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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Director Hironobu Sakaguchi Producer Remington Scott Cast James Woods, Alec Baldwin, Ming-Na

By Ad-Lib Battlefield Earth was the closest that Computer Wizards ever got to realism in feature film making. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within changes all of that. The animation is so realistic that if you happen to catch the movie somewhere in between you could be fooled into thinking that it was the real McCoy. But all this doesn�t mask the fact that it is a terrible, terrible movie. Allow me to elaborate�. It is sometime in the future and Alien beings called Phantoms have taken over the Earth. Man lives in the shadow of destruction caused by wars with these beings and it is only safe to live in barriers created with Life Energy. Dr. Aki Ross is a scientist who has one quest, to find the eight specimens that contain life energy to defeat the Aliens. After being rescued by former boyfriend Captain Gray Edwards (voice of Alec Baldwin), a plate that bears an alien infection in her breast starts acting up and it is then the quest of Gray and her mentor Dr. Sid (voice of Donald Sutherland) to speed it up and find all eight �spirits� as they are known. Their quest doesn�t ring well with the local council in power as it involves a theory of �Mother Earth� which is unproven. Nor does General Hein (voice of James Woods) appreciate talk of spirits when he is on a mission to destroy the aliens using a high powered device in space. Just before the last piece is recovered and a lot of odd melodrama that is a little difficult to understand, Hein scuttles Aki�s plans by allowing some phantoms into the complex and this destroys the place but Gray, Aki and Sid escape to space. From here they attempt to neutralize the enemy by finding the eighth spirit which Aki does and saves the day but loses her love Gray in the process. As I had said earlier the animation is superb and top of the line. Sad then that the script is so bad because the entire movie is very confusing and this really waters down the entire effect of the movie. One gets the feeling that the movie was purely an exercise in bragging by special effects guys. It is not a good movie by a far shot not for the kids or adults but definitely a must for those aspiring to be the next animation wizards. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within gets a lame 1 out of 10.