Subject: Review: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

From: Steve Kong <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 03:57:58 -0000

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
Reviewed by Steve Kong ([email-masked])
Copyright (c) 2001 Steve Kong
URL:  http://www.ultramookie.com/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=5

So, does Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within live up to its hype?  Yes and 
no.  What definitely lives up to the hype is the computer animation.  What 
doesn't live up to the hype is a totally engrossing story and good action.

Lets tackle the story first.  The story follows Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na Wen) 
who is a human infect with an alien "spirit".  She and a Dr. Sid (Donald 
Sutherland) are working on a way to save the Earth, which is being overrun 
by these spirits.  These spirits will take the life force of any life form 
that it touches, killing them instantly.  But, Dr. Sid was able to help Dr. 
Ross and kept her from dying from the infection.  Helping these two doctors 
is the Deep Eyes squadron.  Captain Grey (Alec Baldwin) leads the squadron; 
he also has a love interest for Dr. Ross.  The two doctors are trying to 
save the Earth in an environmentally safe way, a way that will not destroy 
the Gaia (the spirit of a world).  On the other hand there is General Hein 
(James Woods) who wants to fire a huge orbiting cannon at the crater where 
the alien meteor is.  He thinks this will kill off the spirits and free the 
Earth.  The doctors think different, they think that this will kill the 
Gaia of the Earth also and if the Gaia of the Earth dies, then all the 
spirits on the world will die.

The story is overly complicated, especially since director/writer Hironobu 
Sakaguchi decided to throw in all kinds of meta-physical, existential, and 
religious non-sense into what could have been a pretty straightforward and 
fun story.  The underlying story is pretty simple and I would have loved to 
see it told without all this philosophical crap.  The complication bogs the 
movie down and sometimes makes it feel like it is preaching about saving 
the Earth to an audience who is just there to see a cool movie.  Does this 
hurt the film though?  Nope.

What saves the film is the out-of-this-world eye-opening computer generated 
animation.  This stuff truly lives up to its hype.  The movie opens with a 
very long close-up of Aki's eye and is incredible!  It's almost as if the 
filmmakers are inviting you to try to find something wrong  yet we are 
stunned at what is onscreen.  Yes, there are times when the characters move 
woodenly, but most of the time the movie gives a true sense of 
reality.  The characters all look convincing and their movements are 
realistic.  But, because it is animation, the filmmakers are able to do so 
much more with the characters and with the environment.  In the opening 
sequence we see Aki through the ground (from bottom up) and it is just a 
stunning visual.  These stunning mind-bending visuals are used all through 
the film.  The landscapes that are created in the film are especially 
stunning.  There was one thing that felt "off" about the characters 
though.  The speech and the mouth movements just felt a little off.  Kind 
of like watching a movie with its soundtrack just a little be off.  But, 
that's no biggie.

The voice acting is great!  Ming-Na does a good job with her role, as does 
Alec Baldwin.  But the real winners here are Donald Sutherland, Peri Gilpin 
as one of the DeepEyes, Ving Rhames as another Deep Eye, and Steve Buscemi 
as a pilot for the Deep Eyes.  Buscemi was especially good and was 
incredibly funny (like always).  The only voice that felt out of place, and 
this was because of the incredibly lame lines he got and the dumb things 
his character had to do, was James Woods.  Usually, I like Woods a lot as 
an actor, but he just wasn't doing well in Final Fantasy.  His General Hein 
was a bit too badly written.

The score from Elliot Goldenthal is one to listen for.  It is well done.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is truly a revolutionary step forward for 
computer-generated movies.  Will CG actors be replacing real human actors 
anytime soon?  Nah, there's still a ways to go, but Final Fantasy shows 
just how far things have come.  Should you see Final Fantasy?  Without a 
question, Yes!  This is a Don't Miss movie.  See it for the incredible 
visuals that will leave you breathless.  After a while I stopped trying to 
keep track of all that was happening in the story because it was so very 
complicated.  And at times seeing how the consistency of the story itself 
wavered, it seems that the moviemakers also started to forget about the 
stories and concentrated on the visuals  which is a damn good thing because 
this film is all eye-candy and it is something worth seeing twice.
--
Mookie Kong ([email-masked])
Mookie's Gone Mad With His Digital Camera!
http://www.pbase.com/ultramookie

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