VGFlicks: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Part 2)

Lots of plot to cover, let’s continue right away. (Click here for Part 1.)

"How did I get to see Aki's visions during the operation?"
"Plot relevance."
"Okay, but how-"
"Magic, alright? Magic. ...Oh, hi, full-armored guards."

"You're all under arrest! Oh, and that nurse in the
background too."

After arresting the main cast (Aki, Sid and the Deep Eyes), General Hein proceeds to arrest the people in charge of keeping the force field up around New New York City. Then he asks his underlings to create a breach in the force field. Why exactly? Because he thinks the Council will listen to him if they see how many more human losses these aliens can cause. Have a reminder that he does all this to shoot the Zeus, a giant goddamn orbital cannon, at the meteor that landed on Earth, which caused the invasion in the first place, and that everyone keeps telling him that blasting that meteor will only make things worse.

But hey, he’s the bad guy. “I don’t care what anyone says, I’m right!”

So prisons in the future are made of lasers?
That's a waste of taxpayer money.

While she’s in prison with Sid and the Deep Eyes, Aki gets to explain her prophetic dreams. The aliens were waging a war on their world that eventually destroyed and shattered their planet, and a piece of it made the trip and landed onto Earth. It contained several examples of their alien wildlife (explaining why the Phantoms are so varied in forms and sizes). All the living creatures on it died during the trip across space that took them to Earth. They're not so much invaders as confused undead, aggressive from being on an unknown world.

Wait. You mean the Phantoms, these alien ghosts… were ghosts of aliens the whole time? I would have never guessed! Shocking!

…..D’OY!

Gotta wonder if the actors also were "Are you serious?"
when they reached that part of the script.

And of course, now that Hein has let them into the city, there won’t be enough manpower to stop them. A giant Phantom has gone through. By the time the General realizes what he’s done, it’s too late; the Phantoms cause a power outage in NNY. It turns off the protagonists’ prison security, so they’re able to escape. Swarmed by Phantoms, the Deep Eyes get in a vehicle and drive to the military docks, where they could flee in Aki’s ship. They have to break through a station to get there though, and Ryan, the black guy of the team, is wounded in the process and has to be left behind…

Oh no! I'm gonna miss his uncreative snark and his
milquetoast personality, that... er...
What's his name again? ...Neil, right? Oh crap, too late.

Remember when I said this was a horror movie? We’re getting there. The rest of the group gets to the ship and things are looking good, but they need to free Aki’s ship from military impound. The Phantoms reach the group just as Neil is hotwiring the machine to free the ship, but Jane’s there as backup to kill the aliens. Just as Neil succeeds, a Phantom sneaks up on him and sucks his soul out – and Jane succumbs a minute later after she runs out of ammo, taken by the giant Phantom that just showed up. Ryan was still alive, and he holds his own, but he suffers the same fate. Aki and Sid manage to save Gray in the nick of time, and they escape.

...gotta know when to fold 'em.

It’s only once they’ve reached space, the safest place right now, that the full weight of what just happened hits them. Aki and Gray cry, and they hug, and then they kiss, and then they French, and then… No, really. “Hey, three of our friends just died horrible deaths to ghost aliens. Wanna try zero-G sex?” That’s a completely normal course of events. Okay, fair, it’s more romantic than I’m putting it, these are two exes rekindling their relationship, but… right after the sheer horror that just transpired, you two decide it’s a good moment to fuck?

I mean, by common horror movie rules, they're goners now. They might as well enjoy it while they can.

Everything about Hein says "I'm fucking evil" from
mannerisms and actions. And yet, the performance
ruins any chance of this being fun to watch.

Later, Dr. Sid, who's driving the ship, says that the eighth Spirit will likely be found in the one place too dangerous, the place they haven’t searched yet: The sector of the impact crater, where the planet piece landed on Earth. Meanwhile, General Hein is remorseful and even suicidal after what he’s caused, millions died, but his plan still worked; the Council thinks it’s wise to give him the activation codes for the Zeus Cannon if its usage will end the menace against mankind. Sure enough, Hein knows exactly what to do when he gets to the Zeus ship: Aim its cannon at the impact sector. This can only end well on both sides.

The evil general just wanted an excuse to use
his dear machine and calm his trigger fingers.

Sid, in the flying ship overhead, localizes the eighth and final Spirit in the crater area, while Aki and Gray are lowered into the zone in an ATV suspended by cables. Said ATV has a small force field around it to protect them. However, before they reach their destination, the Zeus Cannon is fired by Hein and his lackeys, directly at the crater, which destroys the last Spirit. The second Zeus blast tears a hole into the meteor and releases the Phantom Gaia – a gigantic monster with tentacles representing the life force of the destroyed alien world the meteor came from. You know, the evil, alien counterpart to that Gaia thing Sid and Aki were going on about. The nigh-godly thing breaks the cables, sending the ATV falling to the ground below.

Aki manages to contact the Zeus ship and tries to explain the truth behind the alien invaders, and that shooting at them will just make things worse. But whereas she says “stop shooting!”, Hein understands “keep shooting, assholes!” And he does, further breaking the land within and around the crater, and killing all the Phantoms – except the Phantom Gaia, which respawns all the aliens immediately afterwards.

I am pretty sure this kind of beast was foretold
in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Aki’s ATV has fallen into the chasm, with the Phantom Gaia above them, and to her and Gray’s surprise, there’s a giant lake of blue stuff below. Yep – it’s Gaia, Planet Earth’s soul. You mean to tell me that in this futuristic setting, in which technology has gone through leaps and bounds, the Gaia theory would have been simply confirmed by just scanning several kilometers through the Earth? Nobody thought of that before? Sid, Aki, you’re shitty scientists! 

Oh hey, finally a shot that's pleasing to the eye.

This is apparently a universe where aliens turn nice upon
finding out humans can have babies.
You can tell; this one is going from red to blue.
The most basic color metaphor of all time.

While Phantoms are closing in on her and Gray, Aki has a vision where the Phantom illness inside of her feels the baby now growing inside her from the sex she had with Gray earlier (never mind that it hasn't even been a day yet), and it changes allegiance to the Earth’s Gaia as a result due to the, not kidding here, “hope of new life”, becoming a new eighth spirit as a result. If you read this and think the writers pulled that out of their ass… well, I think so too! I’m gonna make a bad pun here; it’s a Deus Sex Machina! Of course, the Phantom illness also turns blue to signify its new allegiance. With this, Aki manages to activate the Gaia wave, and it looks like it's going to work, but-

What’s that? Zeus needed to recharge due to overheating, but General Hein has overclocked it to shoot again! And at the same time, he undoes the Gaia wave that had been started and causes the Phantom source to spread even further. Hein tries a last time, but his machinations build too much pressure into the cannon and the entire Zeus spaceship explodes. Gotta love self-dispatching villains.

Okay, he's dead. And so is his compensation vessel.

And once again, the color blue saves the day against the red.

Speaking of, Aki and Gray have survived, but the soldier is wounded. Aki can still start the Gaia wave, but after saying farewell, Gray (who is holding her hand) sacrifices himself to the Phantom Gaia, which sucks his soul out into itself while it’s imbued with the power of the eight Spirits, carried from Aki. Gray’s soul is absorbed, and the gigantic monster proceeds to turn blue as the spirit of the Earth takes it over. And just like that, the aliens are defeated. Aki is carried out of the chasm with Gray’s lifeless body, and she looks around to see some color and life return to the world. Well, it just took 99 minutes of uninteresting darks, greys and browns before we finally had something that’s nice to look at. Flying shot of an eagle on the returning nature, and roll credits.

Christ. Okay, so I get what they were going for with this plot, but – damn it, this feels so pretentious. The film is trying to be this big sci-fi plot with technical mumbo-jumbo, spaceships, aliens and whatnot, but it falls flat on its face each time we come back to discussing esoteric topics like Gaia, ghosts and life forces. The clash is too distracting. Although the Gaia theory is a topic of discussion in real life, its use as a literal "planet soul" here is hamfisted and ridiculous. Can sci-fi and fantasy work when combined? Yes! I've seen examples of that. Here? It’s not working, but the movie keeps going without any trace of self-awareness (nor self-deprecation) about the situation. This film takes itself way too seriously. Even the comedy, whenever there’s any, suffers greatly.

Actually, scratch that. The tone is too serious.
All attempts at comedy fail.

This movie feels like a tech demo; it showcases the
amazing power of CGI, but is lacking in every way
that makes a movie truly great.

Meanwhile, I’ve already said much of everything else at the end of Part 1. This is an animated feature, but it doesn’t try in the slightest to display any sort of interesting visuals – the characters just look like regular humans, though perhaps humans struck a little harder by the uncanny valley than those in other animated films. None of this is helped by their personalities, which are as boring as grey clouds on a rainy day. They tend to be by-the-numbers stereotypes or common character builds, as is the case of the three members of the Deep Eyes who ultimately served very little purpose outside of being expendable. To top it all off, the delivery of the script is similarly boring. In an attempt at playing these characters somewhat realistically in spite of the full mo-cap animation, we get people who just aren’t given a chance to let their acting chops shine. General Hein could have been a hilarious villain who does all sorts of exaggerated, comical motions, like James Woods’ previous role as Hades in Disney’s Hercules, but no – “Tone it down, we want this ridiculous asshole to be as reserved as possible!” Can’t even find any interest in the set pieces, since most of them are shrouded in darkness or utterly uninteresting to view.

The only shining point is, once again, the animation itself. From the intricate detail on cloth and skin, to the motions of Aki’s hair (even if the movies adores to show itself off by forcing her hair to move all the time), it can be pretty impressive to look at. We’re seeing an issue of style versus substance here; the style is impressive, but there’s no substance of any interest to back it up. This movie’s only shining grace is that it’s a part of the history of cinematography as the first movie released worldwide to utilise motion capture for its entire cast. (It is, ironically, not the first to use mo-cap for all its actors, as the first is a Sinbad Bollywood animated movie that's seen a very limited release.) The technique would later be used, in much better fashion, by other filmmakers. For 2001, it’s a boring film, but also stunning testament to what the technology of CGI can and would later achieve, in film and in video games. With the gift of hindsight, 19 years later, it’s just a boring film.

I’ve said before that I consider “bad” and “boring” to be different things. Some bad movies are completely horrible, while others can be entertaining to watch. A boring movie has little to save it, regardless of its perceived quality. Being boring goes against the idea of entertainment. What's weird is that, if you do check out supplementary material around the movie (by reading around the FF wiki, as an example), you can read full backstories for all the characters, discover the names of all the vehicles and ships, and see just how much work went into designing everything - but none of this shines through in the finished product.

On the other hand, we did get this bonus video, which is... um... Well, see for yourself.

Do I recommend this movie? No. It’s too flawed, too bad, too generic, too uninteresting. That said, if you want to watch it as the important milestone in CGI that it is, then you could always seek it out. I won’t tell you that it’s a fun watch; but I won’t take away the merits the film had upon release. That said, I actually bought the Collector’s Edition of the DVD, which has an entire second disk packed with content.

You know what else this movie is good for? From it, we can see how technology has evolved over time. Before this film, we had the first computer special effects with TRON in 1982. Then we saw the first CGI characters interacting in live-action worlds, such as the T-Rex in Jurassic Park in 1993, and (alas) Jar Jar Binks in 1999. This film, in 2001. In 2002, we have Gollum in Lord of the Rings, one of the best examples of a mo-capped CGI character in a live-action film. Andy Serkis would find a lot of work in the two decades that followed. Later mo-capped movies would be so much better, even if the uncanny valley wouldn’t entirely go away; Polar Express, Monster House, A Christmas Carol, and I'm forgetting several… By 2009, we would see an entire world made with CGI in James Cameron’s Avatar, with humans exploring and interacting with that world. CGI characters among live-action casts would become a common type of film aimed at kids, with loads of examples; think of Garfield, the Smurfs, or Hell, even Sonic the Hedgehog this year! Sure, these movies aren’t always good, but each one is an attempt at improving the interactions between CGI and live-action to an increasingly believable level, through a mix of CGI and practical effects. Let’s not forget several instances of CGI characters in movies for older audiences, either; think of Hulk, Rocket, Groot or Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And nowadays, several movies use CGI for damn near anything, as well...

So yeah, that’s all the good I can say about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It’s a milestone in CGI animation and special effects. Outside of that, it’s terrible. There been many more movies with the Final Fantasy name attached to it, all of which I can safely assume are better (if only marginally) than this one. We even had Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive, released in 2016 shortly before thr release of the much-awaited Final Fantasy XV on home consoles.

Now that this is done, well, I know I’m gonna be two months late to the party, but I’m going to start work on a Sonic Month, due April. (Why not March? I’ll be using March as a hiatus to write much of that content.) See you in April, then.