Doom & FF7-AC

Yesterday, I decided to go watch DOOM. Why? I dun really know. I guess the fact that it was based on the game was the biggest attraction. This is despite the pretty bad reviews it has gotten. So, I went all the way to Prince Cinema to catch it.

I am sad to say that Doom was totally dooomed from the start. The acting is terrible, the story is pointless and the characters are forgettable. The effects? Passable, but nothing fantastic. Most of you would know that Doom is a FPS game. Well, the director tried very hard to give it all the feel of an FPS game. But the sad part is that he went so far as to include an actual segment which was filmed in typical FPS style! It's one thing to play a game in first-person. It's another thing to watch a so-called live-action movie in first person! And he included elements like monsters popping up and giving sinister 'heh heh heh' types of laugh before you blow them to bits. It's all really very stupid. Another laugh-inducing segment was when the lead, Sarge, decided to go to the Armoury for more powerful weapons (ala-the pc game). Well, the armoury had only ONE weapon, and the weapon looked like a huge toy. Nothing awesome at all.

It's quite sad to see people make movies like this. It's even sadder when I am gamer and I see all these games being butchered on the big screen. Sigh.

Things improved much more in the evening when I decided to watch my Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children DVD. I liked the FF7 game though I never finished it. I think I completed about60 to70% before giving up. heh. What to do, I was never an RPG fan. To get me to play it for so long already shows how good the game is. Anyway, FF7:AC is a very beautiful movie. The CGI is flawless. Some people say that this should have been the movie which SQUARE should have released instead of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Personally, I liked FF:TSW. I know it doesn't have a strong fantasy element like the FF games, but I thought that as a movie, FF:TSW was very very good. As for this new FF7:AC, I did enjoy it, although I was a little lost at times as I didn't know the characters from the game well enough. But I can see FF7 fans going nuts over all the references and characters from FF7. Almost everyone gets some airtime... including the fan-favourite Aerith. Actually, all the FF7 babes like Tifa and Yufi were animated very very well! Sigh, Japanese animation is really very beautiful.

Oh yah... although I bought this movie from a legitimate DVD shop, this isn't really the official DVD release. I think it's the Japanese release and some one (probably from Korea) did the subtitles. I tell you... the subtitles were terrible. For 80% of the movie, the lead of the movie was called 'Kulawend'. I was like 'HUH?' coz I didn't remember anyone called Kulawend in the game. Only towards the end did I realise that Kulawend was CLOUD pronounced in a weird japanese way.... I guess I shall have to wait for the official US release to watch a more complete version of the movie.