“Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”Columbia Pictures/Square PicturesDirected by Hironobu SakaguchiProduced by Sakaguchi, Jun Aida and Chris LeeScreenplay by Al Reinhart and Jeff VintarFeaturing the voices of Ming-Na, Alec Baldwin, Steve Buschemi, Peri Gilpin, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland and James WoodsRated: Pg-133.5 (out of four)
Summer is the season of big budgeted action flicks, usually ones with big stars. So far, however, the best two action films of 2001 have no visible stars and a similarity more distinct than the season of their release: They?re both animated.
Disney?s ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire? is a visual treat, but ?Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within? surpasses it. The film isn?t simplified for kids. As the PG-13 rating suggests, this movie has the same level of intensity as any other special-effects extravaganza out there.
The filmmakers put more work into fleshing out characters and designing stunning locations than any of those involved in this year?s ?live-action? films with digital effects did.
As a film of many accomplishments, one of its least impressive is being the best film made that?s been based on a video game.
The ?Final Fantasy? video game series has been popular for more than a decade. I haven?t played the games before, but I?m intrigued. Each game has a new story and set of characters independent from the last. The film does the same.
In ?The Spirits Within,? Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created the series, directed a film for the first time. It is also the first film made using what Sakaguchi calls the hyperReal technique. The look is almost photo-realistic: computer-generated actors, called synthespians, inhabit a foreign world made entirely with computers.
The feeling this process creates is similar to watching an actor doing his or her own stunts. Rather than put live actors in a computer-generated environment, this film simply creates the actors digitally, tying them to the world with which they interact.
That world is Earth, 65 years in the future. A meteor has crashed into the planet, allowing aliens?called phantoms because they are invisible to the plain eye?to kill thousands of Earth?s inhabitants by simply touching them.
People have to live in shielded cities while plans to exterminate the phantoms are made.
Most members of the government favor conventional militaristic options, which means blasting the Earth with the giant Zeus cannon.
The scientist Aki (voiced by Ming Na) sees things differently, however. She and her mentor, Dr. Sid (voiced by Donald Sutherland), have been researching the idea of Gaia, the spirit of the Earth and its creatures that can be injured or destroyed.
Their theory may allow the world to be free of the phantoms without injuring the planet?s Gaia. It involves the distinct ?spirit? wavelengths encoded on all living things. If eight specific spirits are collected, the wave created will cancel out all the aliens.
As the film opens, Aki is retrieving the sixth spirit from a deserted New York City. There, she meets up with Gray (voiced by Alec Baldwin), a military captain and Aki?s old fling. Gray leads the Deep Eyes Squadron, which patrols large areas of Earth that are void of human life.
While Aki and the Deep Eyes look for the final two spirits, General Hein (voiced by James Woods) plots to speed up approval to zap the planet, which will logically kill all the phantoms.
It?s admirable that the film tries to make Hein more complex than simply a sinister man. Most people do not believe in Gaia, and the Zeus cannon seems like a logical choice (especially for a revenge-hungry man).
The characters, however, are sometimes slightly off. The problem comes when they look almost too human. At these moments, their expressions aren?t as passionate or real as humans?.
The actors voicing the characters, including Steve Buschemi and Ving Rames, add a lot of the passion needed. There are even long sequences with no dialogue that are still successful.
The problem only seems present during conversations about love. Perhaps it would have worked brilliantly if the Haley Joel Osment character in ?A.I.? was a synthespian.
But this is nitpicking. ?The Spirits Within? is a sweeping film, directed with the confidence of a man who knows the world he?s showing is exciting enough without a lot of showy shots and fast editing.
While hyperReality will certainly not replace live-action acting and filmmaking, it is an exciting new method that proves imagination makes for better summer epics than calculation does.[email protected]