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Sylex
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
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 Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:43 pm
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| halochief_90 wrote: | | I'm tired of hearing Spirits Within as something that's "Square-Enix's": Spirits Within was made by a bunch stupid Americans, who didn't even know what their source material is. AC was made by a completely different team, many of which worked on FFVII or other FF games. Who, even if you didn't like AC, have already established their ability on another product. Spirits Within was an abomination that I don't consider "Square-Enix's". |
While I do respect Tetsuya Nomura's ability in character design, I believe he has no aptitude whatsoever in anything else. Sakaguchi was behind almost every FF game - the same games that you cite as examples of Nomura's competence. How does that work? Nomura only designed those characters, which are little more than pretty artwork without good story.
What happens when Nomura tries to direct a game project? Let's look at Kingdom Hearts. Although it has a massive fan base, the stories of the Kingdom Hearts games are so shaky that I could point out plot holes big enough for whales to fit into. This was not the case with Sakaguchi. Either Nomura fails at coherent story writing, or he is "intentionally" leaving things out for fans to fill in, which is not good practice anyways. Kitase, I believe, wrote the stories for the previous FF games, and since that's the crux of our discussion here, I point out that Kitase didn't write the story for AC. How does any of this establish Normua and his team's ability? How does hypothetical good performance on a game project imply good performance on a movie project, when the two are completely different things?
When we look at Advent Children, we see a mish-mash collection of fight scenes and random chatter written by none other than Kazushige Nojima, the scenario writer for the last few FF games. In the original FF7, Cloud was a disturbed ex-SOLDIER who learned more about his origins as the game went on. Fair enough. What is he in AC? He is a black-clad emo that has reverted for no discernable reason back into an antisocial mute that can only think about angst and atoning for his sins. Action, animation, and music, are all that redeem AC, in my opinion.
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halochief_90
Joined: 06 Feb 2006
Posts: 466
Location: Canada
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:43 pm
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| Nagisa wrote: |
| halochief_90 wrote: | | Spirits Within was made by a bunch stupid Americans, who didn't even know what their source material is. |
Because the guy who produced just about every Final Fantasy game to date is a "stupid American," right? Because Hironobu Sakaguchi, who directed, co-wrote, and produced The Spirits Within, as well as produced damn near every Final Fantasy game to date— created the damn franchise, at that—is just some "stupid American." |
He may have co-created the franchise, he may have produced "nearly every damn game", but his role in any of them was minimal at best. Ok, maybe there was a few FF games he did a more significant role on than just "put up the money", but those are arguably the worst FF's in existance (Spirits Within most definitly being the worst). And he was still basically the only one on the entire team who had worked on anything Final Fantasy. Even Tetsuya Nomura was going to work on the character designs, but realized the movie-team's direction was far different than his. And in case you don't know why Sakaguchi was kicked off Square; it was because of his abysmal failure, Spirits Within.
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Sylex
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:46 pm
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| halochief_90 wrote: | | And in case you don't know why Sakaguchi was kicked off Square; it was because of his abysmal failure, Spirits Within. |
Wrong. Sakaguchi left of his own volition to be a part of Mistwalker. Don't make statements you can't support.
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halochief_90
Joined: 06 Feb 2006
Posts: 466
Location: Canada
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:50 pm
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| Sylex wrote: |
| halochief_90 wrote: | | And in case you don't know why Sakaguchi was kicked off Square; it was because of his abysmal failure, Spirits Within. |
Wrong. Sakaguchi left of his own volition to be a part of Mistwalker. Don't make statements you can't support. |
I'll take your word for it, but I read in a magazine that Square-Enix did kicked him off because Spirits Within had lost so much money.
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Sylex
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:53 pm
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He was demoted from his executive post because Spirits Within had lost so much money, which led to Square having to combine with their then-biggest rival Enix. But then since Microsoft gave him money to start Mistwalker in exchange for Mistwalker making games for the Xbox, he took them up on their offer and resigned.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 7912
Location: Anime News Network Technodrome
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 3:21 pm
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| halochief_90 wrote: | |
Anyway, I'm glad none of you turned into pissed off forum trolls after my Finding Nemo comment. |
People aren't "trolls" for disagreeing with your idiotic statements. Fix your tone and start being polite and reasonable or I'm banning you for a week. Period. No arguments.
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Pop-Art Samurai
Joined: 29 Nov 2004
Posts: 62
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 4:42 pm
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| Sylex wrote: | | He was demoted from his executive post because Spirits Within had lost so much money, which led to Square having to combine with their then-biggest rival Enix. But then since Microsoft gave him money to start Mistwalker in exchange for Mistwalker making games for the Xbox, he took them up on their offer and resigned. |
Hmm, I'd heard that Enix approached Square about the merger, likely because of Square's greater international presence. Maybe that's wrong though. Also, anybody have any figures on how much money Square lost on Spirits Within, I've never seen convincing numbers.
As well, I was under the impression that Sakaguchi left Square and formed Mistwalker, after which Microsoft approached him about developing titles for the Xbox and after the third time(!) he finally agreed.
| halochief_90 wrote: | | He may have co-created the franchise, he may have produced "nearly every damn game", but his role in any of them was minimal at best. Ok, maybe there was a few FF games he did a more significant role on than just "put up the money", but those are arguably the worst FF's in existance (Spirits Within most definitly being the worst). |
I see, so co-writing the story on VII is a "minimal role at best"? At least, I'm almost positive that's what it says in the opening credits. "Based on a story by Yoshinori Kitase and Hironobu Sakaguchi" or something. Also, I wonder if you really understand what producers, good ones anyway, do.
Lastly, I liked Kingdom Hearts and don't remember any huge plot holes, but oh well...
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Sylex
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 5:59 pm
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| Pop-Art Samurai wrote: | | Also, anybody have any figures on how much money Square lost on Spirits Within, I've never seen convincing numbers. |
Spirits Within cost 137 million US dollars for production (!), and about 30 million more for marketing. In gross box office sales, the movie made 55 million oversees and 32 million in North America. Usually, the company earnings total to about half of the gross box office sales, so 167 million total costs minus about 43.5 million means a net loss of about 123.5 million for Square Pictures. This was one of the greatest box office failures in the history of motion pictures.
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Kuririn
Joined: 17 Jun 2006
Posts: 24
Location: PR
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:25 pm
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| Nagisa wrote: |
| Zac wrote: |
| Kuririn wrote: | | Of course this is better than Finding nemo or other cg movies. |
There's no "of course" about it. Finding Nemo had a competent storyline that had heart and soul and appealed to a much wider audience. |
Not to mention animation that...actually did involve some significant innovations in the field of computer animation. Something fanboys love to insist Advent Children carries (though...yeah...not by a longshot).
Gotta love statements like Kuririn's. Nothing but blind fanboy ravings based on ignorance of an unimaginable scale.  |
Nah i'm not that blind. I know that FF Advent children is far from perfect. But i still enjoyed more than Finding Nemo though. Is that a comment based on ignorance?
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Steventheeunuch
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:41 pm
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| Kuririn wrote: | |
Nah i'm not that blind. I know that FF Advent children is far from perfect. But i still enjoyed more than Finding Nemo though. Is that a comment based on ignorance? |
Saying you prefer something over something else is entirely a subjective comment and reflects simply what you feel. It isn't bad at all. Saying that Advent Children was 'better than anything pixar could do' is pretty much ignorance because Advent Children basically falls flat of all standards Pixar meets.
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Last_September
Joined: 24 Jun 2006
Posts: 16
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:53 pm
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| halochief_90 wrote: | | Fanboys do not power sales. While some might think they're high in numbers, they never take a huge section of the market. Maybe Panzer Dragoon (the games) would make money once in a while if the market was like this (too bad these awesome games never sold anything due to its poorly conceived name). |
AC was made specifically for the fans. They've made no attempts to explain the previous story so you'd be completely lost if you've never played the game. I was rather dissapointed to see that every character (besides Tifa and Cloud) were just side characters that were just there to boost Cloud higher into the air. How is it that Marlene gets more movie time than most of the main characters in the game?
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halochief_90
Joined: 06 Feb 2006
Posts: 466
Location: Canada
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 2:49 pm
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| Zac wrote: |
| halochief_90 wrote: | |
Anyway, I'm glad none of you turned into pissed off forum trolls after my Finding Nemo comment. |
People aren't "trolls" for disagreeing with your idiotic statements. Fix your tone and start being polite and reasonable or I'm banning you for a week. Period. No arguments. |
I hope you don't count this as an argument. I looked up the definition of troll (on google, define:troll) and it was pretty similar to what I thought it meant. Here's what I found "From the fishing term. As a noun, synonymous with flamebait. As a verb, to post controversial or provocative messages in a deliberate attempt to provoke flames." I really didn't word what I meant to say correctly. But, I guess I was wrong, it sort of means I'm the troll, for what I said about the "Finding Nemo comment". 
I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I know I'm not the brightest person on these forums, but I gotta stand up for what I believe in, even if sometimes I'm wrong.
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