FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN I got spirits within me too (hic) Ten days ago, I saw this movie, and I can barely remember a damn thing. I've put off writing this review for so long because ONE day after I saw this movie, I could barely remember a damn thing. Of all the words that could be used to describe this movie, "unforgettable" is not one you'll be hearing from me. To be sure, as a project, FF:TSW is of awesome scope and ambition. As a movie one wants to be entertained by, it's of limited usefulness. It has its moments, but damn few of them that can be recalled after ten days. Based somewhat on the series of video games (never played 'em, and no idea what any of this movie has to do with any of the games' stories), FF:TSW features an Earth about sixty or so years in the future, devastated by...something. Some species of incorporeal, invisible lifeform which kills people by touch has rendered most of the planet uninhabitable, and humanity now lives under protective domes. Dr. Aki Ross (looks like Bridget Fonda, voiced by Ming-Na) and her mentor Dr. Sid (looks familiar, voice by Donald Sutherland) believe that the cure to stopping this carnage and reclaiming the planet lies in curing their effects on the human body by gathering the spirits of lifeforms which have somehow managed to survive the plague. Not everyone agrees, particularly General Hein (eyes like slits so you can tell he's a villain, voice by James Woods to remove all doubt) who wants to use this orbiting "Zeus Cannon" to blast the beings to hell. Combining science fiction with a spiritual/supernatural angle is a risky gamble at best (remember Star Trek 5?), and FF:TSW does not really distinguish itself there. The concept of a planetary spirit makes its way in here, making everything that much more murky, not like I had the slightest clue how these "spirits" were being used to fight the menace anyway. Soon enough, everything's crawling with ghosts and spooks. Energy weapon technology has been developed that is effective against them. Anybody else reminded of Ghostbusters? Anyway, what I liked best here were the scenes of action; the plot mostly lost me, and the "ooh, aah" scenes of awe and wonder were, uh, a little belabored. I liked most of the scenes where the "cast" had to escape the ghosts, though one does wonder how these ghosts, constantly passing through matter like it wasn't there, still manage to walk on that matter without sinking into it (if anything, they keep rising up out of it). In case you haven't heard, or noticed, FF:TSW is, visually speaking, entirely computer-generated. So if you hate CGI, well, that's literally ALL you're going to see here. As a giant leap into the next level of CGI's possibilities, FF:TSW is wonderful. Most talked-about of these developments are the human characters. Now, nobody's going to believe that Aki is a real person - something about her just isn't right, and that thing would be movement. She looks great in still pictures (I saw that bikini shot on the cover of some magazine, and had to be told she wasn't real). As soon as she moves, she just no longer much works, at least realistically. Granted, never before has an animated character come with so much baggage, as never before has anybody asked us to look so closely. She has sixty thousand strands of hair on her pretty, Bridget Fonda-lookin' head. I find it interesting that untold years and dollars have been invested in bringing about the technology to create the image of a person from scratch...and yet nobody seems to want to give computer-generated voices a try. As much as we hear about these "synthespians" getting all this attention for, well, not being people, their voices come straight from real people. Voices are cheap, I guess. Other characters are more successful, particularly Dr. Sid, who's easily the most visually impressive character in this movie. Still, it's hard not to be distracted by not only the movements, but the way some of these characters look like real people. One of these guys looks just like Ben Affleck, and another, just like Jason Priestley. I wonder if some sort of legal precedent is going to come about from this. I know, I must be totally missing the point of a movie like this when I'm not wondering about what sort of sights this technology can bring us, but what kind of lawsuits it'll result in. For all the hype about the CGI characters, I (expectedly) found myself more interested in the environments, landscapes, and structures those characters inhabited. Lots of cool stuff here, urban, rural, and alien, and it all looks awesome. Wellllll, maybe not as cool as the "planetset" in Pitch Black, but pretty cool. As for the story, I found myself rather involved for most of the running time but by the time it was over, I was just thinking "What the hell was that?" It has one of those "deep" endings, or something. I don't even remember what I was confused by, just that I was confused. I've really got to be more consistent about writing these reviews when the movie's still fresh in my mind. This movie is tanking badly, but something tells me it'll recoup its costs in the Asian market alone. I can't recommend it except to die-hard CGI fetishists and people who are desperate to look at something on the big screen they'll never see on their way to the supermarket. But you could do a lot worse. BACK TO THE F's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE