Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

Note: This page includes review and revision entry.

Looks Great, But No Chocobos!

So, in the end, the first fully computer-animated feature with realistically rendered human characters is pretty much an anime. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a movie based on a long-running video game series which I've followed pretty closely and have enjoyed highly. The later games in the series often made use of computer-animated cinema sequences to enhace the story-telling, one of the series' particularly strong elements. Since players of the later games often found themselves more looking forward to the animated sequences than the actual game play, the next natural step would be for the game-makers, Square, to just create a whole movie out of nothing but the cinema "sequences." If they were going to go all out, though, they might as well do it with the best quality character rendering and animation they could muster, and the result is this beautifully detailed and uncannily realistic-looking work. Unfortunately, the only thing from the realm of "Final Fantasy" that made it into the movie was the name and my least favorite element of the games: the overall anime-style plot having to do with world cataclysms.

As a "Final Fantasy" fan, there were three ways for me to approach this movie. First, there is the appreciation of the movie's technical presentation. Second, there is the enjoyment of the story and the movie as a whole. Third, there's the fan-boy in me that wants to see within the movie those imaginative and creative things that made the games so great.

Right off the bat, it's safe to say that the movie looks amazing. One could call this the next step up from Disney's Dinosaur. Final Fantasy features complete computer animation with incredible detail. The landscapes and backgrounds look spectacularly real, and the loving work that went into creating this world is readily apparent. The monsters, transparent and humongous, are truly frightening and hideous products of pure imagination. And the people? They do look great. I found the character detail to be satisfactory on the whole. They do tend to lose the feel of reality in certain places, especially when they're speaking (the lip-synching isn't quite convincing), but, staring at the characters' features and expression, I gained true admiration for the care that must have gone into these creations. The attention paid to the hair alone, from the female lead's coiffure to the individual bits of stubble and beard on the male characters, was enough to make me gape in awe. I don't believe these "synthespians," as they are referred to by the movie-makers, will endanger the careers of any real actors soon, but as an achievement in and of itself I applaud the animators. There were certain scenes, certain shots, where the expressions were something to marvel at. The characters' movements felt natural. They did a really great job.

I don't think I can say the same about the story. The overall feel the story was "Final Fantasy"-like, but, in a way, that may have been its weakness. The "Final Fantasy" games aren't really known for incredibly original overall plots, and are actually sometimes quite melodramatic. I think this is a result of its Japanese origins; the game plots are usually anime-like in scope. There is a band of heroes led by a mysterious loner character who always has some kind of awful forgotten past or origin. Sometimes, clues to this past are presented in dreams. They are often up against a force of evil who gains incredible power as the heroes make their way through their journey. In the end, it is up to them to stop the evil force from destroying the world as they know it. Emphasis is often placed on character development, which is one of the strongest points of "Final Fantasy." Any watcher of anime knows that all of these elements are pretty much old-hat for an anime story. There are always heroes against incredible odds fighting something overwhelmingly powerful. It's not really anything new. These plots weaken anime in general through over-saturation (there's just too many of them; it feels like the "fall-back plot" of a lot of serious anime), but they work pretty well in the context of the games. This is because one's appreciation for the stories feels deeper and more involved when one is playing the games. You invest more in the characters because you use them and protect them from harm. In the "Final Fantasy" games, the characters are often thoroughly developed, with the requisite sad backgrounds for each one of them. The urgency of the main hero's quest for identity is amplified by the world-threatening plot. So, even if the story's a bit corny, it can be forgiven because of your attachments to the characters. (To give an extreme example of its effectiveness, "Final Fantasy VI" is the only game with the distinction of having made me cry at the end of it because I loved the characters so much.)

However, where these used plots may find new life in a game experience, they falter when, once again, they are used in a movie. Final Fantasy employs the usual earth-shattering plot which, if you've seen enough of them, starts looking pretty trite. In this case, the earth in the future has been invaded by aliens referred to by the characters as "phantoms"; they are invisible and seem to be able to go through solid surfaces. They are hideous creatures which suck the life force from their victims, and they are over-running the planet. The heroine is Aki Ross (voice of Ming-Na), who has mysterious continuing dreams which may lead to the key to understanding and defeating the phantoms. Naturally, she must race against time to find this key before the irascible and impatient General Hein (voice of James Woods) uses his own method of destroying the phantoms, a method which could threaten the planet itself. So, as usual, the fate of the world is at stake, the evil forces are either incredibly powerful (the phantoms) or unapproachably mad (the general), and time is running out. There is also a lot of the philosophical talkiness that anime often employs; action is never the top priority in these tales. A story like this could have counted on strong character development in the games, but with a less-than-two-hour running time here, the movie doesn't get such a boost. Aki is the rare "Final Fantasy" heroine that isn't given much of a back-story; she is developed enough for us to see she is strong-willed and intelligent, but nothing much else gets the audience to identify with her. There are a couple of supporting characters with strong personalities, but most of the other supporting characters are rather thin (this would be considered a crime in the games). Even the evil villain, General Hein, falls into conventions and his character triggers all those events that you know just have to be triggered in order for the plot to move along. He is unsympathetic and grasps at all sorts of reasons to distrust the hero party in order to further his agenda; even in the games, the main villain isn't usually this weakly-written.

Maybe this would have been forgiveable if the movie gave a few of its loyal fan-boys (including me) a few inside references to the game for us to enjoy. Unfortunately, they didn't put in anything. OK, fine, one of the characters is named "Sid." Even that's disappointing, considering that the name is usually spelled "Cid" in the games. Other than that, we have the feel of the plot and the role of dreams, but absoutely nothing else that makes the "Final Fantasy" what it is. The games are part of an imaginative world where medieval concepts, like swords and sorcery, are intermingled with high technology. I would have given anything just to see one sword or spell in the movie. Familiar creatures, like the "chocobo" or "cactuar," are nowhere to be found. A "Final Fantasy" movie without chocobos?!? And all the monsters in the movie were these scary new creations, but it was sad not to be able to spot a famliar beast among them. So no swords, no spells, no familiar monsters, no infamous "call monsters" (often a showcase for the graphics of the later games), no airships, no crystals... nothing that makes the story a "Final Fantasy." I think this has something to do with director/"Final Fantasy" creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's idea for making the name "Final Fantasy" synonymous with larger-than-its-medium entertainment, and, for the movie, he seemed to want to create this entertainment without relying on the usual fall-backs of the video game series. That's too bad, because those fall-backs are part of the "Final Fantasy" world, and we, the fans, love them. It's bad to alienate us like this. OK, I'll end the fan-boy rant now.

Overall, I'd recommend seeing this mainly to marvel at the incredible visual work put in to this movie. I can't say enough how wonderful the details look. The human characters won't make you forget real people, but as a technical achievement they are astounding. It's too bad they weren't put into a plot that felt less hackneyed. I'm really tired of the world being in danger in these stories. Such wonderful technical creations can suffocate in a too-familiar plot that has a hard time truly engaging its audience; it needed better character development, which could have provided support for the story. And, when all was said and done, there was little to the movie that would make me call it a "Final Fantasy." I left the movie really appreciating what I saw, but not fully appreciating what I watched.

Rating: 7/10

©Jeffrey Chen, Jul. 15, 2001

REVISION

In my 2001 Hindsight article, I wrote about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within:

The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I became at Hironobu Sakaguchi's abandonment of the elements that made his video games so good. As a result, Final Fantasy the movie played like a generic anime that happened to be computer-generated. Originally, I felt the good work in the animation was enough to justify giving it a 7/10 (which is my lowest rating for a recommendable movie), but not anymore. What made the difference? I played a little bit of "Final Fantasy IX," and that was enough to remind me what I really loved about the series: swords, magic, exotic lands, off-beat humor, and heroes and heroines who fight, grow, and learn together. None of these were in the movie. It gets a 6/10 -- no longer recommendable, but still held up by the good animation work.

Revised Rating: 6/10

©Jeffrey Chen, Jan. 13, 2002

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