Review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) by Halimali H — 06 May 2010

The movie is set in the year 2065. Earth is captured by huge numbers of alien phantoms where they infect and kill human beings. Aki Ross (Ming Na) along with her mentor doctor Sid try to gather all the 8 spirits required to get rid of these phantoms. During Aki's journey to find one of the spirits she meets her ex lover Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin) and his team who together save her from the aliens and join her to find the spirits. On the other side there is General Hein (James Woods), who wants to use the powerful Zeus space cannon to destroy the Phantoms and refuses to listen to Aki and her team. each team try to do it in its own way but the result is not the same.

The Good Stuff:

-The technology and cinematography: The technology used in creating this movie is really great. The character design and the lip syncing were very accurate. I'm sure lots of time and efforts were spent in creating the whole designs but the end result was excellent.

Music: Loved the background music and it suited the story and the presence of the spirits.

- Voice Overs: Most of the actors done good job by lending their voices here specially Ming Na and Alec Baldwin.

The Neutral Stuff:

- A girl searching for spirits to save earth might not be the ideal story that would appeal to the masses. It is not that the story was not good but I feel lots of improvements could be done.

The Bad Stuff:

- Simply the movie does not make justice to its title. Final Fantasy franchise is without any doubt one of the best RPG games ever made. Thinking of Final Fantasy of course reminds you of the different characters and creatures you are going to fight with but again it also remind you how colorful the game series is. FF game is full of bright colors that is too candy for the eyes, while this movie only showed the dark side of FF games and never even made any attempt to touch on the fighting sequences of the game.

Some Interesting Facts:

- The movie has failed at the box office it only recovered $85M from its $137M budget.

- The character Aki is the first fictional character to appear in Maxim magazine in the sexiest women list.

- This film is considered to be the second biggest animated box office bomb in cinema history and the film was the main reason for Square Studio to be cancelled.

Some stuff might not sound right here, but I think it is OK to give the movie a try and watch the first Japanese-American computer animated science fiction film. You might enjoy it.

Final Verdict: Recommended.

The Ratings:

-Entertainment: 50%.

-Performances: 60%.

-Direction: 50%.

-Cinematography/Special effects: 90%.

-Background Music: 60%.

-Duration: 50%.

Overall: 60% ====> 60%.