Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2003)

While it wasn’t thrashed and left out as roadkill by the critics, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a film that literally took years to produce and had quite a few celebrities giving life to it, was greeted at its triumphant emergence from the studios with a universal “Eh.” It must have seemed like a success story: the movie was, at least in its title (but more on this later), based on the widely popular and long-running Final Fantasy games, guaranteeing the movie at least a loyal, significant fan base, and it was made entirely in photorealistic CGI. And it is a gorgeous film, with every crack and shadow exquisitely detailed. You never quite lose the feeling that you are basically watching a video game, but the detail is so incredible it doesn’t detract from the movie.

The tragedy is that the plot serves up a dreary, post-apocalyptic landscape, and it’s hard not to wonder what it would have looked like if the film’s CGI could have been used to depict a richer universe, one more true to the games. Final Fantasy: Spirits Within doesn’t take place in another world like the games, but on Earth in 2065. Decades before, alien beings known only as the ‘phantoms’ came to the planet through a meteor and slowly they stripped the planet of all life. Humanity survives only in isolated ‘dome cities’ scattered around the world. Two scientists, Aki and Sid, have discovered that the phantoms can only be combated with ‘spirit-energy’ and to harness that energy Aki must collect eight spirits from around the decimated globe to help form a device that will put an end to the phantoms’ attacks. While Aki and Sid gain the help of Aki’s old flame, Gray Edwards, and his team of soldiers, other members of the military establishment don’t look too kindly on Sid and Aki’s work…

While the film itself is groundbreaking, its script is the opposite (groundmaking?). There are enough sci-fi cliches to make a drinking game rousing enough to intimidate even the hardiest liver: the headstrong female who has an unsteady but traditionally romantic relationship with a male hero; the conflict between scientists and military hanchos; a comic relief character (voiced by a sorely wasted Steve Buschemi); not one, but at least four "I won't leave you!" moments; seemingly invincible alien invaders…Most damning of all, though, is the fact that this movie is mostly connected to the “Final Fantasy” series only by the brand name.

True, the Final Fantasy games each have a new cast of characters, entirely new worlds, new backstories and histories, and, most of all, the games range from classic medieval to quasi-Industrial Revolution to modern or even futuristic settings. Yet, despite the wide diversity, there are a number of things that make Final Fantasy games Final Fantasy games outside of an almost uniform gameplay. The different plots generally hit upon the same themes (pretty much all the games end with your motley crew of heroes going up against a power-mad lunatic bent on destroying the planet), you play through a motley group of reluctant heroes brought together by tragedy and circumstance, and there are beings that spring up across the Final Fantasy ‘metaverse’ (the most famous being the cute ostrich-like birds used for transportation, the Chocobos). The fact that different kinds of ‘phantoms’ roam the landscape while humanity is huddled together in cities is somewhat reminiscent of the games, where monsters always roam outside the mysteriously protected cities and towns and the movie’s concept of ‘Gaia,’ which plays largely into the film’s conclusion, is clipped directly from the premise for Final Fantasy VII. There is also a character named Sid, who, as any diehard fan can tell you, has appeared, usually either as a scientist or an engineer of some kind, in nearly every installment of the series, but his name in the games is always spelled “Cid.” Yet, in spite of the few similarities, fans will definitely notice that it doesn’t feel like a film with only the vaguest and most superficial ties to the series. Even the darkest and most dystopian of the worlds in the games is a brighter sight than the flat and colorless, albeit beautifully rendered, world of the movie.

There are a few interesting ideas buried in there under the dry backdrops and the paint-by-numbers script, but for the most part Final Fantasy is a generic sci-fi film covered in a shining silver wrapper and incorrectly labelled.