Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

I love this movie so much

People are voting emotionally.

Absolutely the worst movie.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within (2001): Dir: Hironobu Sakaguchi / Voices: Ming Na Wen, Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, Ving Rhames, James Woods: Breaking new ground with computer generated images yet retreads old story clichés. It presents such promising animated detailed yet by its ending it is certain to be a great object for target practice. Title makes no reference to anything important. It begins with soldiers entering a planet inhabited by phantoms. They encounter a woman named Dr. Ross who apparently has a phantom inhabiting her body. This is perhaps something that no prescription drug can take care of. Director Hironobu Sakaguchi must have been infected for all the good he did the film. The characters have all the personality of an oil rag. Dr. Ross seeks a plant in futuristic New York and what follows is countless action violent scenes to pointless avail. This is one of those over hyped bags of crap that Hollywood insists that people waste their money on because it has production values. The cast might as well have stayed home for all the good this movie will do for their careers. Wasted voice talents by Ming Na Wen, Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, and Ving Rhames. This is hardly the height of any of their careers and they should feel lucky not to be seen. It is a pointless and dreary film that has all the excitement of a jar of fireflies. Score: 1 / 10

I can still clearly remember when Final Fantasy was first released back in 2001. It was kind of a strange movie release 'cause nobody raved about it. Nobody marvelled at it. And nobody (including myself) went to see it. Final Fantasy came and went without even as much as a whimper. It was a weird phenomenon. Final Fantasy was "The-Movie-That-Wasn't".Over the years about the only thing, anywhere near to an opinion, that I've heard about Final Fantasy is that it is unbelievably "boring". Yeah, B_O_R_I_N_G! I guess word-of-mouth of this sort kept people away in droves. It's really amazing sometimes what one, little word like "boring" can do to the fate of a flick.Well, I, for one, certainly didn't find Final Fantasy "boring". To be honest, the story was a bit dry, the action a bit slow at times, but, all-in-all, it did hold my interest for the most part. Yeah, I'll admit that "War Of the Worlds", it ain't. But, hey, I didn't expect it to be, anyways. So, I wasn't disappointed.Where Final Fantasy excels (to the 10th power) is visually. It is an absolute delight to behold. The attention to detail in all the computer-generated imagery is nothing less than fantastic.Any short-comings that Final Fantasy's story may have will be immediately forgiven if you simply treat this movie as basically a feast for the eyes. If you do so, then you won't feel let down when the story doesn't meet any of your preconceived expectations, or if it doesn't go accelerating into high-gear.Final Fantasy's story is set in the future. Natch. The year is 2065. Mankind is on the brink of total extinction after our Earth is infested with alien Phantom-Spirits that feed ravenously on the human life-force.Our quickly dwindling human population is forced to live within great, domed cities. These cities are now the last and only refuge for Man. A specially engineered force-field engulfing the entire city shields these last remaining citizens from being totally annihilated by the ferocious Phantom-Spirits.Top scientists within the city are frantically searching for a means to successfully combat these menacing spirits, yet retain and protect our planet's fragile environment.WOW!! Now, does that sound "boring" to you!?.....Check it out. You might be pleasantly surprised at how non-boring Final Fantasy really is...... :)

Even though it is hard to tell exactly what the hell is going on in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the fact that things look amazing whilst doing it is indisputable.In short the Earth was taken over 34 years ago and the remaining human population has holed up ever since in increasingly small pockets. The outside is a barren lifeless wasteland where the phantoms reside, creatures that are translucent glowing things of varying sizes that can pass through solid matter. Touching them brings infection, should they pass through a body they effectively rip the very life out of the inhabitant – this is a game of tag where you don't want to be 'it'.Dr Aki Ross and her mentor Dr Sid (Donald Sutherland) have a theory, they think that the phantoms are actually haunting/attacking the Gaia – the spirit of the Earth. Unfortunately the army lead by General Hein (James Woods) have other plans, they have a giant cannon pointed right at the heart of the Gaia ready to blow away the phantom menace (tee-hee). Team Science thinks this will destroy the very spirit of the planet.Which is bad.So Aki Ross and a team of soldiers including her ex Gray (Alec Baldwin) head into the barren wasteland looking for the last few of the 8 spirits that can heal the planet – a plant is one, Aki herself is another – as Aki is a spirit as an unwelcome by-product she is phantom-bait, meaning that she and her escorts are rarely safe for long in the open.As must happen the hothead army guy ignores Team Science logic and in a rush to move things along unleashes all hell. The team are inadvertently stuck in the middle of a huge rush to escape with the spirits encroaching ominously and the clock ticking down on the giant cannon being fired.The ending is fairly hippy-ish, as is the underlying message that we must be good to Mother Earth (Note: I didn't say it wasn't an accurate or false message, just the way it was related here was hippy-ish and a little heavy-handed.) Final Fantasy boasts an all star-voice cast including all the above plus Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames and Keith David. The visuals are often incredibly well-rendered, it's hard to believe this was made 10 years ago.Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is like a Brazilian supermodel with no command of the English language, whilst it looks absolutely amazing once the dialogue starts it is easy to get a little confused at times, but for the most part you still don't mind.Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Come for the visuals, stay for the… well more visuals really.

Okay, at first I thought that it was going to be a pretty bad film, since it is based on a video game (And I hate video games) but then I read that this movie didn't had anything in common with the video game franchise in which this was supposedly inspired.Anyway, this was very good film, not only because it had a incredibly animation (Not like the boring and bland CGI crap that you see in most of the animated flicks released every year) but also, because it had a very interesting plot, combining science fiction with mysticism...And also, it had lots of aliens, all of them with an unique and fascinating look.This movie had many beautiful sequences, I liked specially the "dream" scenes, that take place in one alien planet. Also, I liked how it was deconstructed the whole concept of "alien invaders" that appeared in so many films... Apparently, one of the animators from the great movie "Avatar", Andy Jones, worked in this film too, so no wonder why the animation was so good.It is true that not even the best animation could replace the emotion of real actors, but despite that, I still believe that this movie is a great achievement for the cartoon world. Hey, at least it is much better than the overrated kiddie crap that came every single year. And considering that it was inspired in a video game, it could have been very much worse: This could have been anime.