| FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN UK Release Date: 10/08/01 Certificate: PG Official Website Director: Hironobu Sakaguchi Producers: Jun Aida & Christopher Lee Screenplay: Al Reinert, Jeff Vintar & Jack Fletcher |
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| Hot on the heels of Playstation adaptation Tomb Raider, and pre-empting the Resident Evil movie, comes Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Set in the year 2065, Earth has been occupied by mysterious alien 'Phantoms' for thirty-odd years. These invisible creatures tear the souls out of all life they come in contact with, so humans have retreated into shielded cities that can repel the aggressors. Vying to rid the world of the |
| alien menace are some scientists, Dr. Sid (voiced by Donald Sutherland), and Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na), and the military, led by James Woods' General Hein. Sid and Aki believe that all life-forms possess a spirit, that gathers experience and then returns to the Earth's spirit when it dies. They want to find eight energy waves that will neutralise the Phantom's spirits. Opposing them is the army, who have a built a big fuck-off cannon to blow the aliens away and want to destroy their meteorite stronghold from orbit. Both sides have a valid argument, but, in the way that these things are done, Hein is made a caricature of machiavellian evil, with a nasty, sneering face, his eyes narrowing sinisterly as Woods hams it up making evil plans. Unfortunately, you still tend to come down on the side of the military, because they have really cool space armour and guns; while the scientists are bit hippy and spout wierd mystical tosh. The Deep Eyes squadron who team up with Aki are also vaguely reminiscent of the Marines from Aliens, but in a very watered down way. The excellent Steve Buscemi plays Fleming, the wise-cracking pilot. Buscemi's a great wise-cracker, but he needs far better dialogue than this. Also in the squad are Alec Baldwin and Ving Rhames, and it would have been perhaps more satisfying to see what a usually strong cast would have been like in a live-action movie together. |
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| The main attraction of the movie is of course the very latest developments in computer-generated animation. The movie does indeed look stunning, with photo-realistic backdrops that are superb: a derelict Old New York City, a gritty, industrial New York City and an alien planet. The characters, too, are very well realised, you can almost fancy Aki, but not quite. Although she did make Maxim's Hot 100 this year. There is no shortage of impressive visual spectacle in Final Fantasy, just of excitement. The opening sequence in Old New York is promising, but most of the action scenes are strangely flat, and do not have the edge that live-action does. Almost worth seeing for the great CGI, the movie itself is very disappointing, nowhere as action-packed as it should have been, or the trailer made out. Much like the games, there is too much fannying about with mystical rubbish that you do not really understand when you really want violence and action. 5/10. |
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