Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
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| Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within | |
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 Theatrical release poster |
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| 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 13, 2001 |
| Running time | 106 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $137 million[1] |
| Allmovie 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 13, 2001 in the United States and it was the first animated feature to seriously attempt photorealistic CGI humans[citation needed].
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 aliens with the Zeus space cannon to end the conflict.
The film received mixed reviews and was a box office bomb, with losses of about $130 million.
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[edit] Philosophical Background
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.
The film has several pacifist themes, as well as a general pro-environment attitude. Since the phantoms are the end result of an alien war in which the combatants literally tore their planet apart, they represent the unsettling self-destructiveness of endless warfare on an entire ecosystem and not just the inhabitants. Similarly, military solutions in the film tend to be futile or only temporarily effective--often exacerbating the problems until a non-violent, spiritual alternative is discovered.
[edit] Plot
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The story starts with Aki Ross onboard her ship—the Black Boa—waking up from a dream about the Phantoms. After she records her dream, she lands in Old New York City, on a mission to find the 6th spirit. She continues looking until she runs into some Phantoms, and it appears that she is about to be killed until a squad known as Deep Eyes arrives to save her life. Despite the captain indicating to her that she is under arrest, Aki runs and eventually finds the 6th spirit, which is a plant. At this moment the squad and Aki are surrounded by Phantoms, and they escape by going to higher ground and getting on a transport. An altercation occurs between Doctor Ross and the captain of the mission, who accuses her of irresponsibility. Afterwards, he removes his helmet, and is revealed to be Captain Gray Edwards, an old acquaintance of Doctor Ross. When they land they are all scanned for Phantom contamination (except Aki, because she has special clearance). The captain is found to be infected, with a Phantom inside him. Aki performs bio laser surgery on him, saving his life with one second to spare. She then talks to Doctor Sid. She 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 are unpopular among men. Later, after waking up from another Phantom dream, Aki is drawn into a debate on whether to use the Zeus cannon, a weapon that was designed to destroy the Phantoms. Sid argues against the use of the cannon, saying that the cannon would destroy "Gaia - the spirit of the planet". The general mocks this concept and asks for proof. Aki then shows him proof by revealing that she has been infected by the Phantoms, yet still remains alive.
After the debate, Aki proceeds to search for the 7th spirit along with Captain Gray. They are both stranded when members of Gray's squad short circuit the system, saying that they want the captain and Aki to have time to talk to each other in order to build their relationship. Gray asks Aki about the spirits, and Aki replies, "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? It's not fun... And the latest one was the plant I found." Gray then points out, " You missed one - you said that the plant was the 6th one. What happened to the 5th?" Aki 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 seven and ready to die." Aki then sobs quietly. Gray and Aki draw close to kiss, but before they do, the power is turned back on.
Paranoid that Aki might be a spy for the Phantoms, the General orders Gray and Deep Eyes to guard Doctor Ross and report any suspicious behavior. If she acts in any way abnormal, she is to be arrested.
Dr. Ross, accompanied by the rest of the squad and some soldiers sent by the General, then leaves the barrier city for the Tucson Wastelands, where she hopes to find the 7th spirit. After dropping energy buoys to distract the Phantoms, they descend and attempt to locate and retrieve the spirit. After a while, they find it - it is contained in the living tissues inside the OVO pack of a dead soldier,. After retrieving it, they discover that they are surrounded by Phantoms, who, apparently, have been attracted to the one located inside Dr.Ross. The squad is picked up, but the General's soldiers try to apprehend Dr. Ross. One is killed by a Phantom, and Ross, Deep Eyes, and the rest of the soldiers narrowly escape.
General Hein, meanwhile, is desperate to gain clearance to fire the Zeus Cannon. He tells the operators of New York's barrier to lower the shields in a section of the city. Hein's plan is to sacrifice a small part of the population in order to convince the government that the Phantoms can breach the shields, allowing him to take necessary steps. His plan backfires, as the Phantoms are able to use plasma conduits to travel through the rest of the city. Aki and only a handful of her crew survive the resulting attack. Subsequently, Hein is floating in space, about to commit suicide, when a transmission comes in, saying that following the disaster, he is now authorized to use the Zeus cannon.
Aki and Dr. Sid devise a plan to destroy the Phantoms at their heart, the Phantom crater. The plan involves Aki and Gray being lowered into the crater inside a bio-etheric shield vehicle, and finding and removing the 8th spirit, which is a Phantom. The pair have just located the Phantom when suddenly a beam from the Zeus station crashes into the crater, killing the Phantoms on the surface, including the 8th spirit. The beam leaves the vehicle shieldless and exposed to the Phantoms, which[clarify] now cover the crater in response to the attack. Gray leaves the vehicle to protect Aki from the Phantoms.
Meanwhile, Aki has her final vision in which a Phantom tells her that the spirit within her is in fact the new 8th spirit. When Aki wakes up, she calls Gray in to use his OVO pack battery to project the completed wave pattern of the eight spirits. As the projection begins, another Zeus beam penetrates the atmosphere, completely obliterating the bio-etheric shield vehicle, and triggering a massive reaction from the Phantom world's spirit, which resides in the crater. This attack, however, overloads the Zeus cannon, destroying it and killing General Hein.
With the vehicle destroyed, Gray sacrifices his own life to distribute Aki's wave, using his body to transmit it directly to the Phantom world spirit. The Phantoms all turn into bright floating orbs which return to space, and the end scene is of Aki holding Gray's body and looking into the newly liberated world.
| Character | Voice actor | Credit status |
|---|---|---|
| Aki Ross | Ming-Na | Credited |
| Doctor Sid | Donald Sutherland | |
| General Hein | James Woods | |
| Gray Edwards | Alec Baldwin | |
| Ryan Whittaker | Ving Rhames | |
| Neil Fleming | Steve Buscemi | |
| Jane Proudfoot | Peri Gilpin | |
| Major Elliot | Matt McKenzie | |
| Council Member 1 | Keith David | |
| Council Member 2 | Jean Simmons | |
| BCR Soldier/Space Station Technician | John DeMita | Uncredited |
| BFW Soldier | John Di Maggio | |
| Space Station Technicians | ||
| Little Girl/The Fifth Spirit | Annie Wu |
[edit] Departures from the Games
While the film does carry the name Final Fantasy, it is only vaguely thematically related to Square Co.'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 being spelled with an untraditional "S".
[edit] Production
Square accumulated four 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. The film had cost overruns during the end of production.[3]
Prior to the film's release, 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. 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 character entry in Maxim's Hot 100.
[edit] Critical Reception
The film received mixed reviews[4] but was not a popular success.
Despite aggressive promotion by Sony, it became a huge box office bomb. With a budget of $137 million (including marketing costs) the film made $85 million worldwide, meaning total losses were approximately $94 million (the studio typically receives half the box office gross). The domestic box office loss was - at the time - the largest in film history. The merger between Square and Enix, which had been under consideration since at least 2000 according to the then Enix chairman Yasuhiro Fukushima, was delayed because of the failure of the film and Enix' hesitation at merging with a company that loses money.[5]
Roger Ebert was a strong advocate of the film; he gave the film 3 1/2 stars out of 4, praising it as a "technical milestone" while conceding that its "nuts and bolts" story lacked "the intelligence and daring of, say, Steven Spielberg's A.I.". 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.[6]
[edit] Parallels to the video games
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Although the film was based on none of the (then) existing nine games plus numerous spinoffs, a few references and parallels to elements of the games are noticeable:
- The name of Dr. Sid is a slight alteration of the running standard of a "Cid" in every Final Fantasy title.
- The name of General Hein is reminiscient of a character in Final Fantasy III (also mentioned as a deity in Final Fantasy VIII).
- The well-known Chocobo makes a few silhouette appearances:
- On one of Aki's document folders, a little image of a chocobo is shown.
- A chocobo-shaped stain can be seen on Aki's shirt for a moment.
- During the invasion of the spirits, when everyone was evacuating to an escape ship and one of the flying spirits flew through the cockpit, the person carrying a suitcase throws the suitcase at the camera. If paused on the appropriate frames, a yellow chocobo can be seen on the suitcase.
- The Gaia stopping the alien spirits at the end of the movie is relatively similar to the planet's lifestream that, along with Aeriths Holy materia, stopped Sephiroth's Meteor in Final Fantasy VII. The Gaia theory is especially similar to the Lifestream in Final Fantasy VII (and to a lesser degree, the pyreflies and Farplane of Final Fantasy X and X-2), as well as the 'science' of spirit energy in other games of the series.
- The phantom spirits arrived on Earth travelling on a large piece of rock. This is similar to the referenced arrival of Jenova in Final Fantasy VII, in which it had been travelling the cosmos on a meteor.
[edit] Novelization
Final Fantasy: The Spirits 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.
[edit] Soundtrack
| Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within | |||||
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| Soundtrack by Elliot Goldenthal | |||||
| Released | July 3rd, 2001 | ||||
| Genre | Classical Avante garde Modernist Progressive |
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| Length | 56:26 | ||||
| Label | Sony Classical SK 89697 |
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| Producer | Matthias Gohl | ||||
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| Elliot Goldenthal chronology | |||||
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Elliot Goldenthal's score for the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a typical Goldenthalian sci-fi affair with epic, sweeping, anthemic themes and many moments are (as Goldenthal acknowledges in the liner notes) similar in style and texture to his work on the Alien³ score: modernist, dark, and percussion-heavy. The orchestra for the movie was conducted by Belgian composer Dirk Brossé. The films director Hironobu Sakaguchi opted for the acclaimed film composer instead of the composer of the games soundtracks Nobuo Uematsu, a decision met with mixed opinion as many of the games fans were completely unaware of who Goldenthal was.[7][8][9]
| Track number | Track name | Duration | Performer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Spirit Within | 2:05 | |
| 2 | Race to Old New York | 1:20 | |
| 3 | The Phantom Plains | 1:42 | |
| 4 | Code Red | 2:05 | |
| 5 | The Kiss | 4:14 | |
| 6 | Entrada | 0:54 | |
| 7 | Toccata and Dreamscapes | 8:29 | |
| 9 | Music for Dialogues | 2:18 | |
| 10 | Winged Serpant | 1:35 | |
| 11 | Zeus Cannon | 3:24 | |
| 12 | Flight to the Wasteland | 5:56 | |
| 13 | A Child Recalled | 2:26 | |
| 14 | The Eighth Spirit | 0:51 | |
| 15 | Dead Rain | 1:51 | |
| 16 | Blue Light | 3:29 | |
| 17 | Adagio and Transfiguration | 5:23 | |
| 18 | The Dream Within | 4:44 | Lara Fabian |
| 19 | Spirit Dreams Inside | 3:44 | L'Arc-en-Ciel |
Goldenthal's explanation of the soundtrack taken from the liner notes:
It's the composer's challenge to focus the dramatic needs of a film project, which in the case of Final Fantasy presented a strange hybrid between the fantastical and the hyper-human. There seemed to be only one logical answer for me, which was to amplify the humanness in any place that was dramatically possible. I wanted to treat the characters emotional interactions, for example, as one would treat them in a normal drama, with a lyrical sweeping melody. The melody is first heard played on the most "domestic" of instruments, the piano. In hearing the piano in such a futuristic sci-fi setting, one is reminded of the familiar trappings of home, and thus we can create a more approachable setting for earth-bound romantic sentiments. On the other hand, there's a great deal of action, including fantastical alien space battles, in the film, for which the virtuoso London Symphony Orchestra is perfect. I use orchestration techniques associated with the late 20th-century Polish avant-garde, as well as my own experiments from Alien 3, and 19th-century Straussian brass and string instrumentation. This combination makes for a very unusual and unsettling feeling, but at the same time, an audience becomes immersed in watching the movie, and the illusion is complete.
This cue is taken from the start where Aki wakes from a dream she floats up out of her chair to look out at the earth as the ship begins re-entry.
Goldenthal's less typical, for him, Wagnerian brass technique is clear.
[edit] References
- ^ 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.
- ^ Overview over Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2007-07-23.
- ^ Long, Andrew (2003). Square-Enix Gives Chrono Break Trademark Some Playmates. rpgamer.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-25.
- ^ Roger Ebert review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
- ^ Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - Elliot Goldenthal
- ^ Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Soundtrack) by Elliot Goldenthal - Original soundtrack review at Tracksounds
- ^ allmusic ((( Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within > Overview )))
- ^ Elliot Goldenthal Discography: Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (2001)
[edit] See also
[edit] 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
- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at Allmusic
- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at MetaCritic
- Elliot Goldenthal discussing his score for the film
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