Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Starring: Ming-na Wen, James Woods, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, and Donald Sutherland
Directed by: Hironobu Sakaguchi
Running time: One hour and fifty three minutes

Final Fantasy is film history being written before your eyes.

When you watch scenes of the derelict New York or images of Dr. Aki Ross, you'll be fooled for a second that what you see is not simply realistic but oddly real. Final Fantasy is a cinematic achievement which makes seeing it both fashionable and visually rewarding. The story, however, is confusing and confused - the character development barely goes beyond the standard of the animated computer game protagonists on which the film was based. Still, that is only a negligible drawback - the story is merely a holding piece for a glorious unbridled vision.

The film features a version of Earth in the year 2065, which is barren and hostile after a meteor crash-lands, unleashing hoards of ghostlike monsters. Their attacks do not affect the flesh, but dispossess people of their life essence; one is subconsciously tempted to interpret this as a visualization of soul stealing. Life is all but gone, and people are confined to cities within energy shields.

The high human council, which steers people's efforts to confront the aliens, has to choose between two courses of action. The military, championed by General Hein (voice by James Woods) favours the ultimate solution - blasting the meteor with an immensely powerful cannon. Ross proposes an alternative - she believes that an antidote can be produced from the eight aspects (spirits) of Earth's life essence. As the council favours her, she is able to venture out of the energy sanctuaries and collect the spirits. She is aided by a small band of commandos, Deep Eyes, who battle against the hostile monsters and her old mentor Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland).

The film begins with Ross tending to a small plant that has survived amid the wilderness of an abandoned and half-destroyed New York, and which contains the seventh spirit. The combination of seven spirits can neutralize (but not cure) the effects of the alien infection which she suffers from. This action goes a long way towards proving her theory and infuriates the military that are craving to blast the aliens to pieces. Also, the virus seems to be trying desperately to send a message to Ross in her dreams. She begins to believe that this message can explain the nature of the aliens and provide a strategy for confronting them.

Unfortunately, the film is not very consistent in handling its concepts. More than one viewing is required to figure out both Ross' ideas and the nature of the aliens. This, however, does not result from the complexity of the concept, but from muddled story telling. It is strange too that the aliens do not boast flesh of any kind, yet the fairly conventional weapons of the Deep Eyes kill them.

These inconsistencies result from the creators putting all their love and caring into the visual brilliance of the film. I have already said that these are minor faults, yet they must be considered when reviewing a film. They could have been cured if the producers had allocated to the screenwriters a grain more of the movie's mammoth $140 million budget.

As it is, the film is a brilliant and revolutionary extravaganza which may not be rivaled soon in its scope or ambition (although its American box-office take recovered only a third of the money spent). Regardless, it has pointed towards a direction which will soon be ripe for cinematic expansion.