Review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) by Mark T — 02 Nov 2008

[size=2]This film is often criticized as being a soulless, CG tech demo. This a completely unjust categorization by critics who refused to see the strong points of Final Fantasy.

Visually, this movie is beautiful. The film is exquisitely rendered and the character animations (especially the facial expressions) are amazing. The characters act and are very expressive.

The storyline is interesting and new (at least to me). The characters aren't the most unique, but there are a few that are really quite interesting, Aki in particular. Despite the fact that the characters aren't entirely new, they are still interesting, engaging, and easy to connect with and help to drive the story towards its climactic conclusion.

Final Fantasy isn't perfect (the villain certainly isn't subtle), but its shortcomings are outweighed by its freshness, both visually and thematically.

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