Movie Review: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi
It is the year 2065, and in the ruins of Old New York, Dr. Aki Ross is looking for a plant. Some thirty odd years before, a meteor hit the Caspian Mountains, releasing the Phantoms. These ethereal beings come in multiple shapes and sizes; the big ones can rip the life force out of a human just by brushing against them, and smaller ones can infect humans and kill them slowly from the inside. As a result, most of the Earth is uninhabitable, and the remaining humans live in special barrier cities.
Aki’s mentor, Dr. Sid, has a theory. The Phantoms give off a particular bioenergy frequency. By gathering Earth life forms with specific counterfrequencies, it should be possible to cancel out the Phantoms with no more loss of life. He and Aki have made great progress, including stabilizing Aki’s Phantom infection so that isn’t a threat, and they’ve found five of the eight “spirits” they need for a full counter.
Aki’s quest puts her in danger from roving Phantoms, and she is rescued by the elite Deep Eyes military squad. This reunites her with Captain Gray Edwards, the sweetheart she abruptly left when she became infected and refused to communicate with. It takes them a while to sort through their hurt feelings.
Meanwhile, General Hein is dubious of Dr. Sid’s plan, seeing as it relies heavily on the Gaia Hypothesis (that is, the Earth itself is in some way alive.) General Hein prefers the much simpler plan of shooting the meteor site with the Zeus orbital cannon. Since everyone around there is dead, the collateral damage will be acceptable. When he sees his chance, Hein moves against Sid, Aki, and the Deep Eyes. However, it turns out his plan to put pressure on the ruling Council to authorize the unleashing of Zeus has a tiny but fatal flaw. Now it’s up to Aki and the others to save what remains of the world.
This 2001 movie was the first full length feature to be made with “realistic” CGI human characters. Sony and Squaresoft had had good results with CGI cutscenes in video games, and thought they were ready for the big time. They were especially pleased with the model for the “Aki Ross” character, and planned to “star” her in multiple movies. Unfortunately, the movie bombed.
Good: The animation team worked very hard on this movie, and it shows. Good monsters, vehicles, landscapes. The plot is pretty coherent, and I never felt lost. For the time it was made, the people are…okay.
Less good: Aki is astoundingly bland as an “actress” and most of the other characters aren’t much better. Steve Buscemi as Neil does the best job of voice acting; pity I didn’t like the character.
To help with some of the CGI limitations, much of the movie is set in murky or heavily saturated lighting. It was sometimes difficult to follow the movements of characters.
And still a sore spot after all these years: Despite some subtle nods to the game franchise, this just didn’t feel like Final Fantasy. While science fiction elements were often a part of the games, the fantasy elements here are toned down into psuedoscientific theories.
Content note: attempted suicide.
Overall: While an okay movie in its own right, it’s not a top-class science fiction film, nor is it bad in an entertaining way. It’s mostly worth studying for being first of its kind.
