Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Review by Jason Gaston

 

Final Fantasy is a milestone... sort of like The Jazz Singer or Snow White or, God, Tron... because Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is the first attempt at photo-realistic computer animation. The result is impressive because you can tell a lot of effort went into the film. Characters look real enough with whiskers, moles, pores, and even acne in a few cases, but their movements are robotic and their faces still somewhat devoid of humanity.

Still, Final Fantasy is an amazing accomplishment even if it is a preliminary one. I'd love to see what they're going to be doing with this technology in five years. I mean, think about how amazing the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park looked at the time when compared to movies like The Matrix or The Phantom Menace.

Final Fantasy is based on the popular line of video role-playing games. I've never played them, I've never seen them, I don't even know what the games are about. Usually, being based on a video game is a death wish for a movie... witness: Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Tomb Raider, Dungeons & Dragons, Double Dragon... I can't list anymore. Too many painful memories.

Final Fantasy is a decent movie. Nothing just jawdroppingly special about it even if it is a quantum leap foreword in filmmaking.

It picks up in 2062, thirty years after a meteor crashes on the surface of the Earth bringing with it hoards of aliens both big and small. The aliens are pretty cool, a sort of living neon sign that sucks the very soul from their victims, leaving them deader than a doornail.

Well, there's a couple of scientists looking to wipe out these aliens by gathering seven "spirits" that will cancel out the alien's energy signature (it's complicated, okay?). There's also some military dudes, some political crap... and... hell, it's complicated. Let's just leave it at that.

Unfortunately, Final Fantasy resembles Tron in that it's really pretty to look at, but it's kind of dull and lukewarm. Still, I'd highly recommend this movie even if it does go a little off the deep end with that touchy-feely new age crap.

The voice acting is pretty... well... artificial with Alec Baldwin mailing in yet another sleepy little performance. The bad guy in this movie is pretty weak too with the voice of James Woods, but the body of a forty year old beefier Christian Slater.

Come to think of it, Alec Baldwin's character looks a lot like Ben Affleck.

I guess the low budget films of twenty years from now will be CGI features with characters that resemble big name stars... I don't know why, but a Napster for low budget film makers using Leonardo DiCaprio or Julia Roberts tickles my vindictive side.

Who feels like striking now, huh?