Final Fantasy - first and final film apparently

Title: Final Fantasy – The Spirits Within

US Release: 7/11/2001

Directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi

Written by Al Reinert & Jeff Vintar

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

Cast:

Ming-Na Wenn – Dr. Aki Ross

Alec Baldwin - Cpt. Grey Edwards

Donald Sutherland – Dr. Sid

General Hein – James Woods

Neil – Steve Buscemi

Ryan – Ving Rhames

Jane – Peri Gilpin

The Skinny:

                Set in the distant future of 2065, the earth has long been under assault by “phantoms”, alien creatures that crashed years ago on earth and were at first invisible.  They possess the ability to “steal” ones’ soul if they ever came into physical contact with a human being.  Humanity has deserted most of their major cities and live inside “Barrier Cities”, metro areas surrounded by energy grids that protect them from the phantoms.  Along with the barrier technology, weapons and optics have also been developed to see or expose the phantoms by the unique energy signatures they emit.

                The film opens with a recurring dream Dr. Aki Ross (Wen) is experiencing, showing a barren planet.  As the film progress and Ross keeps revisiting the dream, more elements of the dream are introduced, providing her clues to the phantoms, their home planet, and how they came to earth.  She records these dreams with technology commonplace to her time. 

                She lands her ship in the remains of New York City.  She cautiously makes her way through the city searching for a plant that gives off a very rare energy signature.  She is soon beset by the phantoms, illuminated by energy flares, visible as vibrantly colored and almost translucent creatures, but very ugly.  Almost immediately, she is rescued by the Deep Eyes squad.  Unwilling to leave the city without the plant, the Deep Eyes are forced to protect her from the phantoms as she searches and eventually extracts the plant.  Extracted via aircraft, the team barely makes it out as the phantoms are closing in.  Once aboard the aircraft, the deep eyes remove their helmets.  Ryan (Rhames) is personable, asking if she’s ok.  Jane (Gilpin) however, is frustrated and Neil (Buscemi) just seems to be along for the ride.  The captain berates Dr. Ross for her recklessness, putting herself and his team in danger for seemingly selfish reasons.  Dr. Ross’ rebuttal is she never asked for their help, to which the captain removes his helmet showing himself to be her ex-boyfriend, Capt. Grey Edwards (Baldwin). 

                Returning to the nearest barrier city, Dr. Ross saves Edwards life when bio-scans reveal he’s infected with “phantom particles” when a phantom touched him for a split second.  He quick thinking and actions with a medical laser eliminate the phantom particles just in time.  Dr. Sid (Sutherland) soon arrives and takes Aki back to his lab.

                He warns Aki to destroy her research on their project, as he, and consequently her too, has enemies that would use such information against them to shut down their project, and, presumably, level much heavier charges against them personally.

                At a council meeting soon after, Gen. Hein (Woods) is campaigning hard for the “Zeus Cannon”, powerful laser cannon in orbit around the earth, which he believes is the answer to exterminating the phantoms by destroying their crash site, code named “The Phantom Crater”.  Dr. Sid objects, showing evidence that direct action against the phantoms only yield temporary results, as the phantom crater appears to produce more phantoms each time its attacked.  Explaining the science behind effectively eliminating the phantoms (which is the basis for all the weapons, optics, and barrier technology they all depend on now), Dr. Sid shows that two opposing energy signatures can cancel each other out.  Believing there is a natural energy signature within the earth itself that can cancel out phantom energy, thus freeing their planet, Dr. Sid requests the council delay firing the Zeus cannon until he can construct an energy wave strong enough to eliminate all the phantoms on the earth.  Gen. Hein, already out of patience, demands proof.  Aki, in a bold move, stands up.  She reveals that their research has eliminated phantom particles, collected from organisms that produce the rare energy signatures, and furthermore have successfully contained phantom particles within a living person.  She reveals she is carrying phantom particles contained within an energy field inside herself.

                The council agrees to postpone firing the Zeus Cannon so Dr. Sid and Aki can complete their research.  Gen. Hein, convinced the Zeus Cannon is the only solution, and suspicious of Aki since she is infected with phantom particles, assigns some of his own men to the Deep Eyes with separate orders to eliminate Aki and anyone else who gets in their way.  The team manages to retrieve another sample, but the phantoms appear to be drawn to Aki, and she passes out when they get too close.

                In frenzy, the team flees the area with the sample, but en route back to New York, Gen. Hein’s men attempt to take over the team.  In a skirmish, Aki is shot, the Deep eyes eliminate the rebelling soldiers, and one even loses his soul as the aircraft passes through a phantom. 

                Dr. Sid works fast to process the sample and re-enforce the energy shield holding the phantom particles within Aki’s body.  Needing more time, Edwards is recruited to keep Aki alive by sharing her dream.  Here he witnesses what she’s been seeing.  The dream progresses far enough to show that the phantoms were their own race, but in a long drawn out civil war, destroyed their own planet, and a large chunk of rock was sent hurling through space toward earth.  Aki now believes that the meteor was just an improvised vessel, and the phantoms trapped inside were already dead, hence their ability to move through physical matter and take the souls of any living organism.

                Almost immediately, the team is arrested by Gen. Hein’s forces.   Aki’s recorded dreams are found soon after, leading Gen. Hein to believe she’s been under the influence of the phantoms for some time.  He convinces his second in command to assist him in sabotaging the barrier to force the council to fire the Zeus cannon under the pretense that the barriers won’t work forever.  This turns out to be a tragic mistake, as he underestimates the phantoms, and they quickly overtake the city.  Aki, along with Dr. Sid and the Deep eyes squad manage to escape confinement and make their way out of the city.  They find Aki’s ship, but only Dr. Sid, Edwards, and Aki make it out of the city as the pursuing phantoms eliminate the rest of the team.

                Gen.  Hein, who also escaped, is driven insane by his mistake, and lies to the council that the barrier was going to fail anyways.  The council approves his use of the Zeus Cannon.  Aki and Edwards reconcile, and discuss with Dr. Sid on how to complete the energy wave.  Dr. Sid believes the last piece is within the phantom crater.  Edwards opposes the plan, but Aki and Dr. Sid convince him to participate.  They arrive at the crater with a new plan to extract the last energy sample and combine with the energy field already within Aki, just as Gen. Hein prepares the Zeus Cannon to open fire on the crater.

                                 

On the Surface:

                A CGI film intended for mature audiences, this film was supposed to be another choice in the genre of CGI films that was gaining momentum in Hollywood and expanding their fanbase, but so far were all children’s films with very light hearted and “kiddie” humor.  The film is very intricate, the landscapes are very detailed.  The only thing more detailed is the human characters.  Their movements, captured via motion capture, a common practice in video game production that carried over to the film, were almost lifelike.  The clothing moved just as well.  The phantoms were mysterious and ominous at the same time, their visual style set them apart on the screen, and their design portrayed a hideous reality, which was brought to a scary level when we see them close up taking the souls of humans during the New York City attack sequence.

                Sadly, the one detail that was underdeveloped, and by far the most difficult to master artificially in general (as admonished by decades of professional animators) were the facial expressions.  This film was the first CGI film to concentrate on realism, so its understandable that this element was mostly absent from the film because of all the subtle nuances and appearances of each face that gives each its individuality.  The voice acting was solid, you could hear the emotion and conviction in the delivery, but the lack of facial expressions (save for a few key scenes) was a turn off for the audience.  The visuals, though stunning, seemed handicapped because the audience couldn’t identify with wooden expressions.  Some fans did give the film grace, but not enough to recoup the film’s budget.  Aki’s hair, which was praised for its life like appearance, fell by the wayside as viewers walked out of this film disappointed.  Unfortunately, this gave did the film a very dark feeling, but so dark it seemed lifeless.   It seems this film was a failed experiment, and Square pictures folded shortly after.

                 

Production Wise:

                This film was supposed to be the first in a long line of films based on the “Final Fantasy” video game series.  Square Enix, the video game developer that owned the rights to the franchise, created their own production house, Square Pictures, and not only bought high tech servers, computers, and the accessories necessary for CGI animation, but bought many of them with the aim of rendering fast so as to avoid system crashes and lost work.  Many CGI animators from the United States and Japan were hired to work on this film.

                Each element of the film, even down to the finer details, had its own team solely dedicated to perfecting that element for the finished film.  This is exemplified in Aki’s hair.  Each strand was animated individually, rendered separately, then grouped with more strands of hair, and rendered again to test its appearance.  The opening shot where we see a close up on Aki’s eye shows the details of her iris and the pores in her skin, each had its own texture team to key frame the scene for realism. 

                Elliot Goldenthal, known for his dark music scoring, gave the film its ominously dark tone to help with the visuals.   This is before he started branching out more into synthesizers, which he would eventually use for all his musical compositions in some way to varying degrees.

Why I like the film:

                It honestly didn’t surprise me that the characters would have mostly wooden expressions when I saw this film in theaters.  I was more engrossed by the textures, the immersive landscapes, and the visuals of the phantoms.  So, when watching this film again at home, I came to accept this flaw in the film and focused more on what I liked seeing on the screen.

Like most fans when seeing an animated movie, I tried to guess the actors voicing the characters.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear Peri Gilpin’s voice for the Jane character, being a long-time fan of “Frasier”.  It was almost like getting to see a grittier version of Roz Doyle.  Ving Rhames, James Woods, and Alec Baldwin fit their characters so well that I didn’t think about what they looked like in real-life, I totally bought their voices as being natural to their characters.  Steve Buscemi played the comic relief in Neil, which I would’ve liked to see (and hear) more of on screen to round out the experience in the film. 

                I was disappointed when more films like this did not get released in the coming years, some were even cancelled because this film failed at the box office.  I don’t mind CGI films aimed at children’s audiences (though I would prefer politics be left out of those films entirely), I feel that CGI is a great medium that needs to expand past kids’ films and start exploring new territory in visual filmmaking.  Some territory that would only be enhanced by top notch CGI, and some stories that can only be well told with CGI.  Sadly, it appears I’ll be waiting forever for such films.

(Picture)

The film is rated PG-13.  Since there are very grim themes and visuals in the movie, it’s an appropriate rating.  Stream or rent where available if you want to see CGI, but not the happy-happy song and dance numbers that are churned out in the theaters these days.  Even if you’re not looking for a dark and maybe scary film to watch, this film would serve well to show the avenues CGI could explore if given the chance.