Final Fantasy:
The Spirits Within
by Lev David

About two-thirds of the way through Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, one of the characters remarks: "This is all starting to make a crazy kind of sense." He's either lying, or a helluva lot smarter than I am. Regardless, it's hard to argue with the "crazy" part - movie plots are seldom as extravagantly silly as this.

This is the maiden feature film of Square Pictures, the film-production offspring of Japan's SquareSoft, which is responsible for the legendary Final Fantasy computer game series. The hype for this movie adaptation has been considerable.

They've been talking about the complete digitisation of the filmmaking process for a while now, and this movie is being promoted as a giant leap in that direction. Like Toy Story and its brethren, Final Fantasy is entirely computer animated. Unlike those movies, however, this movie makes use of ultra-real digital actors, or synthespians, who some predict will one day render flesh-and-blood actors obsolete.

So, are we there yet?

In a word, no. We will have taken that giant leap when we no longer notice that the "actors" onscreen are less-than-human, and apart from a few glimmers of near-perfect animation, we're never fooled here. This is closer than we've ever been, though...

Walking, leaping, falling and other large movements are very nearly perfect, but the synthespians are betrayed by their plastic faces. Ironically, the animators' well-intentioned quest for subtlety diminishes the believability; characters facing imminent death appear no more than mildly miffed.

Which is not to say that the movie doesn't look good. It does! There are lots of gawkable moments: phantom aliens, floating fire, cool space hardware, some beautiful water effects. Even the synthespians are extremely impressive. But that little bit of something missing is a significant something. Making things worse, the movie's non-visual failings mean that even when Final Fantasy is beautiful, it's a bore.

The plot is spectacularly convoluted. From what I gather, earth has been invaded by all manner of ghostly aliens. The bureaucrats want to use a bloody big gun to wipe out the buggers, but Dr. Aki Ross fears that this might hurt Gaia, the earth goddess, and is therefore searching for a kinder, gentler solution. The answer, she suspects, lies in the dream-journeys she's been taking to alien planets since being infected by an extra-terrestrial life form.

And that's just the start of it. Don't be surprised if you have an out-of-body experience of your own while watching Final Fantasy, your spirit leaving you to mill around the cinema foyer, waiting out the many stretches of humourless exposition.

©2001 Lev David
CineScene