Hironobu SakaguchiFinal Fantasy - The Spirits Within (Special Edition)

Nothing

The year was 2001. This pioneering CGI movie came out and was a complete bomb. I could see how fans of the "Final Fantasy" series of games would have been bewildered watching this, since it really didn't have anything to do with the games, so a bit of 'bait and switch' backlash from those guys would have been understandable.Why most everybody else seemed to pan it at the time and still dis it so much today, I just don't get.A lot of people think the plot stunk, but for an animated sci-fi film, I thought the story was quite decent.**Spoiler** - For once, Earth isn't battling aliens, we're battling the ghosts of aliens. Sure, that's fantasy, but to me, the story made a lot more sense than the plots behind mega-hit films like "Akira".I remembered seeing this film in the theater literally decades ago, had it on DVD at some point, then just recently bought it on 4k out of nostalgia.How has it held up?Well, the CGI is still very good, especially considering that this was made in 2001, but of course a lot of advances have been made since then. Onscreen the characters display convincing weight (and weightlessness), but the lip syncing is really pretty bad. Hair and facial emotion renderings sometimes look corny. Parts of the story will induce eye rolls.And it's just weird to hear Steve Buscemi and Donald Sutherland's very distinctive voices coming out of CGI "human" characters that look nothing like the actual actors - I'm not saying that's a fault, it's just weird to the point of being distracting, especially if you're a big fan of either of these guys.Still, there's a decently entertaining story here that's as good or better than a lot of the sci-fi films I've seen in the many years since.And it's still worth a look if you've stayed away because of all the bad press, IMHOP. :)

This is one amazing movie, different from anything you have ever seen. It is extremely ambitious. It is the first computer generated movie to try not only to be in 3D but to actually represent reality. A few characters, especially Dr. Sid, can fool you into thinking they are human, an incredible achievement. It is a science fiction story wrapped around a spiritual core, a very difficult proposition. It has adventure, aliens, alien war, romance, valor, tragedy, violence and pacifism. This is a conceptually, artistically and technically groundbreaking work.Does it work? Not quite.The graphics may be much more advanced than anything seen to date, including the contemporary Shrek, but they are flawed. Aki Ross, the main character, has a beautiful and soulful face, but her mouth seems chiseled on her chin, her teeth seem to be planted too far out and look like a fish's, her eyes are not wet but rather seem built of a hard plastic, her hair (each of the 60,000 threads individually animated) looks like a synthetic piece. Her body is too long, and her, uhm, bottom seems all wrong. Still she has an intriguing, star-like presence. Other characters, unfortunately are very cartoonish. All suffer from stiff bodies, their limbs attached to rigid torsos, as you see on plastic toys.By the way, the movie is not really computer generated. Rather the computer is used as a very powerful, knowledge based, colored pencil, under the control of human artists. The resulting visual experience reminds one of a very detailed drawing. Live actors were used to help the animators use the computer to render the movie's characters. No wonder, the whole thing cost 100 million dollars to make.The storyline is built around a complex spiritual core, which is revealed little by little in the movie. (If you haven't yet seen the movie you may want to jump to the next paragraph.) It proposes that each life bearing planet holds a spirit in the ground out of which each life form is born from and to which it returns after death. These planetary spirits are formed from some kind of wave, and, significantly, they are incompatible and deadly to each other. A fragment of an alien planet destroyed by nuclear war, has fallen on earth and has disgorged many deceased individual spirits of that planet, which move around like phantoms and lay waste to much of our life sphere.Well, this is a rather complicated background for most of the movie going public, not to say slightly derogatory of the Christian world view. Star War's "the force be with you" was a much simpler proposition. The joy in Final Fantasy is in taking in the beauty of the realistic but completely human-made world it depicts. Less spirituality and more laughs and sexual tension would certainly have made it more successful. This movie takes itself too seriously for its own good. Shrek's creators were smarter in this sense.I understand that Final Fantasy has been a financial flop. This is a great pity. Personally I would love to see Aki Ross again in a few years time, at 10 times better rendering technology. If a movie deserves a sequence, this is one. The movie's creators must realize that they own much more than the first photo realistic picture in human history, they also own the first human-made movie star. Let's hope they will be able to build on top of this amazing achievement.

I remember seeing this at the cinema way back in 2001, everyone going on about how "realistic" it looked. The CG was great for the time, but even then I could see it wasn't as photorealistic as many claimed. I did enjoy the story though, and having not seen it since then (I'm not sure if I ever got around to watching my DVD copy), I decided to grab the recent 4k release.What an upgrade. It's an upscale, but the increase in detail and clarity is astonishing. HDR boosts colours in a fantastic way too, and the actual HDR highlights are very well done. There's still some colour banding here and there, but this is most likely due to the source, which was likely only rendered in 8-bit colour.The included blu-ray has all the bonus material, and seems to be the same disc released originally back in 2007. The 4k disc has no bonus material at all, not even the audio commentaries, so giving the 106 minute film a full 66GB disc means a very high bit rate indeed, and it certainly shows.

I think this film is wonderful. The CG animation is amazing - there are moments, particularly the character close-ups, where you can't quite be sure whether you're watchig real actors. This film bombed big time at the cinema, and one of the reasons suggested was actually the fact that the characters were so life-like they were almost creepy. Another reason is perhaps the fact that this is a stand alone piece of work and has no relationship with any of the Final Fantasy RPGs, which probably infuriated the fan boys. However, the story is mature and deals with mature issues - namely friendship, love, death and the afterlife, the individuals part in the big picture etc etc, but it's also a fully fledged action film with some pretty amazing set pieces and really exciting moments. It's refreshing to see a grown-up CG film where the story is paramount and there are no smart-ass animals, silly/crude jokes and dependence upon talentless 'stars of the moment' to pull in the punters. I would be more inclinded to purchase the special addition as it has a bunch of extras that are worth seeing for the few extra quid.Highly recommended, and probably not what you would be expecting (that is a good thing.)

What a film. Way ahead in its day. The graphics were brilliant even on standard DVD and I also have the Bluray version which was a notable increase in picture quality.Hoping this 4k version will give me a similar increase in viewing pleasure.

OK, I know all the history of this film and the fact that it didn't make its money back or something but either way...I think it is a solid film if a little off. The CGI doesn't hold-up anymore, but it is still fantastic.The plot is basic and it moves a little too fast sometimes. I don't feel like the film is long enough to invest in any of the characters.It is great to hear some of this voices though! Familiar but authentic.A good watch, but not as deep or as awe-inspiring as I had hoped. Still, it is something something.

The 4k UHD disc only offers subtle improvements over the Blu Ray. I believe the original was only rendered at 1080p so this is just an upscale with an expanded colour space.