Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a 2001 Japanese computer animated film considered part of the Final Fantasy
video game franchise. Director Hironobu Sakaguchi named the character
Aki Ross after his late mother, and tried to make her as realistic as
possible by rendering and animating 60,000 separate hairs on her head.
Square Pictures (production company) had planned for Aki to be the
world's first "artificial actress", with modifications made to
her age and appearance for different positions within multiple films.
Aki appeared on the cover of Maxim dressed in a bikini, and was ranked
by the magazine as one of the sexiest women of 2001, placing at number
87 out of 100 and becoming the first fictional woman to make the list.
Livia Monnet (professor of comparative literature) however, argued that
Aki represented little more than "an ideal, cinematic female character" and an example of the constantly kidnapped woman in Japanese cinema.
At the time of its release, The Spirits Within
used the most advanced processing capabilities available, taking 960
workstations in Hawaii and a staff of 200 people (a combined 120 years
of work), approximately four years to complete. Motion capture was used
for character body movements while hand and facial expressions were
animated manually. All the backgrounds were created using matte
paintings because the animators did not want to use any actual
photographs. This process made The Spirits Within one of the most
expensive films produced around that time, netting it a Guinness World
Record for the largest video game movie budget. At the box office the
movie did not fare well, making back only $85 million of its $137
million budget and is blamed for the closure of Square Pictures in 2002.
When Square Pictures was absorbed into Square (now Square-Enix), they cancelled any future plans they had for Aki as a ' digital actress' and ceased using the character altogether.
As of December 2023, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
is officially available on YouTube for anyone to watch for free, although the
video quality is not as good as paid streaming services.
Credits Songs:
The Dream Within (by Elliot Goldenthal)
Spirit Dreams Inside (by L'Arc-en-Ciel)
Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.
Synopsis:
In the year 2065, scientist Dr. Aki Ross searches the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Earth for plant specimens. Captain Gray Edwards (her ex) and his Deep Eyes squad, consisting of Master Sergeant Ryan Whittaker, Neil Fleming and Corporal Jane Proudfoot, protect Aki from ghostly creatures known as "Phantoms" that consume the life-force of living beings. Upon returning to their "barrier city", which is shielded against the Phantoms, Gray's body scan reveals he is infected with a Phantom and undergoes immediate treatment. Afterwards, Aki brings the plant to her mentor, Dr. Sid, who confirms it to be the sixth of eight spirits (unique energy patterns) needed to create an energy wave capable of negating the Phantoms.
Aki and Sid attend a leadership council over whether or not to use the Zeus cannon, a powerful weapon aboard a space station, to destroy the Phantoms. General Douglas Hein is in favor, but Sid believes the cannon will harm the Earth's spirit, damaging the ecosystem. Hein and the council maintain that Gaia Theory has not been proven, but entertain the idea of an alternative solution after hearing Aki has been terminally infected with a Phantom for some time and kept stable by the collected plant and animal specimens.
Hein becomes concerned that the Phantom may be influencing Aki's behavior and instructs the Deep Eyes squad to guard her and report any aberrant conduct. On their next outing, Aki and the Deep Eyes squad find the seventh spirit - an ovo-pac (bio-thermic energy/battery) on a dead soldier. Aki's infection suddenly worsens, causing her to pass out and dream of an alien planet fragment, containing the Phantoms, crashing into the Earth. Her condition attracts Phantoms to the area, forcing the Deep Eyes squad to flee.
Back at base, Gray takes a nap and shares the same dream as Aki of the aliens, while Sid uses the seventh spirit to stabilize her infection. Meanwhile, Hein lowers the barrier shielding the city to scare the council into using the Zeus cannon. Unaware that Phantom's are the ghosts of deceased aliens, Hein's plan goes awry as the Phantoms spread throughout the city using methods thought impossible by living organisms. Ryan, Neil and Jane from the Deep Eyes squad are killed by Phantoms while defending an evacuation ship, allowing Aki, Sid and Gray to escape to space.
Sid locates the eighth spirit - a Phantom, in the center of the alien asteroid crater on the Caspian Mountains on Earth. Hein receives council authorization to fire the Zeus cannon, which vaporizes the eighth spirit and reveals a giant Phantom. Aki takes a nap in a shielded vehicle where she receives a vision of the Phantom home planet and realizes the Phantom infection she carries will function as an eighth spirit.
"General Hein, you must ceasefire immediately. What you are looking at in the crater is the living spirit of an alien's homeworld. Part of it was destroyed and landed here." - Aki Ross
Hein continues to fire the Zeus cannon until it overheats, unintentionally destroying the cannon and all the staff aboard the station, including himself. Back on Earth, Aki combines her spirit with the other seven and uses Gray as a medium (which kills him) to physically transmit the contents to the giant Phantom. This action dissolves the Phantoms into blue particles that ascend into space, returning the Earth to normal.
Thoughts:
As a sci-fi story it's inoffensive. I actually found The Spirits Within
to be more compelling than some other video game adaptations that have
come out since, such as the Halo movie series. A large part of my
intrigue comes from the unusual premise, which is more interesting than
the story itself. The downside is that 'alien spirits trapped on a chunk of planet blown up in an ancient war landing on Earth and haunting it'
is so farfetched that it can be hard to swallow if you don't go in with
an open mind and a lot of imagination. The fix for the haunting is even
harder to stomach: collect eight Earth spirits (why eight?) to negate
the alien ghost waves (however that works). It's vague and poorly
explained. Gaia Theory is also nothing new to the Final Fantasy series,
but The Spirits Within barely touches on the subject beyond a
surface level. The movie had the perfect setup to muse on questions
such as how does the planet adapt to foreign lifeforms? The aliens
appear to be robots; does artificial life have a soul? Would the planet
(Earth/Gaia) ever accept or adapt to artificial lifeforms/souls? The
movie never raises these questions. As a Final Fantasy product The Spirits Within feels out of place. There aren't any swords, crystals, or so much as a chocobo
(giant bird). It isn't even set in a fantasy world. I have a sneaking
suspicion they chose the setting and based their designs on what they
thought would appeal the most to a mass worldwide audience and then
slapped the 'Final Fantasy' branding on for marketing purposes. The
failure to display familiar iconography then alienated video game fans,
while still being too outlandish in its themes to appeal to anyone else.
The story structure, on paper, even sounds like a video game:
the heroes need to collect 8 spirits to save the world. So you would
think those spirits would be a bigger deal in the movie. Instead they're
footnotes, overshadowed by a giant space laser and vapid dream
sequences that mean nothing to the viewer. The movie even spoils it's
own plot twist by calling the translucent aliens "Phantoms", so when
it's made out to be a big deal that humans have been fighting dead
aliens, I couldn't help but think to myself: "did they not know this already? You have been calling them 'ghosts' this whole time."
The characters are all one dimensional cut-outs, with more time being
dedicated to a relationship between two characters I know next to
nothing about outside of what they do for a living, than to fleshing out
the world and explaining how it operates. After the credits rolled, I
still didn't know if the Phantoms were ethereal or corporeal. Why they were visible at times and not at others. Why did they want human souls?
Do they need them for energy, or is it a way for them to reconcile their
existence? Can Phantoms be harmed by physical weapons? The guns used to
combat them appear to be energy based, but Aki is shot by one and it
fires actual bullets. The film seemingly wants to be taken seriously;
it's rated as being suitable for teens and up, but the dialogue has no
bite to it. It's all so bland and safe. The obvious 'Bad Guy' Hein,
talks and acts like a Saturday-morning cartoon villain obsessed with
his space-laser, rather than like a believable human being. I couldn't
help but laugh a little whenever a scene would transition away from him
to Aki - someone we're suppose to be rooting for, babbling on about
combining spirits to negate alien ghost energy. It somehow made the
unhinged Hein look sane and stable by comparison.
By far the
best thing to come out of this movie is its technological achievements,
which to this day are an impressive effort that has pushed the medium
forward. Effects like smoke and fire are graphically dated, but the CGI
eyes, hair, and skin textures still hold up remarkably well for 20+ year
old animation and must have looked amazing back in the 2000s. Although a
massive critical and financial failure, The Spirits Within has inspired many great movies and games since its release, including BioWare's much beloved Mass Effect Franchise.
From Mass Effect 3 art director, Derek Watts:
"Yeah, you know we actually reference a lot from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. We used a lot of their GUIs and the way they did their ship – that was kind of like in some of the early designs for the Normandy."
"Our attack helicopters are loosely based off that movie. There's some great stuff, especially their glowing GUI screens; we used those a lot. I keep a folder of that stuff and I still actually tell the guys 'just go back and look at that. Change it like that!'"
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