Ark (2004 film)

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Ark is a 2004 computer-generated imagery movie, directed by Kenny Hwang, animated by Digital Rim, and produced by John Woo. It is an anime-style film similar in appearance to the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and is also the flagship project for both the director and the studio. Also like the Final Fantasy movie, this film features the voice of James Woods.

Attempting to address the failures of the Final Fantasy movie, the film is an attempt to merge anime-style visuals with a faster, action-oriented plot more palpable to Western audiences.

The film's plot features many archetypes taken from Final Fantasy-style Japanese console RPGs; a young male resistance fighter, a young girl with special powers who unknowingly is her planet's Messiah, an evil "right-hand man", and a small, insanely cute pet mascot.

[edit] Plot

Ark takes place on a dying alien world in which a global war between two technologically advanced human civilizations has reduced the planet to a desolate wasteland. The only way to escape the dying world is by activating the Ark, an ancient giant robot capable of supporting a human city as well as traveling through space.

James Woods plays Jallak, the military leader of the victorious civilization, the Storrians, who is trying to get the Ark to work in order to save his people. Unbeknownst to him, his adopted daughter Amarinth is the direct descendant of the priestess who originally built the Ark, Amiel. The civilization that lost the war, the Ceveans, have since been enslaved. A leader of their resistance movement is a young resistance fighter named Rogan. After discovering the lineage the young woman holds, both civilizations scramble to use Amarinth's power to activate the Ark and leave the other civilization behind to die. However, Amarinth, who has ties to both civilizations, wishes to try and find a way to use her power to save everyone. She is opposed by the lifeforce-stealing wraith Baramanda, the Empress's manipulative right-hand man, who wishes to steal the power of the Ark for his own selfish purposes.

Rogan is arrested during a resistance uprising, but manages to escape. He bumps into Amarinth, who was disobediently wondering around in the city. She then meets with him again during a Savian protest rally and offers to help hide him and tend to his wound. Rogan joins with her back at her apartment and meets her pet tweety bird JuJu, but then vanishes while she's away when he discovers she's the Storian general's daughter.

Baramanda arrives unexpectedly to take Amarinth into custody after the truth of her legacy was proven. Rogan helps her escape from Baramanda and takes her to the Cevean Ark of York. There she meets with an elderly man who explains Amarinth's birthright with the help of JuJu, who originally belonged to him. Amiel helped construct both the arks since she knew the races would clash if there were only one. It took all her strength, causing her to fall into a deep sleep. Before entering an eternal hibernation, she places her very young daughter in a hibernation pod. Her molecular structure enables her body to generate a pulsing electronic field through her bloodstream. This making her body perfectly preserved despite how long she had been inactive. A cell of her blood can supply power to an entire building in death, so scientists began wondering what she could have accomplished in life.

That is when the hunt for the rumor began, to find the great Amiel's daughter who also shares the energy after it became apparent that no matter how much energy Amiel's body retains, it's not enough to move the ark.

Amarinth refuses to pilot the Ark of York and leave the Storrians behind. Despite her lineage as a Cevean she was raised as a Storrian. When she finds out her foster father, Jallak, had been arrested for high treason and was to be executed, she demanded that Rogan and the others help her rescue him if they want her help.

During the recon, Amarinth is forced to deal with Baramanda in allowing Jallak and Rogan to live she agrees to pilot SidArk. The Empress's intentions become clear to the public as she is executed and Baramanda's dasterly scheme is revealed as he tries to use a type of insect to suck the life out of Amarinth and absorb it himself.

Rogan and Jallak stop him, but are separated during escaping. Rogan takes Amarinth back to York as Baramanda merges with the core of SidArk and awakens it. Amarinth discovers that, just as her mother Amiel died in constructing the arks, so she would perish to pilot one. Rogan and Amarinth kiss for the first and final time as she merges with the core of York just as SidArk comes stomping up to it. The arks clash in a giant battle with the earth breaking down beneath their feet. Amarinth grabs the city plate off of SidArk as Jallak and his friend set the self-destruct mechanism in SidArk. They perish in the explosion as the planet begins to crumble.

Rogan narrates at the end as it shows York kneeling with the SidArk city plate on another planet flourishing with vegetation. He states that no one knew both civilizations would make it and neither does anyone think it would work out, living together, sharing the planet. He continues saying that it was hard to imagine that their old world, which was now no more, might have looked like this before the war. So the Storrians and Ceveans are going to try to coexist, to preserve this planet and Amarinth's sacrifice. It's difficult at times, and Rogan wishes that Amarinth was there to bridge the gap between the two civilizations. They could have learned so much from her, but they already had.

Also notable, this film was co-written by David A. Weinstein, the TV writer who has written for everything from the Howard Stern show to THE CLOSER on TNT.