Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals (1994)

An unlikely crew-Pretzz, a clumsy boy who happens to be descended from a great hero; Leany, a young girl who's an amateur monster summoner; Valkus, a bungling but patriotic airship general; and Rogue, a sexy, leather-clad airship pirate-just happen to be the only people standing between a mysterious evil and absolute power, to be gained in the form of the four "elemental crystals"...

While I'm not nearly as obsessed with video games as I was as a kid (honest!), there still is-and always will be-a place in my heart for the Final Fantasy series. For the uninitiated, Final Fantasy is a long-running series (ten installments strong as of this writing, not to mention all the spin-offs) of games that attracted fans by offering, besides what you'd normally expect in most video games, interesting and involving plotlines and strong characterization, making Final Fantasy less like a game and more like an interactive novel. While video games have gotten more complex and invoving over the 1990s, the Final Fantasy series was among the first to add a more complex story and strong characters to the console RPG series. The series did not stay solely in the Dungeons and Dragons-esque medieval setting in which it began, but instead started in its later sequels to touch on the steampunk and sci-fi genres.

You've all probably have at least seen the ads for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the recent major movie release which mainly clung to the sci-fi aspects of the series. However, there was another Final Fantasy film adaptation (well, more like a four-part mini-series) released in 1994 on video, which was much more concerned with the series' original medieval feel (with a very slight touch here and there of the steampunk). The movie's plot was a continuation of sorts of the storyline in Final Fantasy V, centering on the descendents of that game's protagonists. Although there is a century-long gap between the events of the film and the events of the game, fairly frequent references are made to events and characters from the game's story. How imcomprehensible does this make the film? It's hard for me to say, since I'd played the game before watching the film, but I could think of a few points that would make some viewers scratch their heads: who the hell is (or rather, was) that Mid guy and why does his ghost suddenly show up; why are these 'crystals' so bloody important; who was this Exedes guy everyone keeps talking about; and why does one of the crystals materialize inside Linally's ass (er, even I don't know the answer to that one)? All of this still might be well and good, until one realizes that when this movie came out on American shores an official and generally accessible English translation of Final Fantasy V was still about five years in the making (even though the game was released in its native Japan in 1993).

Unclarity with the film's storyline doesn't just come from its plot ties to Final Fantasy V, but from the film itself. While one can't expect a movie-even one long enough to merit two tapes like this one--to have as much room for character background as a game with roughly 48 hours of gameplay and plot, there's very little we learn about the characters apart from what the plot requires. While the characters, for the most part, remain colorful and more than one-dimensional (if cut from familiar molds), we actually know little about them. The worst example of this is the film's villain, Ra Devil. While we know why he's after the crystals (power and immortality, of course), we really know little about him. Does he have any connections to Final Fantasy V's villain Exedes? Does he just want power for power's sake, or does he want to go through the whole "taking over the world" gig? Even more importantly, what the hell is he? As far as the movie is concerned, he could be a demon, a robot, an alien, or even a demonic extraterrestrial robot.

You might think after all this whining about the problems with understanding the movie that I found it boring. I didn't; I actually found it rather entertaining despite (or perhaps because of) some of its whackiness. The action scenes are a lot of fun, mixed in with some hilarious moments, mostly involving the film's helpless hero Prettz (namely his first encounter with the airship pirates and his Indiana Jones-esque sequence in the temple). Even though the plot is predictable, especially to anyone familiar with the series, it's paced well enough despite its length to keep one from becoming bored. The world the film creates, while not as detailed as it perhaps could have been, does have some surreal niceties, such as Rogue and her crew of overweight, identical, female airship pirates. (Speaking of airships, they-and another longstay of the series, the chocobo (basically a chicken-like bird large enough for people to ride on) make appearances.) Now, I can't wrap up this review without mentioning the animation, which I found serviceable, if a bit sloppy and not exactly breathtaking. Some may be disappointed that the film lacks the "slick" look of most recent anime, but they can get over it. All in all, I can only really recommend this one to hardcore fans of the Final Fantasy series, as if anyone else would have the interest or patience to go hunting for this rather hard-to-find flick.