| Schmaltz | 8 |
| Violence | 8 |
| Romance | 8 |
| Nudity and Sex | 2 |
| Plot | 8 |
| Buckets o' Blood | 5 |
| Terror | 3 |
Link in the Internet movie database
Synopsis: It's a madhouse! A world where sprites evolved from men? Unless you've been living under a rock, on the moon, which has just been blasted out of Earth's orbit by a phenomenal explosion, and been cut off from all possibility of radio contact with your mother world... you have probably heard the very basic premise of the most beautiful movie to hit the Silver Screens since, oh I don't know... The Champ... er, right, next time I should give myself a little more time to think when looking for movie names. For those of you on Moon Base Alpha, however, here's the basics: Aki (Ming-Na of E.R. fame) Ross is a devoted, passionate (some might even say clueless) scientist who is seeking to assemble a Spirit Wave out of eight distinct fragments of said wave, all of which exist in living things. This spirit wave, when assembled, will vape the Phantoms which have come to call on Earth... these Phantoms having the sole purpose of wiping out the entire world's population of Living Things. The gorgeously rendered Phantoms are essentially invisible things which slide through living tissue and carry away the spirit within, leaving behind a dead shell. Aki is joined by a rag-tag company (you just can't have a company if it's not rag-tag, these days) of the Deep-Eyes Squadron, her mentor Cid (it may be spelled Sid, but in full FF tradition it is and ever will be known to me as Cid), and a creature which evolved from the ship's cat.
Commentary: And that's it. It's a simple seeming plot, but the simplicity is highly deceptive: Square has managed to pack an oldschool-length version of a new-school style Final Fantasy plot into this film. The problem that faces many of the more mainstream viewers when watching Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is that a good deal of this plot is left in suggestion, supposition and unexplored backstory. Ordinarily, this would kill a movie, but the good people of Square have managed to hint towards their backstory in ways clever and kind to us, as very rarely will the experienced console RPG gamer be unable to fathom for him or herself What Has Gone On Before. Unfortunately, the average viewer will be going into this film lacking the training which gaming will impart. But by and large, this movie works in bringing to the screen the Feeling of Final Fantasy while keeping it all to just one Disc in length.
The shots during the movie are absolutely fantastic... whoever set up the scenes for rendering was a true poet. The shots not only show off the realistic views of each character and the movie's surroundings; but also manage to achieve a nearly (but not quite) Spielbergian effect of showing more with a moment's glance than through ten minutes of exposition. The one (1) exception to this comes when a fellow is describing a Phantom attack on his home city... his rendition is chilling and evokes very primal fears... and would have been utterly ruined had it been filmed.
Lastly, this is the movie that we gamers have been waiting years for. If you've wasted even ten minutes loading up a web site to see if there were new trailers or rumours available, see this film. It is for you.
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