Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
- For the movie sequel to the video game Final Fantasy VII, see Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
| Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Hironobu Sakaguchi |
| Produced by | Chris Lee |
| Written by | Al Reinert Jeff Vintar |
| Starring | Ming-Na as Aki Ross (voice) Alec Baldwin as Gray Edwards (voice) Ving Rhames as Ryan Whitaker (voice) |
| Music by | Elliot Goldenthal |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 11, 2001 |
| Running time | 106 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $137 million[1] |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a science fiction film by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series of RPGs. It was released on July 11, 2001 in the United States and it was the first animated feature to seriously attempt photorealistic CGI humans.
The story follows scientists Aki Ross and Doctor Sid in their efforts to free Earth from a mysterious but deadly alien race known as the Phantoms, which has driven surviving humanity into "barrier cities." They must compete against General Hein, who wishes to attack the planet with the Zeus space cannon to end the conflict.
Despite aggressive promotion by Sony, it became the second-biggest animated box office bomb in film history (behind Treasure Planet), with losses of over $124 million, effectively bankrupting Square Pictures.
Contents |
Production
Square accumulated four SGI SGI Origin 2000 series servers, four Onyx2 systems, and 167 Octane workstations.[2] The basic movie was rendered at a home-made render farm which consisted of 960 Pentium III-933MHz workstations. The render farm was made by Square Pictures located in Hawaii. Later in 2001 nVidia released a technology demo for the NVIDIA Quadro DCC, rendering several scenes from the movie in real-time (compared with 1.5 hours per frame for the movie), albeit at only 10 frames per second and with much lower quality. The film had cost overruns during the end of production.[3]
The Square Pictures render farm and the nVidia demo used completely different and unrelated rendering algorithms -- ray tracing and other pixel-by-pixel CPU-based techniques never intended interactive speeds by the former, and a GPU-based rasterized polygon mesh by the latter. The render farm also rendered at resolutions far higher than the GeForce 3 is capable of. This makes frame-rate comparisons between the two uninformative. Rather, the demo showed the high quality that raster graphics had achieved.
Prior to the film's release (and subsequent box office failure), Square had indicated plans for the Aki Ross "synthetic actress" to appear in other films, possibly even interacting with live actors. A sample of what this might have looked like can be seen on the introduction to the second DVD in the Special Edition release, which shows Aki "breaking character" after filming a scene and walking through the studio, interacting with both CGI and real people. Chris Lee, the producer of Final Fantasy, defended his use of animation, stating that live actors often cannot physically accomplish what computer characters easily can, citing his experience from making Starship Troopers and Godzilla. An early scene in the movie, in which Aki floats weightless in an orbital spacecraft, illustrates his point: such scenes are trivial to shoot when your actress has no weight to begin with. Lee also noted that the difference between the CGI and live action footage can be jarring for viewers when the film requires heavy use of computer effects in almost every scene. Shortly after the release of the film, the character of Aki Ross became the first computer-generated entry in Maxim's Hot 100.
Plot
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is set on an alien-infested Earth in the year 2065. The remaining humans live in "barrier cities" all over the world and attempt to free their planet from the Phantoms, an alien race. The only hope for the planet comes from the scientist Aki Ross and her mentor, Dr. Sid, who have a plan to destroy the Phantoms without damaging the planet, but a general named Hein is determined to use the Zeus space cannon to destroy the Phantoms—even if it means destroying the Earth in the process.While the film does carry the name Final Fantasy, it is only vaguely thematically related to Square Co., Ltd.'s popular Final Fantasy series of games. However, Dr. Sid's Gaia Theory, relating to a lifeforce within the planet to which spirits belong, is highly reminiscent of the Lifestream/Mako in Final Fantasy VII. The plot, characters, and storyline were all created specifically for the movie although the character of Dr. Sid does continue the games' tradition of having a character named Cid appear in most Final Fantasy games, despite the Doctor's name spelled with an untraditional "S".
The Story starts with Aki Ross in the Zeus station waking up after a dream about the phantoms. After she has recorded her dreams, she proceeds to landing in the Old New York City, in a mission to find the 6th spirit. She continues looking until she runs into some Phantoms, all is lost until a squad team appears to save her life. The captain indicates to her that she is under arrest however she runs and eventually finds the 6th spirit which is a plant. At this moment the squad and Aki are then surrounded by Phantoms and they escape by going to higher grounds and getting on a transport. The first person who talks is Ryan who asks if Aki is ok. Gray then reveals to Aki that he was the captain of the squad. When they land they are all scanned (except Aki because of her clearance) the captain is found with an infected phantom inside him. Aki then proceeds to doing the bio laser surgery on him herself. She saves his life with 1 second to spare and then proceeds to talk to Doctor Sid. Aki confirms that the plant she found is the 6th spirit. Sid shows Aki a diary he wrote when he was her age and after she has read it, he burns it stating that their ideas were unpopular among men. After waking up from another "Phantom" dream, Aki proceeds to a debate that is deciding the use of the Zeus cannon, a weapon that was designed to destroy the phantoms. Sid argues the use of the cannon by saying that the cannon would destroy "Gaia- The spirit of the planet". The general mocks the theory and asks for proof. Aki then shows her the proof by revealing that she is the person that has been infected by the Phantoms however she still remains alive.
After the debate, Aki proceeds to search for the 7th spirit when Captain Gray tags along. They are both stranded when members of Gray's squad short circuits the system saying that they want the captain and Aki to have time to talk to each other, building their relationship. Gray asks Aki about the spirits and Aki proceeds in saying "When I was young, I was infected by a phantom however I didn't die because Doctor Sid placed a membrane around the infection, therefore the first spirit was me, the second was a fish, the third was a deer I found in a wildlife preserve outside Moscow, the fourth was a bird... ever tried tracking a sparrow from space, its not fun, and the latest one was the plant I found" Gray then answers " You missed one, you said that the plant was the 6th one what happened to the 5th?" Aki then hesitates saying "The 5th was a little girl, dying in a hospital, I managed to get the sample however she..., I told her that everything had a spirit, little girls, the earth, plants, trees, she said that i didn't need to lie to her to make everything feel better and she said she was ready to die, only 7 and ready to die" Aki then sobs quietly and proceeds to kissing Gray however before Gray gets to kiss Aki, the power is turned back on.
Paranoid that Aki might be a spy for the Phantoms, The General orders Gray and the deep eyes to guard Doctor Ross and report any suspicious behaviors. If she were to react in anyway abnormal way, she was to be arrested.
Reception
The North American box office results were at $32 million. The shortfall from the high cost of production of $137 million (including $30 million for marketing) essentially bankrupted Square Pictures, the subsidiary of Square that produced it. However, Square Pictures did survive long enough to produce an animated tie-in to The Matrix, Final Flight of the Osiris (see also The Animatrix). Final Flight of the Osiris increased the level of realism shown, addressing some of the "painted statue" criticisms.
The film also made $55 million more overseas, meaning total losses were approximately $123 million (the studio typically receives half the box office gross). The domestic box office loss was--at the time--the largest in film history. It is commonly agreed that the financial failure of the film coupled with other circumstances at the time proved to be the catalyst that inspired Square Co., Ltd.'s merger with Enix.
The film received mixed reviews but was not a popular success. Because the plot is typical of Japanese science fiction anime in melding science fiction and spirituality, the movie seemed to be best received by otaku, or at least regular viewers of anime. In some aspects, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was more or less a big-budget anime movie. It became more unpopular when fans of the Final Fantasy series watched the movie to discover that it had little connection to the game series.
While many of the critics of the film cited problems with the story or complained of one-dimensional characters, others focused on the failings of the animation itself. While the rendering is intended to be photorealistic, the characters' motions and expressions can be seen as stiff and unexpressive compared to real human motion. This is most notable in the "doll-eyed stare" of the characters, but also in the rigid poses and gaits of the characters and the lack of deformation in skin and tissue accompanying character motion such as speech and grasping. The modeling of lighting on skin and hair (which in reality are subtly translucent) is also limited, giving the characters a "painted statue" look. As a result, the film is often cited as an example of animation that falls into the uncanny valley, perhaps most famously by critic Roger Ebert.
Roger Ebert was one of the films biggest advocates, giving the film 3 1/2 stars out of 4. He also expressed a desire for the film to succeed in hopes of seeing more films made in its image, though he was skeptical of its ability to be accepted.[1]
Cast
- Aki Ross: Ming-Na
- Dr. Sid: Donald Sutherland
- Gray Edwards: Alec Baldwin
- Ryan Whittaker: Ving Rhames
- Jane Proudfoot: Peri Gilpin
- Neil Fleming: Steve Buscemi
- General Hein: James Woods
Novelization
Final Fantasy: The Spirts Within was novelized by Dean Wesley Smith. The Making of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was also made available, which was edited by Steven L. Kent.
See also
Reference
- ^ Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001). Box Office Mojo.com (2002-01-01). Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
- ^ Jon Stokes and Jonathan Ragan-Kelley (2001-07-30). Final Fantasy: The Technology Within. Ars Technica. Retrieved on 2006-10-16.
- ^ FF:TSW Interview Series - Hironobu Sakaguchi. Anime Dream (2001-10-02). Retrieved on 2006-10-16.
External links
- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at the Internet Movie Database
- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at Rotten Tomatoes
- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at Box Office Mojo
Categories
Articles lacking sources from June 2006 | All articles lacking sources | 2001 films | American films | Computer-animated films | English-language films | Entertainment flops | Films based on computer and video games | Final Fantasy in film and television