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| Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na)'s dreams hold the key to understanding an alien invasion. |
Release Date: July 2, 2001. Running Time: 106 minutes. Written by: Al Reinert, Jeff Vintar. Directed by: Hironobu Sakaguchi. Produced by: Hironobu Sakaguchi, Chris Lee, Jun Aida.
THE PLOT:
It is the future, and it's a particularly bleak one. After an asteroid collides with Earth, it releases alien phantoms, ghost-like beings that kill anything they touch. Humanity has retreated to barrier cities, with the phantoms kept at bay with energy shields developed by the brilliant Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland). Attempts to reclaim the rest of the planet have been unsuccessful, and the human race is on the verge of extinction.
Gen. Douglas Hein (James Woods) has a plan. He wants to use the powerful Zeus cannon to blast the phantoms' crater and destroy the invaders. Sid believes this would be not only ineffective, but disastrous - driving the aliens further underground while harming the Earth spirit, "Gaia," at the same time. His Gaia theories make him sound like a crackpot before the ruling council... that is, until his assistant, Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na) reveals that she was herself infected by phantoms, and that Sid's research was able to stabilize her condition.
The council agrees to let the scientists continue to search for "spirits," sympathetic wave forms that might counteract the phantoms for all Earth the way they have for Aki. They are granted a military escort in their search, led by Capt. Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin), a combat veteran who was once romantically involved with Aki.
But Hein is determined to fire his big gun. He plants his own men on the mission, with orders to monitor both Gray and Aki. And even as the scientists succeed in capturing the next spirit, Hein prepares a plan to jolt the council into action...
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| The romance between Aki and Gray (Alec Baldwin) is lifeless and unconvincing. |
CHARACTERS:
Dr. Aki Ross: She is singularly focused on finding the "spirits," and not just because of her infection. She recalls that one of the spirits she previously found was in a little girl, who told Aki that she was ready to die. Recalling a child who was so prepared for death causes her voice to break, one of the very few times that her composure fails at all. This and her respect for Sid play far more convincingly than the romance with Gray, which suffers from tepid writing. It's not so much that CGI creations are pretending to be people in love - It's that the dialogue makes them feel like CGI creations rather than like people who are in love.
Capt. Gray Edwards: The romance being something in the characters' past also makes a hash of Gray being assigned to protect Aki. Even if Gen. Hein wasn't a villain, he would be far more likely to assign someone without an emotional tie to her. Why am I harping on this rather than talking about Gray as a character? Well, because there isn't much to talk about. Gray Edwars is as generic as his name, a hero in the proper, morally upright, square-jawed mode. Rename him "Captain America," and the only thing you'd have to change is to give him a shield.
Dr. Sid: Not "Cid," for whatever reason. Sid is paternal toward Aki, and his determination to find the remaining spirits to suppress the phantoms seems to have as much to do with saving her as the Earth. He vows that he does not want to see her die before him. He's sensible enough to burn his old research papers in which he discusses his "Gaia" theories, but he's somehow not sensible enough to avoid talking about them to the council... which makes no sense, given that he could easily dress up his research in more purely technical terms (if they were searching for "wave forms," that would immediately sound less mystical - and crazy - than "spirits").
Gen. Hein: Around the midpoint of the film, it's revealed that he lost his wife and daughter when another barrier city was overrun. This has made him determined to do whatever it takes to defeat this enemy. Unfortunately, save for this one moment, Hein is written as the personification of a cartoon sneer. James Woods had been terrific as an animated villain in Disney's Hercules just a few years earlier, but he is absolutely awful here. There's no subtlety in his performance to make up for the lack of it in the script, but he's too subdued for entertaining scenery chewing. The result is a villain who is as dull as he is two-dimensional.
"The Deep Eyes": Gray's team, consisting of: Sgt. Whittaker (Ving Rhames); Neil Fleming (Steve Buscemi); and Corporal Jane Proudfoot (Peri Gilpin). They end up feeling the most like actual human beings, with the three actors giving enjoyably laid-back performances. Buscemi even earns a couple of actual chuckles, notable in a movie that is otherwise straight-faced to the point of joylessness.
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| Gray fights a giant phantom - essentially battling a dragon. |
THOUGHTS:
From the standpoint of computer animation, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an extraordinary achievement. Characters and environments are beautifully rendered. It doesn't quite "fool" the mind into thinking that these are real people rather than computer animated ones; there's a certain lack of full range in expressions, and the people all look a little too crisp, lacking the little physical tics and imperfections of actual human beings. However, the film presents its CGI characters well, avoiding the uncanny valley that would be occupied by most later attempts at similarly "realistic" animation.
The phantoms are also nicely realized. The angry red coloring makes them stand out from the rest of the frame in a movie that favors blue and gray hues, and there's a translucent aspect to them that makes it believable that they would have been dubbed "phantoms." They are of various sizes and strengths, much like the monsters a player might encounter in a fantasy game; the smaller phantoms are your standard goblins, while the larger ones may as well be dragons.
I can scarce credit that that, as of this writing, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is almost a quarter century old. Save for the limited range of character expressions, this would be impressive for something released today!
As a work of visual art, it's a masterpiece. As a story, however, it's a mess - and worse, a rather dull mess.
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| Gen. Hein (James Woods) stares, appalled, at a scan of the phantom virus Aki carries. |
A STORY UNWORTHY OF ITS VISUALS:
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within seems to be trying to be two things at once. It was an expensive movie, with a final production budget of $137 million at a time when major motion pictures still usually came in well below $100 million. I suspect, in an attempt to maximize appeal to casual moviegoers, the script ends up hewing closely to "military sci-fi" tropes... a bit too closely, as the characters and their interactions end up coming across as entirely generic.
The first half generally works pretty well. Backstory is efficiently established, with the first action scene hooking viewer attention while also showing how the phantoms have overrun the old Earth cities. The barrier city is effectively presented as Gray and his time fly into it through a series of extremely eye catching shots. Then the council approves Aki's quest, with Gen. Hein assigning Gray to protect and watch Aki, setting the stage for what might have been an engaging quest story. If the film had just gone forward from here, with the team searching for Dr. Sid's "spirits" while Hein tries to thwart them, it could at least have been an engaging piece.
But that basic setup holds for less than ten minutes. Gray and Aki secure one spirit, after which Hein suddenly takes a blazingly idiotic "drastic action" that doesn't even entirely fit with his established motivations. This leads directly into the major action set piece, which is itself well animated and edited. But it also pushes the narrative off kilter. By the time Aki and Gray are back on their quest for the final Act, there's no time left for the movie to do anything but wrap things up in a rushed and slapdash fashion.
Throughout, I kept wanting to ask the filmmakers why they went with this script. The three Final Fantasy video games that preceded this movie's release were Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX, all of which featured multilayered characters, interesting themes, and moments of strong and convincing emotion. The Spirits Within offers... none of these. The script is an amalgamation of generic sci-fi action and pseudo New Age babble. Dialogue ranges from functional to leaden, and the voice cast seems to struggle to invest any spark of humanity. Even the great Donald Sutherland can't manage to sound convincing when Dr. Sid talks about "Gaia."
Simply put: If the script wouldn't have been considered good enough for the games, then why was it approved for a movie?
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| Sid (Donald Sutherland) and Aki present to the council. |
FAILURE AND AFTERMATH:
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within landed with a disastrous thud at the box office. Critics generally praised its visual achievement, but were left cold by the story and characters. Its failure led to the closure of Square Pictures, and it also delayed the merger between Square and Enix, with Enix worried about merging with a failing company - worries that were assuaged by the performance of Final Fantasy X.
Probably the most notable impact this film had on the subsequent Final Fantasy game series was the departure of Hironobu Sakaguchi. The creator of the series, Sakaguchi had produced most of the mainline entries and had come up with the stories for several of them, including Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX. He resigned in 2001. While he continued to be credited as executive producer on projects until 2003, the last Final Fantasy that had a significant contribution from him was Final Fantasy XI. I think it's fair to say that Sakaguchi's departure greatly changed the trajectory of the series.
The movie has attracted a following, with many visual artists citing it as a major inspiration for their own work. I can't argue with that, as it remains an impressive visual experience. It's just a shame that the script squanders the potential of the artistry.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
Previous Release: Final Fantasy IX
Next Release: Final Fantasy X (not yet reviewed)
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