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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

2001, Movie, PG-13, 100 mins

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: Review

FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN | FAINARU FANTAJI | FINAL FANTASY
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Artificial? Totally. Intelligent? Does it matter? Final Fantasy, the enormously popular role-playing game famous for its state-of-the-art graphics, is the latest video game to make the transition to the big screen. Intelligence — and entertainment, for that matter — is entirely beside the point: The movie exists only as a showcase for the animation technology known as hyperReal, a photo-realistic simulation of space, figure and movement that hopes to one day erase the line between animation and live action once and for all. Whatever the future holds, the overall effect at this stage is less than impressive, and this sluggish would-be adventure is further burdened with a turgid, overly complicated plot. Planet Earth, 2065 A.D. It's been 34 years since a deadly invasion of alien phantoms decimated the human population, and the planet's survivors live huddled together in protected urban areas known as barrier cities. The aliens — most of which resemble giant pink tapeworms, crabs and jellyfish — kill by devouring their victims' "spirit waves" and are highly lethal; one touch by an alien tentacle invariably means slow death via alien contagion. The future looks grim, but this war of the worlds is far from over. Alien-hating General Hein (voiced by James Woods) strongly suggests blasting the alien nest with the giant, space-mounted Zeus Cannon, regardless of the effect the attack might have on the Earth itself, while Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland) and his protégé Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na) propose a far more environmentally sound approach. They believe that if you feed a hungry invader a synthesized spirit wave that's the exact opposite of its own spirit energy, the alien would be neutralized. Finding the component waves on a dying planet, however, isn't going to be easy. The "film" was "directed" by the game's creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, but the characters could have been designed by the geeks from WEIRD SCIENCE: Aki Ross looks like some fantasy hybrid of Neve Campbell and Sandra Bullock, and her love interest, the ludicrously hunky Captain Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin), can only be an underage WWF fan's idea of what a grown-up man looks like. At times, the animation does look great — the filmmakers have managed to simulate eyes, skin texture and human speech to an unnerving degree — but hyperReal's accuracy only makes its obvious shortcomings all the more unsettling. (Hair in particular remains a problem.) And though most of the set-pieces are drearily unimaginative, there are one or two flashes of inspiration. If you can tear your eyes off your watch, you might catch an interesting image or two. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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