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----* No Spoilers Ahead*---
Story--
The story is set 2 years after the events of FF7, the first few scenes of the movie shows remade cut scenes from the game narrated by Marlene (Barrett’s daughter) to aid audiences that are unfamiliar with the premise of how this movie picks up from the game.
The world (or what we see as midgar) is infected with a disease called Geostigma due to the after math of the planet using Lifestream to fight against the ominous Jenova Cell aka the Sephorith element, which some how deteriorates the immune system of the human body, and of course the only thing to cure it is some source of the Lifestream. But where is it to be found? While that’s sort of the Clouds mission in figuring out how to protect the orphans he lives with, what are presumably 3 spawned minions of the Sephorith Cell ,Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz wreak havoc on the Lower Sector of Midgar, searching for the source of the Jenova Cell who they believe Cloud "Brother" might have an answer.... and it just gets better from there.
Good thing is, this movie is surprisingly better paced then A LOT of Japanese movies that I've seen. We get to see just about all the characters from the PS1 game return along with 3 new characters as the main antagonists. The problem is people that haven’t played the game are going to be lost leaving them at the end of the movie saying “Holy crap, I don’t know what the heck that was all about, but that was awesome!”
CG and Cinematography--
First off the CG is very well done as you can probably tell from the trailers, the characters were better rigged then in FF:TSW, Stylistic but believable, even though it was all mocapped (except for the beyond insane "Crouching Tiger" fight scenes).
The good thing about the trailers that were released was, well... UNLIKE US trailers now-a-days- they don’t spoil all the best parts.. in fact, the scene in the trailer where Cloud's bike explodes soaring into the air then clashes swords with Kadaj.. well that whole scene isn’t even in the movie, but rest assure there are an ungodly number of scenes of that type of cinematographic anime style (where they really make use of the camera being the third character). And yes they do include magic spells, and familiar limit breaks.
Speaking of which, its an Action from beginning to end, hands down, these are some of the best fight scenes you will ever see in a movie, ever, which does a great job representing the true purpose of CG Visual Effects used in Cinema today; because the things you see in this flick are totally impossible and insane! Movies like FF:TSW or Polar Express, could have been Live-Action about 90% of the cuts through, and saved a crap load of money for the Producer cause it really wouldn’t make any difference to the general audience.
My only complaint is the over kill of the “anime” style cinematographic fight scenes. Don’t get me wrong, its freaking awesome to see those fancy skewed foreshortened camera angles here and there but what would have made it better is if there were more shots aerial third person shots in between all this fluxed motion, so we can actually comprehend how these characters are fighting from a good distance. I guess Square-Enix did it on purpose so 3d gurus like myself will watch the movie frame by frame.
My particular favorite fight scene is in the Forgotten Capital, they did a great job in one scene where we get to see full body shot of Cloud is fighting Loz and Yazoo among the several shots this was the one I liked, it was only like 1 second long but it was enough time to give me a break from all the fast close ups.
Then there’s the facial animation, which square has a history of really poorly done facial animation in FF games, a lot of the main characters just seamed dead. The eyes and mouths were animated decently but the nose and cheeks are like plaster. The main characters that had some reasonably nice facial expressions would be Reno, Cid (who btw looks exactly like Kevin Jones), and maybe Barrett, and maybe Loz in some scenes.
Thing is I think the experience would be more enjoyable if you watched it right after you played through the game again. Overall I think it was well done, doesn’t matter whether you’ve played the game or not, watch it for the visuals, man. If you’ve never played the game or ever watched a Japanese film, chances are you’ll never understand “the true meaning” bleh. Other then that the movie is well worth getting on dvd which I believe is out on release for the US Nov 29th.
------
btw, incase any of the feds are reading this, i have a legit Jap version of the dvd.
Story--
The story is set 2 years after the events of FF7, the first few scenes of the movie shows remade cut scenes from the game narrated by Marlene (Barrett’s daughter) to aid audiences that are unfamiliar with the premise of how this movie picks up from the game.
The world (or what we see as midgar) is infected with a disease called Geostigma due to the after math of the planet using Lifestream to fight against the ominous Jenova Cell aka the Sephorith element, which some how deteriorates the immune system of the human body, and of course the only thing to cure it is some source of the Lifestream. But where is it to be found? While that’s sort of the Clouds mission in figuring out how to protect the orphans he lives with, what are presumably 3 spawned minions of the Sephorith Cell ,Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz wreak havoc on the Lower Sector of Midgar, searching for the source of the Jenova Cell who they believe Cloud "Brother" might have an answer.... and it just gets better from there.
Good thing is, this movie is surprisingly better paced then A LOT of Japanese movies that I've seen. We get to see just about all the characters from the PS1 game return along with 3 new characters as the main antagonists. The problem is people that haven’t played the game are going to be lost leaving them at the end of the movie saying “Holy crap, I don’t know what the heck that was all about, but that was awesome!”
CG and Cinematography--
First off the CG is very well done as you can probably tell from the trailers, the characters were better rigged then in FF:TSW, Stylistic but believable, even though it was all mocapped (except for the beyond insane "Crouching Tiger" fight scenes).
The good thing about the trailers that were released was, well... UNLIKE US trailers now-a-days- they don’t spoil all the best parts.. in fact, the scene in the trailer where Cloud's bike explodes soaring into the air then clashes swords with Kadaj.. well that whole scene isn’t even in the movie, but rest assure there are an ungodly number of scenes of that type of cinematographic anime style (where they really make use of the camera being the third character). And yes they do include magic spells, and familiar limit breaks.
Speaking of which, its an Action from beginning to end, hands down, these are some of the best fight scenes you will ever see in a movie, ever, which does a great job representing the true purpose of CG Visual Effects used in Cinema today; because the things you see in this flick are totally impossible and insane! Movies like FF:TSW or Polar Express, could have been Live-Action about 90% of the cuts through, and saved a crap load of money for the Producer cause it really wouldn’t make any difference to the general audience.
My only complaint is the over kill of the “anime” style cinematographic fight scenes. Don’t get me wrong, its freaking awesome to see those fancy skewed foreshortened camera angles here and there but what would have made it better is if there were more shots aerial third person shots in between all this fluxed motion, so we can actually comprehend how these characters are fighting from a good distance. I guess Square-Enix did it on purpose so 3d gurus like myself will watch the movie frame by frame.
My particular favorite fight scene is in the Forgotten Capital, they did a great job in one scene where we get to see full body shot of Cloud is fighting Loz and Yazoo among the several shots this was the one I liked, it was only like 1 second long but it was enough time to give me a break from all the fast close ups.
Then there’s the facial animation, which square has a history of really poorly done facial animation in FF games, a lot of the main characters just seamed dead. The eyes and mouths were animated decently but the nose and cheeks are like plaster. The main characters that had some reasonably nice facial expressions would be Reno, Cid (who btw looks exactly like Kevin Jones), and maybe Barrett, and maybe Loz in some scenes.
Thing is I think the experience would be more enjoyable if you watched it right after you played through the game again. Overall I think it was well done, doesn’t matter whether you’ve played the game or not, watch it for the visuals, man. If you’ve never played the game or ever watched a Japanese film, chances are you’ll never understand “the true meaning” bleh. Other then that the movie is well worth getting on dvd which I believe is out on release for the US Nov 29th.
------
btw, incase any of the feds are reading this, i have a legit Jap version of the dvd.
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