It's not very usual that a movie based on a game turns out to be a stunning movie. But Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, however, is just that. The incredibly realistic characters and beautifully rendered backdrops in this movie make it a fascinating work of CGI. Unfortunately, its story falls short of anything but a rather boring Sci-Fi plot, which I'm sure is what caused it to be such a failure in the box-office.
The Spirits Within follows a young scientist named Aki Ross, who shares a belief with her colleague Dr. Sid that with the collection of 7 spirits they can stop an invading alien race and save the earth. Being a fan of the video game series of the same name, I remember getting pretty excited for this movie when it first came out. After seeing it for the first time, I could not figure out why in the world they would call this movie "Final Fantasy". Aside from a few subtle references to characters and themes from the video game series, it does not contain enough blatant similarities to possess the Final Fantasy title, and I feel like this should have been a more important goal in directing this movie. It was a great choice to have done this movie in CGI rather than in live-action, as one of the most captivating things about the Final Fantasy series are its fantastic cinematic scenes. To have a whole movie based on the quality of an epic Final Fantasy cinematic really shows the hard work that goes into creating all of these scenes. Every model in the movie displays a high level of detail from the main characters to the ships that they fly in. The freckles on Ross's face allow for intense close-ups. The subtle movements of their facial structures make them more interesting to look at. It's an art form that was very well presented in this film. In fact, this was the first full CGI film to feature fully realistic characters, modeled to look like real actors. The fact that it is a computer generated movie allows more freedom to conduct scenes and also set camera angles in places that would be impossible to get if it were shot in real life.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within portrays a mastery of computer generated imagery for its time. It's a fine tribute to the wonderful cinematics of the Final Fantasy series. But it doesn't possess a very original plot line, which doesn't even portray enough references to be called Final Fantasy, and should have just been another Sci-fi called "The Spirits Within".
