The emotion of fear doesn't have to revolve around traditionally scary things, there are multiple kinds of fear, including dread, worry, anxiousness, panic, many types of fear. Why do I mention this? Because when I was younger, I popped in a VHS tape my dad had, it was a recorded tape of three movies, it was one of my first double features as I skipped over the first movie on the tape (it was Leon: The Professional if anyone is curious), the movies I watched began with Resident Evil, a really bad movie that I hated watching. Then it started, the movie that I would dub "The worst movie I've ever seen in my life", a movie that would stick in my brain and make me so angry every time I thought about it that even after years of never having rewatched it, it still holds that spot. I've seen some awful movies in that time, and a part of me wonders if this is still the worst, or at least my most hated, of the bunch. It made me mad when I was younger, now it makes me afraid as an adult, it is silly, I know, but I'm walking into this review feeling like a man condemned to the electric chair. Well, here it is, my review of what I dubbed "The Worst Movie I've Ever Seen", Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
The plot follows Dr. Aki Ross as she tries to find some energy forms known as "Spirits" in order to save the Earth from an alien threat known as The Phantoms, translucent beings that are almost immune to physical attacks and seem to kill people by attack their life essence. See, all beings have this kind of essence to them, and organic life forms are apparently attached to the spirit of the Earth known as The Gaia, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything Final Fantasy that I am aware of. Okay, I know that there is some form of environmental theme in Final Fantasy VII, but like, there is nothing Final Fantasy about this Final Fantasy movie, I mean this is normally the point where I would say, "Full disclosure I've never played a Final Fantasy game ever", but that literally does not matter here because even I, who knows next to nothing about the games, can find nothing that identifies this movie as Final Fantasy, you literally could have called this movie "Spirits of Gaia" it would still work. As for the plot itself, I mean it moves along fine, they have a major reveal in the first third of the movie that would have worked better in the second act, and the big reveal of the movie is that the phantoms, beings I have described as similar to ghosts, are actually ghosts of an alien species. What a reveal...
However, that really isn't the biggest issue with the plot, the biggest problem with the plot, and really the entire movie is that it's boring. It is really boring, like I have never seen a movie this boring before. Remember when I was reviewing Open Season and I mentioned that I don't find boring movies to be worse than bad movies? This is the exception to that statement, this is the boring movie that is worse than bad movies. Open Season was boring but it was an uninspired kind of boring, Wonder Park was boring but it was a predictable kind of boring, this movie is almost offensively boring.
I think the big problem is that the crew were too focused on the animation and graphics. This movie had a 137 Million dollar budget, not the most expensive animated movie ever made, Treasure Planet had a budget of 140 Million, but that is just one of the examples of how much they hoped the visuals would save this movie. It took four years to complete this movie, and 960 workstations to render it all, they wanted this to be one of the first photorealistic computer-generated movies ever, and the worst part about all of it is that it doesn't look all that great. Like, it looks no different from a PS3 game really, which is funny because a later Final Fantasy project would also be known for trying to push graphics to an absurd degree to the point where background plants had just as much polygons, if not more, than human players. Apparently when it comes to Final Fantasy, lessons are always learned the hard way. 2001 was the year Monsters, Inc. was released and that movie still looks great today, while this one doesn't look that great.
It also does not help that it really does feel like more effort was put into the characters, apparently 100,000 polygons, than towards their personality. I could not tell you anything about these characters, maybe one or two aspects, but rather than give time developing the characters and their relationships, they just dump exposition. There is a scene in the movie where one of the characters watches one of her team get killed, and she just gives up and lets the Phantoms kill her too, I'm sorry, all through the movie she made it clear she did not think too highly of this character, now I'm meant to believe that she actually liked him, and not just that, but enough to actually give up fighting after he died? Honestly, such a waste of a decent cast, Donald Sutherland, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, James Woods, Ming-Na Wen, Peri Gilpin, not bad actors, but they really weren't given the best writing or direction.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is notorious for being one of the worst Box Office Bombs in cinema history, grossing just over 85 million dollars and was one of the major causes for Square's financial trouble that lead to them merging with Enix Corporation. Honestly, I can see why, it banked too much on the visuals and not enough on the story or characters, there is no hook to keep anyone watching, let alone coming back, and I can't imagine this would be any good for Final Fantasy fans either. Is this still the worst movie I have ever seen? Honestly, I don't know, I can think of movies that I hate more, but not really movies I like less. With all of that said, is there anything good about this movie?
I'd say there is, it makes fantastic white noise.
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