Decided to watch this yesterday (was on one of the Sky channels).

WOW the animation is fantastic, really enjoyed watching it.

Very good animation, a bit of a ho-hum film though. Facial expression's not quite perfected yet.

And I've noticed the japanese have always had problems with animating hands, it does show up during the film.

[Sinzer]

You will most likely find that is due to the extreme difficulty of drawing 4 fingers and a thumb. 99% of western animation only draws up to 4 fingers, which is extremely easy.

Sinzer, I've just got a Macross episode. Is there a full length film available on DVD?

It's got incredible animation

See below pic.

[Garrett]

Originally posted by mikeq
Decided to watch this yesterday (was on one of the Sky channels).

WOW the animation is fantastic, really enjoyed watching it.

I saw this on DVD and as you say the animation was stunning possibly the nearest to real life I have seen yet, but I found the story a bit of understanding since it is most likely one in a long line of stories.

Yep, excellent demo material for a PJ/plasma etc..., but seriously lacking in the "storyline" department.

Saw a clip recently in HD - stunning

[Sinzer]

but I found the story a bit of understanding since it is most likely one in a long line of stories.

There is some element of FF storyline in there, the classic Gaia background. However, it is not really related to any previous FF storyline and tbh it was just a poor script. Personally I ignored most of the poor dialogue and enjoyed the special effects.

The storyline wasn't bad, just poor scriptwriters. There are not many films that depict ghosts of forgotten civilizations torn apart by war.

I loved it too. Only watched it for the first time a few weeks ago. I thought the animation was first-rate and some of the scenes were remarkably lifelike, as has already been said.

I thought the plot was very decent. I have never played any Final Fantasy games and watched this movie knowing nothing about any of the characters or anything. Found it easy to follow

There is a fantastic extra on the 2-disk, that's buried in the menus somewhere. It's basically a Final Fantasy version of Michael jackson's Thriller. Made me chuckle

[Reiner]

I did like it, too. Though the story might not appeal to Western audiences the animation is just stunning. Not perfect perhaps but for the (IMHO) first feature film to star animated humans a good start.

[NicolasB]

There was a big difference in quality between the scenes that were obviously animated by hand and the ones that were motion-captured.

The plot ended up annoying the hell out of me.

Spoiler (highlight to read):
If the phantoms are actually vengeful ghosts (a rather nice idea) then how come they can be shot and killed? And how come they are sufficiently corporeal for some of their "tissue" to end up detectably inside human bodies in a way that is eventually fatal to the human in question?

On top of that, I thought the script was remarkably derivative of "Aliens" in places. Even to the point where one could make analogies between specific characters - Jane Proudfoot (Peri Gilpin's character) and Vasquez, for example. There were several scenes that were very reminiscent of "Aliens" - especially one that reminded me of the scene where (spoiler, highlight to read) Ripley thinks that Bishop has taken off in the dropship and abandoned her, but it turns out that actually he hasn't.

But yes, the animation was very fine. The dream sequences, especially, I thought were stunning. Made me wish I'd seen it in the cinema.

[Garrett]

Spot on with your observations there Nicholas I thought that as well whilst watching it.