Review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) by Thadd C — 30 Dec 2016

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is the directorial debut of Hironobu Sakaguchi who is the creator of Final Fantasy itself, and it stars Ming-Na, Alex Baldwin, James Woods, Donald Sutherland, Ving Rhames, and Steve Buchemi in a computer-animated science fiction about a scientist that has to find the spirits as they think that collecting enough spirits would save the entire world as it's surrounded by enemies called phantoms, but she has to deal with people that don't believe so and think to defeat them has to be violence.

I figure since I was playing a bit of Final Fantasy XV, why not watch all of the Final Fantasy films leading up to Kingsglaive? So with that said, let's start with this. The effects to this day look terrific with the background looking realistic, and the creatures looking creative that I'm glad that this type of effects inspire other films to be more 3D to their effects.

The acting is decent, and the action sequences can be fun at times. I did like the first 30 minutes of it as the plot for searching for spirits is interesting, but when the villain shows up, the plot starts getting really tired and predictable.

We seen this type of plot thousands of times, and the villain himself is only there to make the situation matter worse, and is not memorable enough for me to feel remotely sorry for him, or even think he was necessary enough to be in this film.

Not only that however, the characters themselves are forgettable despite high-class actors portraying them, and the main character herself is the only developed one, but even then there's not much for me to really care about.

There is actual potential here that really could've worked here as an actual film as this is a different story in the Final Fantasy, even if it doesn't have much to do with the franchise itself, but Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an ok, but mediocre, film that is more or less what you expect from video game adaptation films.