Film Friday: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

Sometimes a box office bomb is actually a gem. Indeed, even great films can get lost when the marketing goes wrong or when the general public just doesn’t get it the first time through. More often, however, a bomb is just a bomb. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a bomb.

“Final Fantasy” is a video game franchise developed by Square Enix. First published in 1987, the franchise now consists of fourteen games, most of which are quite good. Over time, these games have obtained an amazing quality in terms of animation, video and music. In 2001, Square Enix decided to see if they could adapt their franchise to film using computer-generated characters. They spent $137 million and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was the result. They made $85 million.

FFSW takes place in post-apocalypse Earth in 2065. The planet has been ravaged by alien beings called “Phantoms.” These are energy creatures in any number of shapes, and when they come into contact with living beings, they basically rip the soul out of the living being. To protect themselves, humans have huddled into a small number of barrier cities, which are protected by energy barriers the Phantoms cannot penetrate. To stop the Phantoms, researcher Dr. Aki Ross and Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland) are trying to develop a weapon which uses living energy to negate the Phantoms. The living energy comes from certain plants, animals and people. Needless to say, the military types like General Hein (James Woods) don’t cotton to this tree-hugger crap.

As the story opens, Aki needs to be rescued by a team of soldiers who include Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, and Peri Gilpin. She had been running around collecting spirits for her weapon when the Phantoms appeared - they are drawn to life. As they return to the safety of the city, we learn that Aki is infected by a Phantom and is slowly dying, though Sid has managed to contain the Phantom somehow. Because of this, Aki experiences a recurring dream which will explain who the Phantoms really are. Meanwhile, General Cliché is upset that the council won’t let him fire his new weapon, the Zeus Cannon, because they are worried about damaging the Earth’s (Gia) spirit. Like all military men would do, he sabotages the city shield, allowing the city to be destroyed, so he can fire his gun. Oh no!

How To Do It Wrong

This thing is a turd. They went so wrong in so many ways. Indeed, right out of the gates, the first problem was that they dumped their franchise except in name. The “Final Fantasy” franchise is a fantasy. It takes place in strange worlds where all kinds of amazing things are possible. There are beautiful vistas and fantasy worlds you wish were real (see image below). Setting this film on Earth was downright stupid, especially a grim apocalyptic Earth which lacked all the grandeur and majesty of the series, because it wiped out the essence of the game. Just as stupidly, they lost the sense of the characters. The characters in the game are anime characters who have just enough reality to them to be recognizable, but enough unreality to let you accept the things they can do, like flying and summon magic. The film dropped this and tried to use realistic, dull humans. The end result was an immediate disassociation of the very thing they claimed to be making, a disassociation which stripped you of the “Fantasy” part of “Final Fantasy” and just left you with another apocalypse film.

Even in the spirit of apocalypse films, this one stinks. For one thing, while the film does provide excellent apocalyptic imagery, like a skeletal worker still sitting at their desk in a skyscraper, the whole story comes across as dull and indifferent. What happened to these people happened so long ago that they seem to have become comfortable in their existence and it wipes out the tension and the horror. Moreover, there is no real risk to them because the Phantoms can’t break through the barriers. Thus, turning the story into a race against the clock is misguided because the humans really have all the time they need. And trying to inject a ticking clock by having Aki and Sid race to build their weapon of love before the evil General can fire his weapon of evil feels manufactured.

Then you add the politics. The “Final Fantasy” series has never really been about politics. They do have a Gia-centric worldview, but they don’t really beat you over the head with it. Here they do, and that is annoying. But that’s just half the problem. See, the writers have such little confidence in whatever their message is that they beat you over the head with it savagely and then let it kick you when you’re down. Even worse though, they aren’t quite sure what their message is. Seriously, this is what Aki spouts: something something, the Earth is alive, don’t hurt the Earth, something something, don’t fire space weapons at the Earth, something something, use love to kill aliens. . . “Eat more Chikin!” Talk about a rebel without a clue.

To make up for not having anything to say, they use the old Hollywood proxy of simply making the General odious and obviously wrong, while making Aki angelic and obviously right. This then becomes a proxy for the confused message and it reeks of propaganda. Basically, the message is, “See how evil the people who disagree with us are? Support our cause-thingy!”

Ultimately, though, the real problem is that this just isn’t a good movie. The effects are ok, but nothing special and they feel really dated (something you never feel with classic animation). This could have been avoided if Square Enix had done something unique and fantastic rather than trying to create realism. Moreover, the plot and the characters are highly predictable and not very interesting – a tired cliché at best. Ironically, Square Enix does better all around with their videogame storylines, so they would have been better off running with one of those. In a way, making FFSW the way they did was like hiring the world’s greatest football coach and asking him to coach your basketball team.