Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Review
by Eugene Novikov (lordeugene_98 AT yahoo DOT com)August 6th, 2001
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
Featuring the voice talents of Ming-Na, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Donald Sutherland, James Woods. Directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. Rated PG-13.
Are computer-animated actors bound to replace Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis and the rest of their flesh-and-blood kin? Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within makes the first convincing case for the affirmative. While none of the "actors" here can not yet be mistaken for a human being, this is easily the most impressive CGI on display in a completely animated motion picture. The word "cartoon" will soon become extinct.
The plot concerns the adventures of Dr. Aki Ross (voice of Ming-Na, who, a couple of years back, brought the title character in Disney's Mulan to life), a scientist who believes in the Gaia theory. The film's version of Gaia involves 8 spirits, each contained in a different life form somewhere on earth. Earth, unfortunately, is being invaded by aliens called Phantoms, who landed on a crashed meteor. To kill the Phantoms, Ross needs to collect all eight spirits, and use them to create some sort of wave that will cancel out the Phantoms' life force.
The villain is a vigilante general who doesn't believe in all this Gaia mumbo-jumbo, and whose elaborate strategy for defeating the aliens consists of blowing them all to smithereens using some futuristic version of a nuke. So Ross teams up with a group of army officers sent to protect her to find the 7th and 8th spirits before the evil general can use his death ray, which will only make matters worse.
Final Fantasy is based on a video game, but the movie is by no means unaccessable to someone who has never picked up the controls of a Playstation. The story is actually quite easy to follow; it's also not very interesting, as often happens with movies that pay more attention to technical wizardry than to plot. The science fiction here is like something out of a second-rate Japanese anime, completely run-of-the-mill and unaware of its own absurdity.
But no matter. I had no problems spending the 100-some minutes simply looking at the pictures, which are even more astounding than the trailer made them look. The film plays like a window into a parallel universe rather than a work of animation. The characters aren't quite human-looking, and yet they are, with their hair bouncing and waving in the wind, and their flesh looking like you can reach over and touch it.
What's the point? Why go to such pains to create an artificial reality when you can simply film with real actors? Animation allows artists to truly create their own world, almost unaffected by the budget constraints that would otherwise plague a filmmaker. This is why you're hard-pressed to find a CGI animated version of You Can Count on Me: it would be a pointless exercise in showing off. Final Fantasy, as well as some of the summer's other animated flicks, use their breakthroughs in graphics to achieve the fantastic.
When this spectacular technology finds a visionary -- John Lasseter, perhaps? -- with a story to tell as well as pictures to show, we will be in for something truly incredible. This has not happened yet. Final Fantasy works better as a 2-hour demo reel than as movie, a showcase of what we can do and what we can do better.
Grade: B
Up Next: Legally Blonde
©2001 Eugene Novikov
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