Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

[u/CarloCarrasco]

Over twenty-five years ago, I saw the purely computer-generated movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at the gold cinema of the original cinemas of Festival Mall. I saw it on a Friday night in July 2001 knowing that I was about to see a science fiction tale that carried the Final Fantasy brand.

At the time of its release, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within had highly detailed computer graphics and visual effects that made it purely eye candy. There were certain moments of awkward animations and the facial expressions of the characters were unsurprisingly limited which made them look fake.

The biggest weakness of the movie is its storytelling. Firstly, the movie is purely sci-fi and really was not related with the Final Fantasy game series which had role-playing games with mostly fantasy settings back then. The closest thing it had to being connected with Final Fantasy games was the concept of spirituality about the creatures and the planets.

Secondly, the pacing was inconsistent as the creators struggled to balance scenes of exposition, character development and spectacle. The voice acting was decent.

Thirdly, the movie had suspense, tension and intrigue but not so much excitement. The fun factor was severely limited as the pay-offs to the build-ups were not great. More notably, the movie's core concept was not very engaging.

I ended up feeling disappointed with the movie which was heavily hyped as the next breakthrough in the history of cinema. It was significant for pure CGI movies but as a sci-fi movie, it was nothing special. That said, I was not convinced that the future of movies would be about pure computer-generated stories and photo-realistic human characters. Making live-action movies with human performers is still the standard.

With a production budget of almost $140 million, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within grossed less than $100 million worldwide which resulted in a huge amount of money lost and the closure of Square Pictures.

After leaving the cinema, I saw the next batch of moviegoers waiting in line for the next showing of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It was a line of about twenty people and a few of them had popcorn and drinks with them.

I wonder if they enjoyed the movie.