Flak Magazine: Review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, 7-16-01

There are only three things that are fundamentally wrong with Go, Doug Liman’s sophomore film. Unfortunately, it’s not unrelated that the film has three major plot sequences.

When you think animation, your mind will zip past great cel animation like Akira and Princess Mononoke. You won't even stop at computer-animated features like Toy Story and Shrek. From now on, you will first and foremost think of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and well you should.

Don't be mistaken, though; as a movie, it's barely special. The lighting is basic, the shot selections are rarely breathtaking, the action can be cartoony and the story limps along at times. As a movie completely rendered via computer animation, though, it's a gem. FF is the measuring stick; it's the first full-length computer-animated film that pretends to be something more than that. This is not Woody and Buzz traipsing along with other playground toys. This is a cast of real people in real (albeit sci-fi/fantasy) situations, and it's going to inspire filmmakers to find out what is possible in a way not seen since the color era, or maybe even the black-and-white era. That may be too dramatic, but in this day and age, filmmakers are looking for the latest/newest/ most-cutting-edge effects and techniques, and FF wrote the first chapter of a whole new book.

The one strength of the "Final Fantasy" game series is its sense of story — better put, its sense of the epic — and, unfortunately, this is not served well by the script. Writer/director/game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi has his formula, and he sticks to it. To appreciate the structure of FF, look at the three groundbreaking installations of its video-game franchise: "Final Fantasy II", "III" and "VII." The second and seventh follow the noble warrior with a conscience as he collects a band of like-spirited but hard-nosed comrades and wages against evil incarnate. The warrior goes through an apotheosis where he rises into a new role or realizes how his past dictates his future. By contrast, the third game has a much more Huston-esque camaraderie to it, with a cast of characters that can exceed a dozen, and a scope that left most RPG players spoiled rotten. FF is none of this. It's the aftermath of that apotheosis, with a dwindling cast that surrounds a lone woman and her quest not against evil (although there is an antagonist). No, her quest is to protect the earth. It may be a common "Final Fantasy" subtext, but by not pairing that goal with thee defeat of an arch-villain, it's far from thrilling.

The film's length is also outside Sakaguchi's comfort zone. No game in the "Final Fantasy" series has been less than a 24-hour journey, and if he had attempted to push that type of saga into two hours, well, we'd all be complaining about something quite different. Instead, he concentrates on plot points that would comprise no more than a fifth of any given game and stretches it over two hours. FF would be the second or fourth act of a typical "Final Fantasy" passion play. Atop that, after years of collaborating with composer Nobuo Uematsu, Sakaguchi turned to Elliot Goldenthal to score his film. Goldenthal is, in his own right, a great composer, but this was a golden chance for Square — the "Final Fantasy" game company and now nascent film studio — to respect its roots and bring Uematsu into the American mainstream.

In terms of visuals, despite a valiant effort, it's clearly a computer-made movie. There are just as many robotic movements as there are swift pivots and sudden steps, making it difficult to escape the thought that you are watching video people. In addition, the characters bear strange resemblance to real-life personages, creating an interesting issue for the voice talent:

The voice provided by … … is supposed to belong to the character of … … but it's distracting because the character was clearly modeled to look like …

Alec Baldwin Grey Ben Affleck

Steve Buscemi Neil John Edward ("Crossing Over")

Ming-Na Aki Posh Spice

Ving Rhames Ryan Ving Rhames

Each character has its moments where the digital rendering brushes with mistaken reality, though, especially Donald Sutherland's Dr. Cid. But the fantastic setting doesn't aid verisimilitude. If this was a movie set in modern-day New York, people would be more enamored with the likenesses, but viewers don't have a frame of reference to judge whether phantom centipedes surging through the floor of the space jet hangar look true-to-life.

Even with the limits of this animation, however, Final Fantasy is clearly breaking major new ground, the first all-digital non-infantile feature-length motion picture. It's the birth of the computer all over again in a new arena. Select theaters even get to project the movie digitally, eliminating the risk of film stock distortions and abnormalities. Ten years down the road, some people will point at FF and smirk, talking about how the people looked robotic and the shots were uninspiring, saying they could have done so much more. Everybody else will applaud the movie for opening a door that allowed everyone else to start doing more. See it. It's the start of something big.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)