![]() ![]() (There is a telling scene about the fragility of Hein's spirit where after his botched coup he contemplates suicide.) But what's the bigger obstacle is how they also believe, naïvely, that a good explanation will win over those who resist - that people like Hein refuse to believe only because they are misinformed, and not because the way they see themselves is at stark odds with the new worldview being presented. Some of that evidence is highly subjective (e.g., Aki's prophetic dreams, later shared by Edwards). What's at the outer edge of science always looks like fantasy, until the evidence comes in to support it, and in this case they do have the evidence on their side. With FF:TSW, the mix is used to show how people of science, like Aki and Sid, have difficulty in bringing understandings to the rest of the world that can sound like mysticism, or maybe better to say mystification. It's not that those two things can't dance together, but they have to tread carefully. A matter of beliefįusing SF and fantasy elements is largely a matter of tone and judiciousness. © 2001 Final Fantasy Film Partners Answers come in dreams. For only Aki and Edwards now know that what they face is not an alien invasion, but the laments of the restless dead. Then Hein stages a coup by rendering the city defenseless to Phantom attack, forcing Aki, Edwards, Sid, and the other Deep Eyes members to find a way to unite the remaining spirits before either Hein or the Phantoms devastate everything. When Ross reveals she has a Phantom infection held at bay with the collected spirits, it's meant to give weight to their plan, but it ends up being more ammo for Hein to use to get his way when Ross's condition worsens. The ambitious and hissable General Hein (James Woods) pooh-poohs the scientists and their theories about life forces he would rather use an orbital laser cannon to obliterate the Phantoms, even when there's no evidence that will work. Ross and Sid have at best qualified support for their work from the powers that be. It doesn't help that Ross and Edwards were once romantically involved, and now bristle at each other's presences. She's saved by the soldiers of the "Deep Eyes" team, led by Captain Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin), who are peeved that they've risked their leather necks so she can scoop up some plant. The sixth of these, she finds when (illegally) spelunking through what's left of New York City, right before a Phantom corners her. Gather eight "spirits", each found in different lifeforms scattered far and wide, and the resulting energy can destroy the Phantoms. Sid (Donald Sutherland) believe they have the answer. Among the survivors are scientists searching for a way to dispel the Phantom infestation and restore the world.ĭr. What few humans remain huddle in domed cities, hiding from the "Phantoms", wraithlike beings that suck the lifeforce out of human beings. It's set in the 2060s, after a catastrophe of some kind has devastated most of the earth and left it lifeless. FF:TSW goes full-tilt into SF, at least at first. Some FFs have more of an SF flavor than others, but fantasy (as per the title) remains the predominant mode. No two Final Fantasy projects are exactly alike, but they all have common elements or threads, chiefly that of the life force as a fundamental power of the universe. Sid unravel the mysteries of the Phantoms. © 2001 Final Fantasy Film Partners Aki Ross and her mentor Dr. I also see it as the first major step towards how animation and live action would become less polar opposites, and more elements that could be alchemically blended. On watching FF:TSW again, twenty years later, I see all the flaws bigger than ever, but also the ambition and vision. Mainstream audiences were perplexed by its uneasy mix of hard SF and spiritual musings critics mostly held their noses fans of the Final Fantasy franchise felt like the whole project had only been assigned the name as a quick-and-dirty way to associate it with its creative team.īut a few people, like Roger Ebert, defended the movie as a milestone in filmmaking technology that enabled new kinds of stories to be told, even if this particular story wasn't up to total snuff. But the movie itself landed with a resonant thud. ![]() And a technological groundbreaker on top of that: the first fully photorealistic CGI feature film. When Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within debuted in theaters in 2001, for fans of video games and Japanese media it felt like a validation of what they held dear: an A-list, big-budget adaptation (sort of) of a well-known property in their circles.
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