| Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within |
| 2001, Coumbia Directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Motonori Sakakibara. Voices of Ming-Na, Alec Baldwin, etc. Rated PG-13 for Sci-Fi Action and Violence |
| Grade: D+ |
| Review by Anthony |
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| Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a computer animated, sci-fi movie that lacks an interesting plot, edge-of-your-seat action, good dialogue, and characters worth caring about, leaving us with only a ridiculous plot, cheap and superficial action, dialogue saturated with corny lines, and characters I couldn't care less about. But the movie's biggest flaw is its spirituality. The story of Final Fantasy revolves around themes that are explicitly New Age pagan beliefs. These beliefs can basically be summed up as follows: Within every human, animal, and plant there is a spirit. Each spirit comes from Gaia, the spirit of the earth. When a human, animal, or plant dies, its spirit returns to Gaia. Not only are these themes obviously contrary to traditional, Christian beliefs, but they are also what ultimately makes the movie so ridiculous. When the movie starts, the world is dominated by alien spirits. Aki Ross and Dr. Sid, both ardent believers in all this Gaia insanity, are in search of eight specific spirits which, once collected, can counter and destroy these aliens. Aki and the Doc are joined by Aki's love interest Grey and his squad, and off they all go to save the world from these phantoms. As absurd as all this is, the worst part of the movie is its climactic ending. Grey (who throughout the movie has been on the fence about whether or not to believe in this Gaia) sacrifices himself in order to finally destroy the alien phantoms, but before he does so, he tells Aki that he isn't afraid of death "...now that I finally believe." Oh please. This scene is a failure. It was supposed to be this big, dramatic scene that makes the viewer feel all good inside. It did nothing but make me feel nauseas. Another weakness of Final Fantasy is that it failed to make me feel either interested in or concerned about these characters. I simply sat there not caring about what happened to these guys (in all fairness, there is a member of Grey's squad who is sometimes mildly funny, but he doesn't come close to Donkey in Shrek or Mike Wazowski in Monster's Inc.). In fact, the one character I was interested in was never even on-screen. This was a little girl about whom Aki tells Grey that right before this girl died, Aki told her that she was going to be with Gaia. The girl replied that Aki did not have to make up stories. This is another failure of a scene. Aki is at the point of tears when she tells this, and we're supposed to feel sad that this girl died without ever believing in Gaia. To me, this little girl was the hero of the whole movie. Finally, because the plot is absurd and the characters not worthing caring about, there is nothing driving on the action. It's merely a bunch of gun-shooting and some explosions that want to be action, but it's never real, keep-you-in-suspense action. As numerous as my Final Fantasy critiques are however, I must give credit where credit is due: the computer animation of Final Fantasy is excellent. The best yet in fact. The characters look so life-like that I have known people who just glanced at the cover and thought that the characters were played by real people. But if the film makers went through all the trouble of producing such cutting-edge computer animation, couldn't they have also given us a good movie to use this animation on? But, alas, no. Final Fantasy may have some great animation, but it is also a bizarre and uninvolving movie with disturbing spirituality. For a far better fantasy/action movie, see Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. For a far better computer animated movie, see Shrek (whose animation is second only to Final Fantasy) or Monster's Inc. |