The Lowdown on Final Fantasy:The Spirits Within Let me start by saying I love everything Final Fantasy, which could have been a mixed blessing when I went to see this movie. On the one hand, with my nerdish pre-concieved ideas, I could have stubbornly refused to accept anything that wasn't up to my lofty, Highwind powered standards. On the otherhand, having learnt to love the earth (a la Final Fantasy VII), break down my emotional barriers to let my friends in (a la Final Fantasy VIII), and generally growing as a human being after playing the Final Fantasy games, I could have been so laid back when seeing the movie that I would accept any shiny computer generated crap they through my way. In retrospect, the movie fell somewhere in between these two viewpoints. Break it Down Pre-movie After waiting outside the cinema for god-damn ages while it was being cleaned, the large gathering of excited nerds (including me) was let in. I settled in my seat, an asian couple on my left, a possibly gay couple on my right, and watched some of the dodgiest trailers ever. First up was the trailer for Spiderman, which although I am naturally excited about because it's being directected by auteur Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame, the trailer doused this excitement a bit. It was a cartoonishly done mini movie, ending with helicopter bound bank robbers getting caught in a giant web spun by Spidey. As 1 member of the possibly gay couple next to me mentioned to his partner "That'll be crap". Well, we'll see. The next was a trailer for a movie called "The Animal", which judging by the trailer, is the worst movie ever made. Why would they make a trailer for this movie? The less people that know what an awful premise this movie has, the better the chance that they'll foolishly wander along to see it. Surely nobody in their right mind would go and see this movie after seeing the trailer....right? Maybe my faith in human intelligence is too high. Anywho, the movie then began, with much excitement felt by me.... During movie Beautifully simple opening title......excitement builds......cut to perfectly rendered planet scape....excitement builds.....cut to shot of a woman's eye.....excitement crescendos.....voice over, done by Ming Na who plays the character of Aki Ross, comes in.... and excitement drops. I realise suddenly that Ming Na is an awful choice for the voice of Aki, or any character in any animated movie for that matter. Her voice is just so boring and unemotional. Throughout the film, she ruins nearly every emotional scene by simply speaking, or in the case of the love scenes, by making strange little noises which I think were supposed to convey confusion and uncertainty. Considering she played the main character, the choice of Ming Na could have almost drowned the movie for me. But luckily, there were a ton of great things about the movie which I could focus on, allowing me to forget about her droning tones. First up, the animation was fantastic. Almost lifelike faces, and settings which sometimes were hard to tell apart from the real thing. Some of the body movement was a bit stiff, but I ignored this by thinking about giraffes. There were lots of cool little moments in the film, both technical and story-wise. When one of the characters said "Shit", I couldn't help reminiscing about Barret in FFVII. I found the story to be very Final Fantasy-esque. All deep and philosophical and metaphysical. Probably not deep enough for some, but I found certain elements of it rather beautiful. Apart from Ming Na, the voice acting was generally good. James Woods was sufficiently smarmy as the villain, Donald Sutherland was all stuttery and nice as Aki's mentor, Dr Sid (Why couldn't they just spell it 'Cid' like in the games?). Steve Buscemi was decent, and as Tom pointed out it was interesting to see him as an attractive character, rather than his real life mosquito-esque appearance that we all know and love. There was some dodgy dialogue, but whereas real actors wouldn't get away with saying the lines, it somehow seemed acceptable coming out of computer generated mouths. Maybe that's just a sign that i'm actually a cyborg, but I've yet to find any proof. Beautiful ending, which almost brought a tear to my eye. It definately brought a lump to my throat. Post Movie I left the cinema with a smile on my face, and with my belly full of tangy fruits. I really enjoyed the film. Any negative aspects it had were more than outweighed by it's good points. Would I see it again? Yes. Would I buy it on DVD? Yes. Would I transform myself into a computer generated character and transport myself into it's world?.....probably. Pete (Yes, I was listening to Final Fantasy music on MP3 when I wrote this article)

This is just before Diz get's killed by a bug...no, that's not right.

Aki, thankfully when she's not speaking.

*Photos used without permission, please dont sue me*