Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Director: Hironobu Takaguchi
Year Released: 2001
Rating: 1.5
This 'four-years in the making' mega-picture is a supreme disappointment from Square, whose brilliant Final Fantasy series ranks as one of the great achievements in video gaming (I profess to be a die-hard fan, having played through and beaten every single one to date). The CGI is nice and all, but with a storyline this uninteresting and characters this cookie-cutter, I can't help but ask why they just didn't use real actors and saved themselves a lot of trouble. There isn't a sliver of life or charm to any of what goes on - characters rattle off sci-fi junk information, James Woods grunts and groans through another madman bad-guy role, loads of earth-conscious warnings and metaphors are presented in one way or another. Paradoxical, in a way, how it's so visually advanced and so lacking in every other area; each of the video games takes about 40 hours to complete a piece, involving you in every way with the characters and their personal histories - this was penned by Green Peace with rewrites by the Star Trek Fan Club. Stick to the Playstation.
