I had very very high expectations for this movie and was slightly disappointed. It didn't grab me and suck me in, and so I'm mad at it. Now I will point out every little thing that wasn't absolutely perfect about it. Please take this with a grain of salt...

How do you evaluate a movie made entirely of CG? You could compare it to a normal special effects sci-fi film. You could compare it to previous all-CG films. You could compare it to a Japanese anime film.

Compared to a regular Hollywood blockbuster special effects film, the effects are much, much better. There isn't a familiar celebrity playing the lead role as in Tomb Raider... there aren't one liners when the hero kills bad guys... however, there are some issues with the more dramatic segments of the film. The more emotional scenes are a bit awkward, and could have been directed better. It's not a limitation of the technology, it's just bad directing. The action scenes lack urgency. At several points, a character is in mortal danger and has a means of escape, but for some reason chooses to sit there and ponder the situation for several seconds before finally deciding to fight inertia and get to safety. This is a typical action movie problem - it's hard to believe the danger when the actor doesn't seem concerned nor in a hurry.

Compared to an all-CG film, such as Toy Story 2, the effects are light years ahead. Square simply has fantastic artists, with vivid imaginations that produce breathtaking visuals. This movie will be everything that you hoped for if you looking for that. The animation itself could be better - at times (not just in zero-G scenes), it seemed like the characters were moving underwater, because they moved in such an unrealistically graceful and willowy way. The ultra-graceful slow wave of a hand through the air gets tiresome after the first time Aki does it. Real people are more herky-jerky than the characters in this movie, and you would think that motion capture would reflect that, but it doesn't. It's like they tried to capture the ideal "turn around and face the other person", the ideal "walk up this rocky hill", rather than what someone might actually do. Disney films and anime (which disney films are based on after all!) get human motion right, without the benefit of motion capture. In zero-G scenes this comes off very well, though; the grace is believable. Also, there are many, many places where lip synch is clearly off. Worse, there are scenes and angles from which characters don't look like the same person. Did they use high and low detail models for close-ups vs. group shots? If so, it shows; if not, I don't know what's going on, but sometimes, Aki didn't look right. You would expect that with a 3D model she would look consistently like Aki, but it isn't so. The same goes for all of the other characters. Finally, Grey looks far too much like Ben Affleck for it to be a coincidence. On the other hand, landscape scenes are gorgeous, the concepts behind computer interfaces of the future are very innovative, and in general everything other than the people looks amazing. The people look amazing in stills but not quite right in motion.

Compared to an excellent anime, this movie has a predictably bizarre and technomystical plot line. It lacks the typical anime cyborgs, cat/bunny girls, street hardened police, or pencilnecked geeks. Anime fans will feel at home with neato future tech stuff, cybermilitary gizmos, giant power stations, mega-cities, dramatic space scenes, and very strong female leads. Of course, the animation technique is totally different, and nobody goes superdeformed when they get embarassed or upset.

Don't get me wrong - Hironobu is a creative genius and I have enjoyed FF 7, 8, and 9, but apparently he has a bit to learn about dramatic film direction, and I look forward to seeing his develop these skills in his next film. This movie is a great starting point - the people look very much like real people, even if they don't move quite like they ought to. The concept art is clearly genius material as well; I can't imagine how much effort must have gone into actually modeling the phantoms. The love interest is there but doesn't overshadow the plot, and the bad guys are complex enough that it's hard to say they are really all bad.

Go see this movie, in a theater, and pay the outrageous prices; it's worth it. Pay close attention - there will be many derivative movies and hopefully sequels, and they will all have a major affect on the future of the art of filmmaking. You'll probably really enjoy it.

-Jamie 7/8/2001