Digital disappointment (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (DVD))

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (DVD)
Date:	23/07/01 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Absolutely superb visual effects, Pretty good voice acting, um... did I mention how good the visuals are?

Disadvantages: Weak plot, Overlaboured explanations of plot slow down pace of film, Animation of human figures not perfect

I was probably more inclined to like the 'Final Fantasy' movie than the average person in the street. I've been enthusiastically following the film over the last few months, eagerly checking the official website for new trailers regularly, and reading articles about the production of the movie. So, it was with massive enthusiasm that I headed along to Leicester Square for the press screening at the Odeon cinema.

The 'Final Fantasy' movie is loosely based on the computer game series of the same name, in as much as they have a writer in common – Hironobu Sakaguchi, and both are computer generated. Yes, that's right, all the visuals in the 'Final Fantasy' movie is computer generated, though unlike the equally computer generated, cartoonish 'Toy Story' series and 'Shrek', serious efforts have been made to produce a film which is as close to photorealistic as humanly possible.

The resulting movie is easily one of the most visually stimulating that I have ever seen, since the entirely computer generated nature of the film has made obscure effects as easy to achieve as more prosaic ones. In a conventional movie, many of the effects used in this movie, such as those using zero gravity, would have proved a lot more costly. However, in this entirely computer generated movie, far more basic effects require a lot of effort, such as making characters appear to run convincingly, for example. Unfortunately, the stunning visuals don't make up for the slight, predictable plot, and the dreadful pacing.

THE PLOT

The plot is exactly the sort of thing that you get in the 'Final Fantasy' computer games. Strange alien phantoms are taking over the Earth, killing everything in their paths. Two factions hit on different plans to wipe out the alien invaders. Dr Aki Ross (voiced by Ming-Na) is a young scientist investigating the waveform of all living things. She is striving to collect togeth
er the eight spirits, creatures that have managed to evade the alien invasion, and link their waveforms together to create a waveform that she believes capable of destroying the aliens. She is assisted by the Deep Eyes military squadron, led by her old friend Grey Edwards (Alec Baldwin), and her mentor Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland).

The other faction, led by the nefarious General Hein (James Woods) seeks to destroy the alien invaders by turning a giant laser on the crater where the asteroid crashed, originally bringing the aliens to Earth. However, Dr Ross believes that turning the laser on Earth will harm Gaia, the spirit of the planet.

COMPUTER GRAPHICS

So the main selling point of the film is unquestionably the outstandingly good graphics throughout. Incredible amounts of computing power have been put into producing realistic characters, and ensuring that the characters' faces and expressions are as authentic as can possibly be achieved with current technology.

Different teams have designed individual characters, and some teams have obviously had more money to spend than others. While Aki and Grey have received a lot of processing time, and have extremely detailed and well textured faces, some of the other members of the Deep Eyes squadron – notably wisecracking Neil (voiced by Steve Buscemi) and feisty Jane (Peri Gilpin) – have clearly had less spent on them, and have less realistically textured faces. Many of the peripheral characters are even less realistic, with very basic skin tones, and even less major facial expressions.

The mouth movements were fairly unconvincing too, with characters speaking apparently without the need for their cheeks or tongue to move, and were generally poorly synched to the dialogue, which was something of a disappointment. The characters' movements were also still not entirely convincing, with a slight resemblance to puppetry when the figures are in the far distance. <
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Nonetheless, these are minor problems with the film, and really not very significant in the grand scheme of things. The aliens are supremely well rendered and fluidly animated, consisting of tentacled semi-transparent glowing creatures which pass through solid objects, tearing the (blue) spirit from any living things they encounter. This works extremely well, mainly thanks to the fact that the film is completely computer generated, thus eliminating the need to try to carefully match and insert the computer animation into frames of live action. The reflected light of the incandescent aliens on the surrounding objects and characters was also very neatly rendered, adding an extra level of style to the presentation.

Visual effects are very well handled too, from lens flare, to explosions, via the rippling effect of the heated air around the exhausts of the flying craft used in the film. There's even a brief "My God, it's full of stars" moment, and some exceptionally well rendered zooms in and out. Certainly, the attention paid to the visual appearance of the film has been extremely careful, and the film's presentation benefits greatly from it.

THE FILM

The plot of the film is very weak – essentially, there are two conflicting factions of humans. The "good" side, represented by the scientists, makes persuasive arguments and attempts to understand what's going on. The "bad" side, the military, makes no attempt to understand the aliens, and just wants to win through brute force. The characters on both sides are extremely poorly developed, particularly the unyielding military, and the dialogue is hackneyed at best, including two occurrences of the phrase, "Let's get the hell out of here."

As you've probably guessed from the plot description I give above, there's a heavy reliance on "new age mysticism", particularly the claims that all
living organisms have waveforms. To be honest, I was prepared to tolerate this, the 'Final Fantasy' series of games have usually involved the player's acceptance of tenuous pseudo-science. I was even prepared to accept the presence of Gaia, the "world spirit." What I did have a problem with, was the film's continual insistence on explaining it to us. As the film progressed, it seemed that the need to explain the pseudo-scientific principles upon which the plot depended increased. This inherently isn't such a problem, but it is when it affects the pacing of the film, and unfortunately here it did.

As the end of a film approaches, generally, you would expect the pace of a film to increase, rushing towards the climax. However, in 'Final Fantasy' the need to explain the characters' actions, in a frustratingly overlaboured way, seemed to slow down what intrinsically should be the most exciting part of the movie. The last twenty minutes or so were appreciably slower than the rest of the film, and made for quite boring viewing, so by the time the characters did what they'd been talking about, you'd started to lose interest in whether they'd actually succeed or not.

But nonetheless, despite these criticisms, the plot itself was internally consistent, and the film did hold together reasonably well. The film's emotional scenes aren't perfect, and the dialogue is often quite clichéd, but despite this, they still manage to achieve an impressive level of involvement, despite the artificiality of the characters. The film's swelling orchestral scores also add some good atmosphere to the film. Kudos should also be offered to Square Pictures for the decision to end the film the way they did (not giving any more clues than that!).

VOICE ACTING

The voice acting was generally pretty good, but not great. Ming-Na started off quite poorly, delivering her lines with awkward woodenness, ho
wever, she had improved greatly by the end of the film. Alec Baldwin clearly used the experience he'd gleaned on the shortlived 'Clerks: The Animated Series', to provide the husky voice of Ben Affleck-lookalike Grey.

Donald Sutherland speaks in conspiratorial hushed tones as Dr. Sid, Steve Buscemi cracks wise as the jovial Neil, and James Woods booms with barely repressed rage throughout as the belligerent General Hein. Essentially a lot of the characters were so shallow that voice acting didn't really require too much of an effort on the part of the actors.

CONCLUSIONS

The main reason to see 'Final Fantasy' is unquestionably the effects, and for many cinemagoers, this is going to be the most appealing aspect of the film. The computer generated visuals are, at times, absolutely breathtaking, and while you're never convinced that what you're seeing isn't computer generated, it's still easy to relax and take it for granted. The animated characters aren't completely perfect – they still move a little unrealistically, and some aren't as convincing as others – but despite this, they are certainly nearer to photorealistic than any computer generated figures that I have seen before at the cinema, and their facial expressions are brilliantly rendered.

The film does however have several downsides – even assuming that you can endure the unoriginal science fiction premise of conflicting approaches to tackling the same problem, and the strange new age mysticism, there's still the overlaboured plot explanations that really slow down the film toward the end to contend with. While the plot works, and doesn't suffer from any obvious plotholes, it's not a particularly inspiring one, and is disappointingly predictable.

Still, this is the standard against which all future computer animated movies will be judged, and there's no denying that the standard is extr
emely high. If you go and see 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within' expect to see some jaw-droppingly stunning visuals, but don't expect to be bowled over by the story.

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