Hoo boy. I have no idea how real and honest (as opposed to bribed) movie reviewers review movies but I suspect the way not to review a movie like Final Fantasy is to let the afterimages percolate over the course of a weekend to give me time to do some real analysis. We saw the movie last Wednesday when it opened. Every day I thought about it and every day I liked it a little less. That brings us to today. . . almost 6 days later.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within opens on the dreams of a scientist named Aki ((Ming-Na) who dreams about the ending of a world that has strange resonances with the fate of our own. She takes her ship from space to ground and we see that something terrible has happened to the cities of earth. No life is to be found but eventually the foe is revealed in the light of a flare - a strange and otherworldly ethereal creature that kills by simply touching another living creature. Aki is trying to recover a weed that has managed to survive in the dead city and has to be rescued by a team of marines led by Grey (Alec Baldwin). The rest of the marines are the usually motley crew of video game archetypes - Ryan the tank (Ving Rhames), Jane the token female character (Peri Gilpin), and the irritating talkative engineer guy (Steve Buscemi). The rest of the movie concerns some kind of odd plot having to do with a mysterious science called bio-etherics created by Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland) and finding these eight spirits that will somehow combine to counteract the alien spirits that invaded the planet through a comet.
To add a little bit of depth to what is basically the kind of video-game translation, questy-item-retrieval, kill-lots-of things genre of movie, a human villain is supplied in the form of General Hein, played by James Woods who can't seem to escape typecasting even as an animated character. General Hein wants to wipe out the alien spirits at all costs and believes that the bioetherics is a fairy tale. This makes no sense because the military folks under his command use weapons that work against the spirits devised by the very scientists that he thinks are crazy. It's completely illogical and this little point only magnifies and gets worse through the course of the movie. It's unfortunate that this character existed at all because the movie could have possibly stood on its basic elements. If this were a video game, General Hein would have been okay because no one plays video games to see the darn story and everyone expects that the super bosses are a bit irrational and megalomaniacal because it would take to long to explain any other motivation. But this version of Final Fantasy is a movie and without a little bit of realism or continuity, a bad central character can really destroy the whole thing.
I could discuss the parts of the movie that I didn't like but that'd take all day and I'm kind of busy. Let me make a feeble argument for why you may want to see this thing. The detail and CGI used in this movie ranges from good to breathtaking. The computer graphics experts in our group pointed out the various flaws, like the way that faces were studiously avoided or concealed in many shots. I was stunned by the level of detail and imagination that graphics allow these days. Think back on the good old days of Tron and The Last Starfighter. We've come a long way since then. The reason to see this movie is not for the laughable story, the strained acting supporting a horrible script, or the rather overused science fiction elements, although those can provide a certain amount of amusement. You should see this movie if you're a computer graphics practitioner or aficionado to see where the future is headed. There were moments where the avatars looked extremely human in mannerisms and facial expressions. I can see this as the medium that will allow us to finally do those good translations of the comic book, fantasy, or science fiction stories that would be too difficult to cast or film with live actors. If you're a movie buff, you may even want to watch this movie so that you can debate the future of such techniques with other movie buffs.
Otherwise, this movie was extremely frustrating to watch. It was a couple meters shy of realizing its potential as a good movie. Instead, we get a technically-clever and expensive piece of mediocre Japanese anime. If you like that sort of thing, you have to see it on the big screen. For the rest of you, I give Final Fantasy a 3 on the Good Movie Scale and about a 7 on the Bad Movie Scale. I suppose that it's almost laughably bad enough to be entertaining but there's that whole having to buy a ticket thing that kind of gets in the way of the fun. . .
Our Drive-In Totals:
.1 breasts
62 dead bodies
The Sixth Spirit
The Seventh Spirit
The Eighth Spirit
Bio Etheric Surgery
A Weed
2 near-death experiences
The Gaia Hypothesis
2 birds
Ye Olde Council of Reluctant Elders
Ye Olde Megalomaniacal Insane Military Leader Villain-type
Ye Olde Super Techno Satellite Laser Cannon
Ye Olde Romantic Interlude Between Fight Scenes
Fuel Cell Retrieval Quest
Kinetic Goo
1 Last Stand
1 Vasquez Moment
Kung Fu
Blade Fu
Gun Fu
Laser Fu
Cannon Fu
Alien Artillery Fu
Big Space Cannon Fu
Bio Etheric Fu
Goo Fu
Good Movie Scale: 3
Bad Movie Scale: 7
