But nope, he's just explaining the inspiration for his latest cunning plan. We learn that Hein's wife and daughter were killed by ghosts, and it seems like the movie's finally going to humanise him a little. It's a nice looking 3D set, though that holographic display on the left's getting a bit excessive. Meanwhile Hein has things to do at the city's barrier control centre. The six spirits they've assembled so far are in a chest plate right now keeping a terminally infected Phantom victim alive. But Aki has brought evidence that their plan can work. Hein calls this idea utter nonsense, and it's hard not to agree with him even when every word out of his mouth drips with menace and he's got "I AM THE ANTAGONIST" written all over his frowny face. See, if they can find the right set of eight spirits they can assemble a spirit wave that will cancel out the bio-etheric energy of the invading Phantoms! I'm starting to see why he was worried people would think he was mad. He has a more sensible plan in mind though: find the last two crystals! Uh, spirits I mean. Sid's opposed to the plan, as shooting a laser that strong at the Earth might hurt or kill Gaia! The council mumbles in shock and outrage. He's played by James Woods, he dresses like Albert Wesker, and he wants to kill things now!ĭr. We learn here that the Phantoms came from a meteor, and General Evil is eager to just shoot it with his giant space laser and eliminate them at the source! Sorry, I mean General Hein (I guess they thought General Heinous would be too obvious). Then in his next scene he immediately tells the council everything he believes in! To be fair, the leader of humanity is Keith David, and it's hard to not trust the guy. I don't much want my Final Fantasy movie to look like 'Battlestar Galactica', but if that's what they had their heart set on, then I'm glad they didn't half-ass it and add an anime warrior princess walking around in her battle bikini to sex things up. You know I have to give the creators credit for putting the soldiers and scientists in sensible clothes that actually cover them. Oh plus there's also Alec Baldwin, playing their boss Captain Gray Edwards, who I'll be calling Captain Gray from now on. ![]() Imagine if you took the marines from 'Aliens' and sucked the life and wit out of them, that's kind of what these three are like. So the voice actors are fairly fantastic, but they're not given much to work with I'm afraid. The marines remove their helmets to reveal there's humans under there, and likeable ones too! They're played in the English dub by Peri Gilpin from Frasier, Steve Buscemi and Ving Rhames, and despite Square being a Japanese company, the animation is lip-synced to their performance. (I'm basically going to go ahead and spoil this entire movie one scene at a time now, so please stop right here unless you're okay with that). So yes, it really is 15 years old at the time I'm writing this. A proper big-budget serious cartoon aimed at adults starring humans, four years in the making! To give it a bit of context, it came out 6 years after Toy Story (the first full length CG movie) and around the same time that 'Final Fantasy X' hit the PlayStation 2. But this isn't a case of a movie studio taking a brand name and doing their own thing with it, as it was conceived and directed by 'Final Fantasy' creator Hironobu Sakaguchi himself! His very first film in fact, and also his last.ĭespite its utter failure, Spirits Within was a pretty important milestone in cinema, as it's the first full-length 'photorealistic' motion captured animated movie. I'm not sure the movie failed because it was based on a video game though, because I've seen this before and I know full well that it ain't based on any 'Final Fantasy' games I've played. ![]() I guess if you keep using 'Final' in your titles it will eventually come true. They'd would only work on one more project, the 'Final Flight of the Osiris' short for the 'Animatrix', before being shut down. ![]() And it was also the last, because it bombed so hard. Speaking of trying something new, 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within' was the debut movie from Square Pictures, the video game company's new computer animated film division. So this week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about a science fiction movie! Because I do that now. I need to widen my scope, pick a new subject, try something different! I mean I'm still fascinated by games and I always will be, but I have a very slight obsession with science fiction as well and it'd be nice to shift gears and focus on that for a while. I've been writing about video games for a long time now, over five years in fact, and it's starting to become a dull routine for me to be honest.
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