Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within | ||
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Director: | Hironobu Sakaguchi, Moto Sakakibara | Actors: | Ming-Na (as Dr. Aki Ross (voice)), Alec Baldwin (as Captain Gray Edwards (voice)), Ving Rhames (as Sergeant Ryan Whitaker (voice)), Steve Buscemi (as Officer Neil Fleming (voice)), Peri Gilpin (as Officer Jane Proudfoot (voice)), Donald Sutherland (as Doctor Sid (voice)), James Woods (as General Hein (voice)), Keith David (I) (as Council Member #1 (voice)), Jean Simmons (as Council Member #2 (voice)), Matt McKenzie (I) (as Major Elliot (voice)) | Country: | USA | Category: | Animation | Year: | 2001 |
| Description: | A female scientist makes a last stand on Earth with the help of a ragtag team of soldiers against an invasion of alien phantoms. | Comments: | Almost immediately after the release and failure of the highly overrated Tomb Raider comes the release of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. While Final Fantasy wasn't nearly as bad as Tomb Raider, the spiritual element made up far too much of the story for the film as a whole to be taken seriously. The religious aspect is unmistakable and almost suffocating, as Aki and Dr. Sid and the others search feverishly for the spirits that are expected to collectively eliminate all of the invading phantoms. There are many other heavily religious allusions, not the least of which is the basic good vs. evil story structure and the clearly Satanic appearance of the phantoms themselves. One of the great ironies of computer animation, that this film in particular brings to attention, is the fact that the better it gets, the less necessary it is. Sure, there are things that can be done with computer animation that would be impossible to film with real actors, but Final Fantasy looked so real that many of the scenes may as well have been real. On the other hand, humans have been particularly troublesome in computer animated films - they just never quite look right. But here, they are so real that it is unnerving, but this time, they screwed up the humans MOVEMENTS. No matter how real they looked in the movie, the actual motion was still entirely robotic. Besides that, it was a mistake to have so many well known actors lending their voices to the film, because all that did was take voices that we know and put them on other people, which was distracting because the people looked so real. This all makes you wonder when full-length animated films will become obsolete and computer animation will be used only to add to the special effects of other movies. On the other hand, Final Fantasy did have some of the most amazing scenery ever made with computer animation. The desolated New York City was amazingly real, and the idea of the humans hiding in gigantic enclosed areas to keep safe from the phantoms was also very interesting. But in the second half of the film, this all gets a little convoluted and we see the sacrifice of the human element of the movie in favor of the competition between Dr. Sid's peaceful theory and General Hein's militaristic tactics, as the two clash at the film's climax. Final Fantasy is not a complete failure, and is far superior to it's real life counterpart, the awful Tomb Raider, but there can be no mistake that it is disappointing. Fans of the video game may enjoy it, but this is not for general audiences. | Languages: | English | Subtitles: | Length: | 106 | Video format: | Audio format: | Resolution: | Files sizes: | 1012 |