CW

Most of what I want to say has been said before, and given this movie only has three reviews (none of which were written by Lupercal), it really tells how very little there is to say about it.

The biggest problem with interquels like this is that you know things will work out in the end. And doubly so in this particular interquel: the writers took no risks with the characters, and went with a safe crisis-of-friendship story. Such a story doesn't fit with the original Fox and the Hound, where you had no idea whether the main characters would make it through safe and sound. The same impact isn't there.

The music was... better than I thought it would be. It was nice and country, and didn't rely on cheesy lyrics... most of the time. The addition of some real singing talent as the Singing Strays was a nice touch.

There was a lot more humour in this interquel than in most of the other animated sequels I've seen thus far, but most of the humour came from the kind of slapstick comedy they used mainly in movies like Robin Hood, back when it was more effectively utilized. And in a movie which ran barely 70 minutes, it seems to have been used mostly as filler anyway, to stretch the running time.

Certainly the younger generation will love the movie, as it comes complete with a cast of lovable characters, and the songs weren't horrible. But like the Land Before Time movies, you probably won't find yourself watching this movie more than once or twice at the very most.

It seems it was a natural progression, and it sounded like a good idea at the time. Final Fantasy started as a series of 8-bit sprite games on the Nintendo Entertainment System and 16-bit sprite games on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Then, Squaresoft tested out a 3-D engine for the Nintendo Ultra 64 (thankfully, Nintendo dropped the “Ultra” before they released their console), but instead brought Final Fantasy VII to the Sony PlayStation (I’ve heard some say that FF VII is what sold the console) and with the advent of the CD technology used in the PlayStation, came the use of FMV - Full Motion Video.

Final Fantasy VIII was truly the first game to master 3-D FMV, and Final Fantasy IX improved upon FMV even more. So with the Final Fantasy series already looking like a movie with game elements contained within (how can you not have a movie-quality game when you have Skywalker Sound providing your sound effects?) it was about time Square cut the game out and delivered just the FMV.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was that movie. And it follows the storytelling style of the games pretty well. Most fans of the games cry out that TSW is nothing like Final Fantasy, and shouldn’t be called such. But essentially, it’s more like the games than fans would care to admit. TSW’s storytelling, as I’ve already mentioned, is much like the games: it possesses enough plot twists to keep the viewer happy (even though I could semi-predict one of them, said twist still came as a surprise), and as is often the case with the games, it turns out that the evil force you hear about at the beginning of the story isn’t really the true evil of the movie. Just because chocobos, moogles, and a scientist/inventor named Cid never appear in the movie (okay, that’s splitting hairs, saying Sid isn’t Cid their names are pronounced the same), it doesn’t make it any less valid a Final Fantasy. And since this is Hironobu Sakaguchi’s playground, I’m sure he does have some say on what gets the name Final Fantasy and what doesn’t. (Or at least, he used to...)

TSW’s assets include a musical score that fits the movie very well (although like FF VII, I don’t enjoy most of the soundtrack unless I’m watching the movie), and decent voice acting by some very talented actors, including Gargoyles VA Keith David and Mulan VA Ming-Na. Fans of the game series might be a little surprised that the voice acting is decent, as I have heard horror stories about Final Fantasy X’s voice acting (and although as of this writing I have yet to play the game, I have heard samples of the game’s voice acting and I must agree that it is pretty bad). This perplexes me, as FF X was released a year after TSW (but considering where the movie fell short, which I am about to cover, I guess I’m not surprised).

My main complaint with TSW is that while the characters look real, they don’t act completely real. Sure, they walked and talked like us, but the main criticism I’ve heard from friends is that they don’t emote like us. And I must admit, it’s a true enough concern. As of yet, I have not seen realistic CGI crying in a movie or a game. (If one such movie or game does exist where a CGI character cries realistically, please let me know.) Heck, the crying in FF IX was done better, and that game was released a year before TSW! If this odd downward spiral continues in voice and FMV quality, who knows what Final Fantasy XII, or Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children are going to be like!

To me, TSW doesn’t rate quite as high as any of the games (with the possible exception of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest), not only because of the lack of visible emotion (though they did seem to show a character’s terror somewhat competantly), but also because of an ending that seemed to come abruptly (another similarity to FF VII that I noted), and left you wondering if things really were alright with the Earth. What makes this worse is that you are taken from the climax, straight into the gentle and lonely-sounding ‘The Dream Within’ while end credits roll. I don’t know if the point was to leave you hanging, but I’ve come to expect a lot better from Sakaguchi and the writers at Square.

Still, this movie doesn’t deserve all the criticism it has received from the Final Fantasy fandom, and deserves to be looked upon as something more than the black sheep of the Final Fantasy series. It’s certainly an alright movie for those who have never played the games, and definitely a different kind of experience for those who have. I would recommend this movie to anyone who does not have a closed-minded attitude about their favourite video game series.