Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

Plot: Dr. Aki Ross and a small band of soldiers are the key to the last ditch defense of Earth from invading alien phantoms. This movie intends to be the first to feature photo-realistic computer animated human characters.

News:

12 July, 2001

Our reviews are now in and the word is pretty good. This ain't a half bad film.

• Batman's review
• Dogburt's review

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10 July, 2001

Want a quick advance look at the movie before it hits theaters this Wednesday? Here's your chance. We received a short clip from the movie and we can point you to more. The clip here is of Aki's dream that has made up a lot of the trailers to date but this is much longer.

• Aki's Dream 0.5MB MOV

If that didn't satisfy your curiosity head over to Ultimate Movie Fantasy to see more.

24 June, 2001

Dr. Aki Ross, the digital star of this movie is an It Girl according to Entertainment Weekly. The new issue features another pin-up style shot of the good doctor, although this time with a bit more on than a bikini. You can see what they have to say here, along with a video clip from the film.

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22 April, 2001

Well here's something you don't see everyday. Maxim magazine's next issue will feature their Hot 100 list of women in "film, television, music, sports, and fashion who will dominate our cultural landscape for the next 12 months." The odd thing is that the character Dr. Aki Ross from this movie has been selected as the cover girl. Since she is computer generated they couldn't exactly bring her in for a photo shoot. Columbia Pictures and Square Pictures had to sit down and create the model for the shot which you see here. Very strange.

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5 January, 2001

Sony has posted up a short behind the scenes video on the making of this movie. It talks a bit about rendering the first fully computer animated movie. They show a lot of the motion capture techniques used to give the characters more realistic motion.

You can check it out here. Windows Media Player is needed to view the video.

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15 November, 2000

The full trailer for the animated movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is now online. The movie marks the first attempt to make a completely computer animated movie to feature photo-realistic human characters. The visuals in the movie are astounding. That said, while the human characters certainly look real, they still move a little too stiffly to be completely convincing. It's an impressive start though.

Click on any of the pictures to the right for a larger still from the trailer or click one of the links below to download the entire trailer.

• 3MB MOV Lo-Res
• 8MB MOV Med-Res
• 20MB MOV Hi-Res

24 March, 2000

• 176KB MOV

9 March, 2000

Sony's presentation at ShoWest featured a brief mention of the movie. Below is the excerpt from our report.

Following Arnold was actress Ming Nah and the producer and Hironobu Sakaguchi the director of Final Fantasy. The producer (sorry didn't catch his name) said they were late because Sakaguchi had made him change suits. They had both been wearing the same black jacket and he didn't want them to look like Men in Black. Nah then complimented the director saying he "brought humanity and technology together to create a new art form." Well we know it will be pretty anyway.

8 March, 2000

The official website is up and running. It provides a tiny taste of what the movie has to offer. The most interesting thing is that it contains a pair of video clips to show off the sophisticated 3D CGI. In case you aren't aware, this movie is the first attempt to generate convincing photo realistic computer generated human characters. Actually the entire movie will be CGI but this is the first time someone has tried to make it look completely real.

So why list it here? The movie is based on a video game. To date no one has successfully made a good movie from a video game. Until that changes video game based films earn automatic coverage here. (Editor's note: "This originally appeared in the bad movie news section.")

• 583KB MOV
• 493KB MOV

3 August, 1999

Production has begun on this latest of video game adaptations. I've long ranted about all video game movies leaving a nasty stench on every theater they visit, but this movie stands out. Final Fantasy will pull out all the stops. Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland, James Woods and Ming-Na have all signed on as voice talents. That's right, this is going to be computer animated. Columbia Pictures wants to make this the most realistic CGI animated movie ever. They are going to try and create realistic human characters. If they succeed, this will be impressive. Dinosaurs and aliens are fairly easy to make look realistic these days, but so far no one has created a realistic human. The story is something about saving the Earth from some enemy. Direction will come from Hironobu Sakaguchi. Now for the bad news, it's still based on a video game. This movie may be cool to look at but it's going to suck. Trust me.

13 December, 1999

Apparently there will be a teaser trailer for Final Fantasy released in about a week. Based on a video game, it hopes to be the first 3D animated movie to produce convincing photo realistic human characters. I'm extremely skeptical about this movie. I've seen some of the graphics and they might actually live up to their billing but movies based on video games are always bad. It's possible that streak could eventually be broken but until it happens I'm going to be skeptical. Anyway, read below for a description of that trailer.

"It starts of for around five seconds of the sound of soft wind and is on a black screen, it then fades into a ocean, a blue ocean with nothing in it. Then suddenly it cuts to a woman walking (you can only see her back) threw a long hallway with doors on each side. It cuts back to the ocean with the breeze sound, then again it cuts to the woman, now you can see her face (its an asian woman, very attractive) as she walks into center of the screen, her eye is the only thing on the screen as the camera zooms into the patterns in her eye (which is blue) and it tranforms back into the ocean. The camera starts moving fast upon the ocean and music starts. In faded writing over the ocean the words "I will believe" apear, the camera keep on zooming and then the words "I will help" appear on the screen. Then suddenly the ocean turns upside down and the camera stops moving. The woman falls out of the cieling (which is water) and lands on a platform with slides being shown from projecters on each four walls. It only shows in blur what the images are, but some looks like paper clippings. Then she stands up and a light shines on her, the words "I will defend" cut over her she puts out her hands togther (closed) and when she lifts them from each other, a straight line of blue light shines between them, she then pulls it back to her body, clunches her fist and then all these rays of blue light fro all around the room close in on her and she pushes out her hand where it flies into one of the slides whic smashs, then all the slides smash and cut glass (or whatever it is) flys around everywhere as she falls, she keeps falling, then plunges into the ocean into the beginning. Her back first. Shes asleep (I know she not dead) as she falls through the water to the bottom which isn't sand but a metal slab (as if it was waiting for her). Her face has a close in. Suddenly theres a really quick image of the movie (around two seconds), it is off two people flying together so they can grab hold of each other (in slow motion) then it's back to her face, then again you see the images of the two people trying to hug each other then back to the face, and again, only this time they meet, and again back to her face, this time though, her eyes open and she goes to scream, but it closes with a black out. The niose of wind. The words "Final Fantasy" appear. 2001.

I know, its fucking wired, but that's the way it is. Let me remind you though that the graphics are brilliant and even though I've written it down for you, you could never imagine what it looks like, it took my breath away. The best bit is of the two people trying to hold each other, oh, by the way, in the background to that, there was explosions everywhere and it was between a woman (not the girl with the eyes) but another and a young man." - 'Paul'

4 October, 1999

Maybe I'm just really slow and missed this but wandering around IGN's site I noticed they had some test footage of the animation in this movie. Naturally I checked it out. The animation of people's faces is pretty impressive. When still some of them are very hard to differentiate from real people. When they move however, the illusion is snapped. Don't get me wrong, this is still very impressive, but it is not completely convincing. Facial movement seems a bit stiff and plasticy. Now this is only test footage, so we can assume that it will probably get better. Anyway, check it out and see what you think.

• Test footage 9.91MB MPEG
• Siggraph footage #1 1.33MB MPEG
• Siggraph footage #2 1.37MB MPEG

27 September, 1999

It's a video game movie so of course it will suck but this one is at least going to try and look good. The images below are not photos but instead are CGI effects shots. The level of detail is pretty astounding. Instead of using live action, this movie will be 3D animation. The major problem with 3D animation to date is that humans can't convincingly reproduced. The detail shown here indicates that they will look realistic. That leaves two major questions. Can the movement of characters match the detail level they are rendered at? Is the script any good? They've assembled some pretty good voice talent for the movie: Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland, Steve Buscemi, and James Woods. This might make you think that they have a good script. I'm not so sure though. They could have been shown these kinds of images and been so blown away they signed up without much consideration for the script. I'd love to be wrong but I suspect I'm pretty close to accurate instead.