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| Enticingly colorful characters fill out the top letters on this anticipation-building poster for Hironobu Sakaguchi and Motonori Sakakibara's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within |
Scientist Aki Ross carries an alien virus within herself, which gives her some frightening dreams. She lives on Earth after an alien attack, where humans battle the ghostly phantom aliens.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is written by Al Reinert (Apollo 13 (1995)) and Jeff Vintar (I, Robot (2004)) with Jack Fletcher (Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)) supplying dialog and debuting co-director Hironobu Sakaguchi contributing story elements. It is based on Sakaguchi's popular Final Fantasy series of video games and was co-directed with also debuting Motonori Sakakibara (Rudolf the Black Cat/Rudorufu to ippai attena (2016)). It is notable as the first photorealistic computer-animated feature film.
The plot is fairly abstract and to some degree most appealing to the initiated computer nerds, who are already privy to Sakaguchi's sci-fi universe. However, the film's visual side is so overwhelmingly beautiful, - particularly the dreams and alien attacks, - and Elliot Goldenthal's (Heat (1995)) score is so atmospheric, - that as audiences, Final Fantasy transports us to a world of fantasy regardlessly.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 137 mil. $
Box office: 85.1 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.62 times its cost)
[Final Fantasy premiered 2 July (USA) and runs 106 minutes. The film was the most expensive computer game adaptation until Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010): 45 mil. $ was spent to construct the almost 1,000 computer 'render farm' in Hawaii, which was used to create and render the unprecedented amount of computer-animated details required. Reportedly, 200 people worked for 4 years to create the film there. Special care went into the creation of lead Aki Ross, who was thought to become the world's first computer-animated star actress, 'performing' in other films following Final Fantasy, (this did not materialize, - although she did get to adorn a cover of Maxim in a purple bikini, named one of the year's 100 sexiest women.) The film opened #4, behind fellow new releases Legally Blonde and The Score and holdover hit Cats & Dogs, to an 11.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd week and grossed 32.1 mil. $ (37.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 7.4 mil. $ (8.7 %) and Germany with 5.8 mil. $ (6.8 %). Some sources say that the 137 mil. $ price tag includes Columbia Pictures' 30 mil. $ spent on advertising and distributing the film, although it also says that the production costs were 115 mil. $, - which would then bring the combined cost at 145 mil. $, - so in the confusion I am going by the ballooned 137 mil. $ production cost (as appears on Box Office Mojo and Wikipedia). The flop of the film turned Square Pictures out of business. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. The film made in excess of 26.6 mil. $ on home video rentals in North America alone, - not enough to change its 'huge flop' status if figured into the calibration. Sakaguchi has not returned to filmmaking since; Sakakibara returned as supervising director on 1 episode of King: King of the Apes (2016-) and theatrically with Rudolf the Black Cat (2016). Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is rotten at 45 % with a 5.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within?
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