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(Before I begin with my review proper, let me direct your attention to my ratings for "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and its DVD version--across the board "tens." This is the first time that I´m awarding a DVD perfect marks in every category. While I hope that I´ll run into other DVD experiences every bit as enjoyable as this one, I suspect that it´ll be at least a couple of months before I get my hands on a DVD set as wondrous as this one.)
Usually, movies adapted from video games suffer from an overload of action and a lack of storytelling depth or human interest. After all, how interesting can it be to watch characters pummeling each other for two hours? Even the recent "Tomb Raider," based on a series of video games that actually requires the player to use some brains to unravel the mysteries of archeological histories, degenerates into a series of gunshoots and fistfights for no apparent reason other than to show off an actor´s new muscles and brawling skills. The problem with adapting video games into movies lies with the fact that video game characters usually have simple motivations for simplistic goals, and all a game-player has to do is press a button to blow the living hell out of anything that stands in his way.
What distinguishes "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," Square Pictures´s first feature film, from other video-game-to-big-screen projects is that its filmmakers wrote a serious screenplay that takes the time to contemplate thoughtfully, even deliberately, metaphysical, scientific, and political debates. That has always been the nature of the long-running, best-selling series for Sony's PlayStation console. While each game has basically nothing to do with the next (though the games always have a wise old scientist or technician named Cid), the "Final Fantasy" games emphasize story development as much as stunning visuals, so the RPGs (role-playing games) end up playing like hallucinatory dreams, not just idiotic blow-´em-ups.
Set on Earth in the year 2065, "Final Fantasy" busies itself with Dr. Aki Ross´s (voice by Ming-na Wen) quest to find the Eight Spirits, the keys to unraveling the mystical wave pattern of Gaia, the Earth´s life-force. Some three decades earlier, the Leonid meteor crashed into Earth, bringing along with it "phantom" creatures that suck the spirits out of living organisms. Devastatingly defeated by these phantoms, man moved inside protective "barrier cities," all the while trying to figure out how to combat the aliens. Aki and her mentor, Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland), hope to use Gaia´s wavelength to subdue the phantoms. However, General Hein (James Woods) wants to blast the Earth with the Zeus, a huge gun in space orbit.
Assisting Aki are her ex-boyfriend, Captain Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin) and his loyal band of soldiers--Ryan (Ving Rhames), Jane (Peri Gilpin), and Neil (Steve Buscemi). Aki also finds help in her dreams. While she sleeps, her mind visits the same alien world over and over again, and her dreams may offer the key clue to finding the last pieces of the Gaia puzzle. Needless to say, the last half-hour of the film becomes a race pitting the environmental spiritualists against the die-hard militarists.
Aki has a Japanese first name and a "Western" last name. It is possible that her mother was Japanese and her father was of Caucasian extract. Or, of course, in the brave new world fostered by Japanese animation, racial categories do not matter at all. Notice how the characters in Japanese animation tend NOT to look like any recognizable ethnicity/nationality if the animators can help it. In a sense, it´s funny how one of the world´s most culturally closed-off societies (few people born outside of Japan become naturalized Japanese citizens, unlike here in the US) has had a long-running tradition of looking beyond race when it comes to depicting the future.
Did I already mention the film´s "stunning visuals?" Actually, forget stunning--the computer animation is jaw-droppingly astounding. When I first saw this film, I couldn´t stop shaking my head, thinking, "Wow." "Final Fantasy" is the first full-length feature attempt at photorealistic animation (versus computer-generated visual effects meant to enhance a live-action film). Look, no one will be fooled into thinking that "Final Fantasy" was shot with real actors on real locations or sets, but there are individual moments that, for all practical purposes, can pass for "real" without serious complaints from anyone. Well, anyone except for members of the Screen Actors Guild. (SAG is looking into protecting the rights of real actors from being inputed into a hard drive and used abusively, like those Fred-Astaire-back-from-the-dead vacuum cleaner commercials.)
Sure, this is an animated film that did not require the use of cameras, but the cinematography is breathtaking. The angles, the shots, the way the images sear themselves into your memory--these are all the result of a visionary desire to enthrall the viewer. Even beyond the reach for realism, "Final Fantasy" shows us visuals that we used to see only in our dreams. There is a shot where the point-of-view looks up through a plane of water/liquid glass at Aki, and the gorgeous colors of a twisted alien landscape rival the best of Dali and van Gogh.
Computer animation usually fails the "lighting" test. In "Final Fantasy," the lighting actually looks more real than some of the characters do. In fact, I would go so far to say that the animators of "Final Fantasy" have managed to capture the essence of photorealistic light. During one scene, Aki floats in space, and her hair dances in front of the moon. The photorealism inspired me to point at the screen and whisper to my sister, "Look at that!"
How does Aki Ross hold up as a leading lady? Hm...well, at the beginning of the movie, there are a couple of close-up shots of Aki´s left eye. The eye movement is astonishingly real, but here you can see where CGI has not yet matched reality--there is no "soul," no "life," no "fire" in her eye. It is obvious that the animated character has no intelligence behind those pupils. I read somewhere that Square Pictures spent twenty percent of production time and money on Aki´s 60,000-plus strands of hair. That level of attention to detail is visible on the screen. I love the triangular area between Aki´s eyes and nose, and Aki is as gorgeous of a creation as any painted Renaissance beauty, as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa, and (hopefully) as iconic as the Venus De Milo.
A friend of mine and I were discussing how some of the peripheral characters looked more real than Aki, Gray, or Hein because the animators obviously spent the most time on the lead pseudo-actors. Our theory is that the more time they spent making Aki "real" (liver spots, birth marks, acne, etc.), the more they fidgeted and obsessed over the details, resulting in imperfections that are too "perfect." That´s our pet theory.
At times, the dialogue left a bit to be desired. For example, when one of the characters dies, a friend of his actually jumps up and screams "NOOOOO!" while emptying a gun-load of bullets into one of the phantoms. Also, the final cut of the film underdevelops General Hein (Hein for heinous?). My guess is that the animators never had the time to get around to finishing his scenes, and that permanent scowl on his face is an easy way out of giving the poor fella any sort of personality.
Another problem I noticed was that the characters´ lips often lagged behind the speed of the voice actors´ deliveries. I remember reading in "The New York Times" that the reviewer felt that he was watching a dub (which, of course, the film is). :-)
"Final Fantasy´s" trajectory recalls everything from "Akira" (a huge mess of a blob becomes the focal point of both films´ climaxes), "Aliens" (the way Aki resuces Gray at the last second with a hovering craft), "The Fifth Element" (the films´ resolutions involve finding the last piece of a puzzle and a dazzling symphony of light), and every war movie with a wounded soldier making a brave last stand in order to save his comrades. There are other influences, traditions, histories, and allusions, but the filmmakers use these conventions as a way of enriching their narrative, a way of paying their dues and respects without resorting to clichés as crutches.
Many viewers may be put-off by the way the film flat out refuses to zip through its narrative. After the stunning first fifteen minutes, the pacing slows down considerably so that the characters can discuss the philosophical problems that weigh heavily on their minds. This is a departure from American animation where all dialogue deals only with the immediate plot. On the other hand, it´s been a long standing custom for Japanese animation creators to treat their work like live-action psychological dramas, where as much action occurs in the stillness of a person´s thoughts as in physical realities. What a refreshing experience it has been for me to have seen this film twice in a week and to be caught up in a world where ANIMATED characters have more going on inside their heads than the heads of those assholes in Michael Bay´s disastrous "Pearl Harbor."
Near the end of the movie, I could hear sniffles in the audience. As "Final Fantasy" is an ideas-driven work, I could only attribute the audience´s reaction to their being moved by the characters´ sacrifices and ideological nobility. That is a trait you expect to find in a drama by Ingmar Bergman, and that is certainly a trait you won´t find in the modern era of Disney, with its cheap pandering to juvenile audiences.
The film ends with a tracking shot of an eagle soaring over a canyon. While this sort of ending continues the "Final Fantasy" tradition of a master shot of animals in harmony with nature, it also reflects my feelings, my spirits after watching the film. Ultimately, "Final Fantasy" is a sublime triumph of visuals AND ideas.
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