|
So, I will sum up my feelings about this whilst sidestepping spoilers.
I would recommend going to see it *if* you haven't read the book.
This movie made me feel weird. It's a conundrum. I didn't really have an interest in seeing it until I got turned on to the book, but I would have enjoyed it a hell of a lot more if I hadn't read the book first. They changed a lot. A. LOT. But, the changes, for the most part, were for the sake of making it a couple hour film. What was done was done well, and it was enjoyable enough, but I feel like I should have liked it more than I did.
The best way I can describe it (yet, still a bit unfairly) is this: remember that movie Square tried to do Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within? It wasn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. It was actually pretty great. The problem was trying to hitch the Final Fantasy wagon onto it for metaphorical street cred. Applying the name heaped a whole hell of a lot of expectations on the film that weren't going to be met.
"The book was better" is such a cliche thing to say, but here, it is soooo true. The film kinda misses the "love letter" to the references, and so much had to be stripped down, condensed, consolidated, that it's barely the same story... but, at the same time, it still wasn't *bad* because of those things. I personally feel this would have been better served as like a 5 part miniseries (kinda like oldschool V) on Netflix or Crunchyroll or something.
|