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Last Update: 08.14.03

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

First of all, I just want to say that with a word like "final" in the title, you KNOW there is going to be a least a sequel or two or three or ten. Before I saw this movie, I thought that since I had played the games, I would know what it would be all about. However, there was no killing rabbits with oversized swords, nor people who say the same thing every time you talk to them. Also, when they shot people, little numbers didn't appear. It would have been an awesome effect if when one of the ghost creatures plowed straight through some guy, it said "9999." And the other thing that this movie was definitely missing was the awesome song every time the goodguys won a battle against the badguys.

Despite those obvious shortcomings, this movie came through pretty strong. It had an all-star cast of a bunch of computer generated stuff, put together by a team of famous artists whose names all look the same. Speaking of which, have you ever noticed that when you see a list of Japanese names, you never have any idea who is male and who is female? Japanese people are probably all gender-neutral like the dude from Friends. Yes, that one.

Anyway, actors like Ving Rhames and Alec Baldwin could have never made a movie even comparable to this one. Or Michael Jackson either, because even when he's not computer generated he looks fake. There was one guy in this movie that actually looked real (more real than Michael Jackson and Gary Coleman put together), and it was kind of scary. I mean, the first time I saw that guy I almost jumped out of my seat and said "HOLY CRAP! I'm all out of popcorn!"

After resolving that crisis, I realized that the main guy looks like Ben freakin' Affleck. Man, what a horrible idea that was. They decided that since they have a state-of-the-art graphics lab that can render computer people that actually look real, they'd render a bunch of average every-day people. They probably also wanted to have a teenage boy with bad acne, an ugly fat girl with braces, and a drowning midget. You know your graphics are high-tech when you can draw a drowning midget. They'll be bragging about it, like "Look at the water effects there—you can actually see the droplets falling off of him, and the rings forming around him!" and you're like "Is that a drowning midget?"

The plot of this movie is one of the most complex I've seen in awhile: the world is ending and someone has to save it. Two words: brilliant. But not just anybody can save it, it has to be these one people, because nobody else believes them. Man, that's such a killer idea that I can feel a few sequels coming on already. Or better yet, they could make a prequel. That way they could call it "Next to last Fantasy" or "Penultimate Fantasy" if anybody actually knew what that meant.

As we all know, however, a brilliant plot isn't complete without some sort of awesome monster. That's where this movie really delivers: there are a bunch of these alien ghost things that like to fly around and dance to Kenny G, except instead of dancing they kill things. And then the dark lord himself comes out with his saxophone and plays his own version of the victory battle song, which is so sacrilegious that the goodguys have to blow him apart with a giant laser that they keep in their basement.

And before I forget not to ruin it for you, there is this really cool plot twist at the end: all of the unnecessary characters die. You almost stop to ask yourself, "What was the point of that character?" but before you do, something else blows up. Anyway, this movie destroys without regret. I give it 4 out of 4 movies based off of video games.