Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

"Open your mind. Unlock the secret. Experience the fantasy."

Unleash a new reality? Harsh.

In 2001, something that had not happened before in film occurred. Squaresoft, under the ill-starred Square Pictures imprint, made a feature length film that was entirely computer generated. The intent at the time was that this would be the first but not last film they made, and the main character, Aki Ross, was supposed to be a recurring figure in more movies. Alas, the Spirits Within proved to be a catastrophic undertaking. It was a disaster at the box office, grossing half of the 136 million dollars that went into its production. Squaresoft took such a bath on this movie, that their pending merger with Enix almost fell through. Square wouldn't make another feature until their Final Fantasy VII film Advent Children (more on that in a bit). There is a long grocery list of reasons why this movie tanked in a massive way. I will recount some of the better ones for you now.

Eragon

It was tough to pick a tagline for this one, because they're all so very choice, but I'm going to go with this one, now seriously hilarious in retrospect:

"The First Chapter of the Inheritance Trilogy"

Looks cool right?

There were signs all over this movie that they intended it to be (as seen above) the first in a trilogy of movies. Why not right? A movie based on a series of best selling books, there's a dragon, and you have a cast of relative competence (mostly...sort of... I guess...) But oh, how very wrong they were. To say that this movie was not good, well that would be the understatement of the century. There is essentially no element of this movie that could rise to the level of 'adequate', and most of it is abysmal. Let's start with the basics, and work our way to the grisly crescendo that is the movie's conclusion.

Prometheus

"They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end."

Giant Evil Head

     The much anticipated and long delayed prequel to the original Alien (which ultimately seemed to be more of a reimagining/reboot) has finally hit theatres. Was it worth the wait? Ehhhh I don't know. This movie, while visually stunning, well paced, and full of the sorts of things you'd expect from say, Alien, is just that. This movie more or less IS Alien, in every single god damned way. Only this isn't 1979, and Alien has already been made. I think viewing this as a remake is the only way to redeem it, but even then all it does is set up for a movie that maybe I'd want to watch.

Snow White & The Huntsman

"..."

Ok, so I have no tagline for this movie, because it had no tagline. I like to think that Kristin Stewart's blank expression fills in for any witty one-liner for the movie. This will be part one of my "Charlize Theron is having a crazy month" series, part two will be when I talk about Prometheus in my next post.

Return and Dark City

After not having updated this blog for three years, I decided I wanted to again. So without further ado, let's start with a movie I liked that never got recognized for anything.

"A world where the night never ends. Where man has no past. And humanity has no future."

Looks fun, right?

For those not familiar, Dark City was a movie that came out in 1998. Without spoiling too much of the plot (the circumstances of the plot are revealed slowly over the course of the movie) a man wakes up in a bathtub, with no memories, and finds that he is being accused of committing serial murders, which his present circumstance suggests he committed. He comes to realize that the city he lives in is controlled by mysterious beings who have power over its shape. This leads him into a race to find out what's really going on in the city, and how he figures into that plan. It's a really interesting sort of plot that makes you think you're watching one kind of movie, until you realize that it is totally different.

Ice Spiders

"Where Nature Stopped. Science Evolved"

I was just sitting here writing and watching the Sci Fi channel, when this movie came on. Now I expect very bad, very corny things from ole' Sy Fy but this has got to be one of the most ridiculously cheesy movies I have ever been exposed to. As a result I will now expose you to it.

Special Post: Bad Advertisement Part 2

Last time I talked about bad advertisements, today I want to talk about weak ass taglines that find their way onto the slipshod DVD boxes for movies. Now I would have to figure that most of the time, if you're at the point of picking up the DVD box, you've already decided to buy the movie, but if you hadn't decided say to buy the movie Push, this tagline probably wouldn't encourage you to buy it:
"HANG ON TIGHT as a gang of superpowered paranormal operatives takes you on a white-knuckle thrill ride."

....what? I'm of the understanding that the back jackets of these are typically written by people who otherwise have nothing to do with the movie or its production, but still, it might be a good idea to watch the movie... or maybe a trailer before you start writing about 'white-knuckle thrill rides'. I was convinced I was buying a movie, not a roller coaster. This line manages to take what I think is a pretty original movie, and make it sound like the most played out, utterly lame movie ever. The entirety of the back jacket is either misleading, stupid, or just plain untrue.

This is probably not a decisive factor in buying a DVD, but I just found the description of the movie so devoid of content, that I felt it deserved inclusion in my little report. My next entry will return to movie reviews. Look forward to the white-knuckled thrill ride!