Interesting. I had no idea what to expect with this film, but was pleasantly surprised. At least many of the production team were Japanese, so it had more intelligence behind it than most recent offerings (which have me avoiding anything with American accents). I wonder, if the film were made today, with the same production team, would the cast appear slightly less plastic? Also I'm not sure whether the rest of the series (of which there appear to be quite a few) will stand up to similar scrutiny. I see a comment below which I resonate with - a great opportunity and a very interesting film- though I didn't think the opportunity was completely lost. It was certainly a breath of fresh air after some of the recent sh*t offered in the form of fantasy or sci fi.
My first movie with complete CG world. It’s a shame that DI was only 2k because it’s caused that the quality of picture looks only little bit better than Blu-ray. Sharpness is quite good, colors are little bit dull. HDR10 not help as much as it can. Any surprise on audio, too. Old fashioned Dolby Digital 5.1. I’m worried that this 4k UHD is final destination of this movie for this time.
although I no longer find it as visually impressive as when I saw it in the cinema, I still like it
With groundbreaking animation, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within delivers the first photorealistic computer animated film. However, the plot is insanely bizarre; alien ghosts are attacking humanity and threatening the planet’s Gaia. Still, the animation is amazing, delivering some truly astounding visuals. And the casting is quite impressing, featuring the voice talents of Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, and James Woods. But as interesting as the film is, the story drags it down. Yet despite its issues, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an amazing technical achievement and a fun and entertaining science fiction adventure.
My combined knowledge of everything Final Fantasy is around absolute zero. For me this is just another movie - nothing more, nothing less. As such I like it. Yes, the animation is what draw me into it but at the same time I don't think the plot is awful. It's scifi, maybe with some clichès along the way. But I have seen much worse.
The animation really looks great even today considering it's age. It doesn't look like a nealy 20 year old (animated) movie, which is a clear indicator how far ahead this movie was in 2001. One thing that became a little anoying the further the movie ran was Aki's hair. I think they invented a special engine for that if I remember correctly but they where really milking it. I thought at times that this would make a good shampoo and conditioner commercial.
One of (if not the first) blockbuster digital animation movies. Unfortunately its focus was solely on the (then impressive) special effects and graphics and a good plot was forgotten.
Not even close to any of the series video games!
In 2001 everybody was thinking, this is a bad movie of the games. In 2014 we know, every Final Fantasy game since #12 is much bader than this movie. RIP Final Fantasy Franchise :(
A technical marvel...but quite lacking in most other departments.
I want more movies like this
I saw this one in the theater. The only thing "Final Fantasy" about it was the title. The CG animation was groundbreaking back in 2001, but after an hour of admiring the wicked awesome CGI I started to realize that the plot was weak.
The trailers kinda lied about what the story is all about.
Review by LNeroBlockedParent2020-06-08T08:16:45Z— updated 2020-06-26T08:49:28Z
Overall: 7-8
Personal Subjective Score: 9
Perhaps the greatest lost opportunity in the past half-century of filmmaking. A critical miscalculation in marketing and a failure of imagination by the public squandered what could have been a revolution in the capacity of fantastic filmmaking.
Final Fantasy fans complained, rather hypocritically, that it had nothing to do with the games when the games were connected by themes, not setting or characters. The critics weren't willing to take it seriously because it was "animation", and half of their jobs are posturing for their peers. And the public... just didn't go to see it. I personally don't get the last fact. The sheer beauty and originality of what was shown in the trailers before the film's release, alone, should have made it a media phenomenon... but it didn't, and that makes me legitimately sad.
And here we are today, 20 films deep into mind-numbingly banal, jokey-joke, Americans in America + a little space Marvel films and actors in ridiculous caked on "alien" makeup, and I think of what could have been, and that this film... this gentle, beautiful fantasy parable in the shape of a sci-fi action drama was a box office failure that ended up being the actual Final Fantasy of the talented and inspired staff of Square Pictures.
We * need* more films from this studio.
It was fitting that this film was released in the first year of the new decade, (and century, and millennium), as it was a culmination of the imagination of science fiction and fantasy films of the 1980s and 1990s, and a maturation and apotheosis of the themes they followed, along with a revisitation of the lost theme of environmental culpability and responsibility, rendered with the state of the art of computer animation, and had the boldness, integrity, and intelligence to play it for real, instead of with some perversely colorful, happy meal, kiddie lowest-common-denominator "family" toy movie, but to make a legitimate adult drama, and to even have a serene, positive message.
Failing stories like this film tells, not appreciating the transcendent personality of its protagonist and not understanding the film's transcendent theme, and going on to create the reality that we have instead is damning evidence that humanity will never learn. The stupid, the pathologically optimistic, the majority, and its sycophant class of rulers will destroy this planet with mindless and careless greed as everything of our culture degenerates as we slowly die out on a radioactive, plastic, and smog-filled planet.
We either had to achieve the sublime or fail to save ourselves from our self-made apocalypse. We have failed.