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The Story
In 2065, Earth is infested with alien phantoms, and
mankind is struggling to contain these mysterious alien spirits.
"Barrier cities" were built to protect the the human race from these
alien invaders that threaten mankind to extinction. Dr. Aki Ross
(voice talent of Ming-Na)
works with her mentor Dr. Sid (voice talent of Donald Sutherland) to collect the eight
spirits in the hope of creating a force powerful enough to destroy the alien
spirits. Will Aki be able to find all eight spirits in time to save the
earth?
This science-fiction action-adventure film is ground-breaking
in that it is completely
rendered by computer animation. The photo-realistic characters
and environments are incredibly real and life-like. My jaws dropped in utter
amazement. Especially noteworthy is the animation of Dr. Sid. I really thought Dr. Sid
was played by a real human in the opening of Chapter 6. Until I read the
included two-page production notes, I could not believe that no photographs
of humans or environments were used in the computer animation. The
characters (and environments) were all built from scratch! Sure,
real-life human actors were used in some instances for realistic body
movements, but not for the rendering itself. Wow!
The movie itself is good, but not stellar material.
I gave the movie an "A-" score anyways, giving credit to the
exceptional and ground-breaking work in computer animation. For a
science-fiction or computer animated movie, the visual special effects or
just the visuals (in this case) is an important element of the story-telling
process.
The Extras
"Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" Special Edition DVD comes
as a two-disc set with the following bonus features:
Disc 1:
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Three feature-length audio commentaries:
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Co-director Motonori Sakakibara, sequence
supervisor Hiroyuki Hayashida, sets and props lead artist Tatsuro
Maruyama, and phantom supervisor Takoo Noguchi audio commentary in
Japanese with optional English or French commentary
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Animation director Andy Jones, editor Chris S.
Capp, and staging director Tani Kunitake audio commentary
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Isolated score with audio commentary by composer Elliot
Goldenthal
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"Boards/Blasts": a film viewing mode that
features a combination of the final film, storyboards, and rough
animation, with optional filmmaker commentary and optional subtitled
factoids. This feature is very cool with the subtitled factoids --
a must-see for the avid fan!
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Theatrical Trailers: teaser trailer and theatrical
trailer for "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", sneak preview
of "Final Fantasy X" (a PlayStation 2 video game), "Men
In Black", "Starship Troopers", and
"Metropolis"
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Production notes (2 pages)
Disc 2: opens with a really cool on-the-set computer
animated Aki in a real-life setting
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Original Interactive documentary: The Making Of
Final Fantasy. Dig deeper and link-out to information pods
which spotlights some of the specials listed below. This
documentary is well done and really cool.
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Optional Filmmaker Commentary: activated by pressing
on the "audio" button during the original interactive
documentary.s
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Character Files: a short video background and
essential facts for the major characters: Aki, Gray, Dr. Sid, Hein,
Ryan, Jane, and Neil. These character files are very well done.
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Vehicle Scale Comparisons: a video background on the
movie's vehicles: Bandit the all-terrain vehicle,
Black Boa the spacecraft, and Quatro the armored reconnaissance
vehicle. They make it sound so real!
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Final Fantasy Shuffler™: become the filmmaker by
re-editing the conference room scene from the film (Chapter 7). Complete the edit and
play back your final cut. This feature is ultra cool!
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Trailer Explorations: the making-of for the
"Final Fantasy" teaser trailer
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The Gray Project: a proof-of-concept animation test as
an early prototype of how the computer animation would work.
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More Boards/Blasts: a continuation of the "Boards/Blasts"
featurette from the first disc.
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Matte Art Explorations: a behind-the-scenes look at
how the matte art work (i.e., backgrounds) are created. What
beautiful artwork!
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Joke Outtakes: watch out, there's funny stuff
here! Too bad there's no way for this material to be integrated
into the movie.
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Compositing Builds: an interesting study of how layers
of composite animation were put together to form the final scene.
There's no narration, just set to background music.
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Original Opening: Wow, what a cool alternate
opening. But it seems to give away much of the mystery that the
viewer should discover later.
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Aki's Dream: The entire sequence of Aki's dream as a
mini-movie.
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Final Fantasy "Thriller" Music Video: a
must-see... it's funny! (Select the square box with the moving
images at the bottom right corner of the screen.)
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DVD-ROM features (requires a PC or Macintosh with a
DVD-ROM drive):
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an interactive film exploration with complete screenplay
links
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virtual tour
of Square Pictures
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Aki screensaver
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web links to the Final Fantasy
There's an incredible amount of rich bonus materials
here. The quality, quantity, and depth of these featurettes are sure
to please any film buff. Nice job, Columbia TriStar Home
Entertainment.
Video & Audio
The image quality of this anamorphic
widescreen DVD is pristine, thanks to its high definition direct-to-DVD digital
transfer. The colors are accurate and
saturated, while shadow detail is exceptional. The cinematography (if
you can call it that for a pure computer generated movie) is stunning.
The DVD-Video picture is as every bit detailed as the theatrical
presentation.
Equally amazing is the awesome sound design, which is
perfectly captured on the Dolby
Digital 5.1 soundtrack. The 5.1-channel surround sound mix is well balanced with aggressive use of the surround
channels and the LFE (low frequency effects) channel. The
dialog is consistently clear throughout the movie.
The spectacular picture quality and immersive surround
sound envelopment makes this DVD one of my reference DVDs for demos,
auditions, and hardware product reviews.
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Visit the Final Fantasy web site
and the Columbia TriStar
Home Entertainment web site.
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Associated equipment used in evaluation: Sony
DVP-S7700 reference DVD player, Sony
KP-61V45 61" rear projection TV (4:3 screen aspect ratio), Sony ES STR-V444ES A/V receiver, four
B&W CDM 9NTs as left/right main speakers
and left/right surrounds, B&W CDM CNT center channel speaker, Monster Cable M-series S-Video cable MSV-500, Monster
Cable Interlink LightSpeed 100 (Toslink) optical cable, Monster Cable
Interlink 400 MKII interconnects, Monster Cable
Original speaker cables in bi-wire configuration with Monster Cable twist-on gold-plated banana plug
connectors, Lovan Sovereign T HiFi audio
rack, and Sony MDR-V600 studio monitor headphones. Our home theater equipment was calibrated
with the Video
Essentials DVD.
Be sure to check out our Top 10 DVDs of the year
2001 and our list of this year's Oscar winners on DVD.
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United We Stand
