fantasy series. But even there they failed.

    As some one already said, where were the sword fights? The summons and the spells? The dragoons and the armour? All of these elements are inherrent in every FF game (though they have definately changed over the years). These are all elements that we look for in something with the name Final Fantasy. This movie could have been great if they worked with the story development liek they do with their games. Personaly, I thought FF VIII was a great game, and had a very nice story line that would have made a great movie. VII and VI too. Even III had its moments that could have made it a movie.

    The thing that makes the FF games great are the long engaging stories, the internal conflicts among the main characters, and the slightly eccentric characters that would seem out of place if it wasn't for the fact that they played into the story so well.

    Of course, for the sake of making a movie, I was willing to forgive Square forgoing the elements of their games if they had incredible animation. But even there they failed. Don't get me wrong, some of it was incredible, but alot of it was not. None of the characters could smile, and when they tried to frown, it looked like they were choking. Their movement was stiff and for all the money they spent on the muscle and hair development (look at their hands, you can see the muscles and bones move), they didn't spens enough on the hands and fingers. When ever they grasped something, it didn't look like they were holding it.

    Had the animation been flawless or at least smooth, perhaps it would have done better. But the animation was not enough to keep it alive, and the story ws not like the games, so it failed.
  • They should package and sell the plug-ins they created because they made a lot of them, to make Final Fantasy possible.

    That hair plug-in could be a very hot item.

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