Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within aka: ptitlecljrkyg 3
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a computer animated science fiction film by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the adverb-ly popularFinal Fantasy series of role-playing games. It is set on an alien-infested Earth in the year 2065, where the remaining humans live in "barrier cities" all over the world and attempt to free their planet from the Phantoms, spectral alien beings that roam the earth, decimating everything in their path.Dr. Aki Ross, alongside her old mentor Dr. Sid, hopes to unlock the secret behind these Phantoms and find a way to destroy them without harming Earth, but General Hein has a plan of his own to annihilate the Phantoms with a huge space cannon - even at the risk of destroying the planet.Although bearing the Final Fantasy title, this movie bears almost zero connection to the video games that share its name. It was the first feature film to attempt photorealistic CGI characters, with less than desired results. It is considered a huge Box Office Bomb, only bringing in slightly over $30 million in domestic box office earnings whereas the film's budget was nearly $140 million. Not only did it probably single-handedly end Square Pictures' existence as an independent entity, but also Squaresoft lost so much money on this movie that it nearly killed merger negotiations with Enix, who nearly balked at the idea of merging with a company who just lost a substantial sum of money. Ironically, it also ended up being the most critically acclaimed movie based on a video game on Rotten Tomatoes.
After the End: At some point, the Leonid meteor crashed into Earth and dispensed its payload of Phantoms. Mankind has been reduced to a handful of cities around the world, and virtually no life exists outside these safe havens.
Alien Invasion: Subverted, as what the human authorities assume was a deliberate invasion is really just an accidental collision between a huge haunted chunk of the Phantoms' home planet and the Earth.
Animated Actors: Hironobu had intended for Aki to appear as a digital actress in a number of feature pictures. However, the failure of her debut film cut her career tragically short, though she did have a photo spread in Maxim magazine.
Apocalypse How: Earth has already suffered a Class 4 before the movie even starts, and the Leonid meteor is revealed to be the result of a Class X.
Armor is Useless: The soldiers wear all of this heavy armor that does nothing to protect them.
Author Existence Failure: Some people might at least consider the film's use of incredibly realistic CGI to be the cornerstone for an Award Snub for Best Visual Effects. However, it couldn't have won any awards; Square Pictures was disbanded before the Oscars that year.
Big Applesauce: Most of the action takes place in and around New York City.
Big Damn Heroes: The first scene of the film: Aki has gotten herself surrounded by Phantoms, who look like they're about to move in for the kill, when we hear a transport flying overhead. Four objects are launched, firing some kind of gelatinous mass at the ground, softening the impact as they land. When the gel dissolves, we see it's the Deep Eyes, who take aim and fire immediately.
Collision Damage: Touching a Phantom is almost always fatal. Hell, most of the bigger Phantoms don't actively attack, but rack up a body count just by wandering around.
Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: When visible, the spirit energy is this. Phantoms (and anything else native to their planet) show up as red energy. Humans (and other creatures native to Earth) show up as blue energy. When the Phantom particle sealed with Aki's chestplate makes its Heel Face Turn, its energy color changes from red to blue to signify its new loyalty.
Combat Tentacles: Most Phantoms possess these; in particular, the Hand Cannons of the Phantom Soldiers had a variety of pipes and tubes which became their deadly tentacles upon their passing.
Cool Car: Aki's ATV, armed with gel missiles for soft landings and an anti-Phantom barrier generator.
Decontamination Chamber: The domed cities have decon protocols to keep out the phantoms that haunt the outside world. Though, for some reason people with enough clout get to skip them if they feel like it.
Doing in the Wizard : When you see people complaining about the fantastic elements of the series having been "stripped out" of this movie, what they actually mean is that they are disappointed that Grey and company aren't casting Watera and Meltdown on anything, and Omega Weapon isn't the Big Bad. If you pay attention, magic is pretty much the only element of the Final Fantasy mythos that is left out; most everything else of significance is left in.
Dynamic Entry: Gotta give it to DEEP EYES —they know how to make an entrance.
Exact Time to Failure - It can apparently be determined down to the second how long an infected person has before it is too late to save them from the Phantom.
Fanservice: Several images have been released in this manner. One has Aki wearing a tight black leather outfit, which exposes her navel, has a very seductive look on her face with her hair in the middle of a "wave" motion. Another has Aki posing in a bikini. And one has Grey posing completely shirtless.
Gotta Catch 'Em All: The Eight Spirits needed to create the anti-Phantom wave. (Although, to the writers' credit, several of these spirits have already been collected as the film opens - specifically five have already been collected and the sixth one is collected in the opening scene. This is a double Shout Out to Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy IV, which open in a similar way.)
Heroic Sacrifice: Gray Edwards sacrificed himself as a medium needed to physically transmit the completed spirit into the alien Gaia.
Ryan performed one in order to draw the Meta Phantom away from the Black Boa.
Hilarious Outtakes: Of the spoof variety, of course. Featured on the DVD.
Just in Time: Averted Aki manages to defeat the Phantom infecting Edwards with a whole 1.02 seconds to spare.
Lampshaded Double Entendre: Sid to Aki: "And stay away from your friend, the captain. He saves your life, you save his life... I was young once too you know?"
My God, What Have I Done?: General Hein, realizing that he accidentally let the Phantoms into a major population center.
Mythology Gag: Several references to the game series, including a Chocobo embroidered on one of Aki's shirts, and some of the Phantoms are based on creatures and bosses from the series.
Random Encounters: One of the few things seemingly taken from the source material, the movie comes up with an explanation of why monsters can just pop up out of the ground at any time.
Real Is Brown: A sad foretelling of what many video games would be.
Recurring Dreams: Dr. Aki Ross has these, which prove to be integral to the story.
Rescue Romance: Used, reciprocated, and helpfully lampshaded by Dr. Sid.
Revive Kills Zombie: The ultimate example, probably: the Phantom Gaia and all of its children are expelled at the end of the movie by a healing wave from the Eight Spirits.
Rule of Symbolism: The eagle. The suggestive placement of the Phantom tentacle that is cleansed by Aki's child. The fact that the Eighth Spirit is a brand new life brought into the epicenter of death.
Run or Die: The Phantoms, being limitless in number and instantly lethal to the touch, are this. Best displayed in the opening scene where the Deep Eyes rescue Aki from the ruined city.
Shout Out: Two tiny, easily-missed references to Chocobos hidden in the background in the entire movie.
Also, General Hein and his flying dungeon/Kill Sat are a very obvious reference to Final Fantasy III, although most Americans wouldn't be able to recognize it as such until about 8 years after the movie came out.
Every FF has a Cid. The Spirits Within addresses it with a Sid.
The Deep Eyes are a subtle shout-out, as well. The squad contains four members; four is the traditional number of party members in an FF game, with Aki functioning as a Guest Star Party Member.
Villainous Breakdown: Suicidal tendencies + access to huge freaking space cannon = BAD THING.
Villainous BSOD: Which leads to the breakdown described above.
Virtual Celebrity: Aki was touted as the first CGI actress, and Square Pictures was hoping for a long and illustrious virtual career. Too bad about her debut movie...
What Do You Mean, It's Not Awesome?: One of the biggest publicity points about the film was that each strand of Aki's hair was individually animated. In practice however, what this actually resulted in was Aki jerking her head around wildly whenever she talked, so that the animators would have plenty of chances to show her hair moving. This led to several reviewers joking that Square had created "the world's first virtual George Clooney."
And even if the movie had been successful, this would have eventually been overtaken by the much more practical use of hair/fur/etc simulation programs such as used in Monsters Inc.
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