Her family followed her father, a General of the United States army, to various assignments around the world. Review originally published in Ad Hoc magazine, 2001.Born in Houston in 2037 as the only girl within a family of brothers, Jane grew up to be a strong, athletic woman. If the art direction owes something to seminal Japanimation outings Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1987) and Bubblegum Crisis (1987-90), FFTSW nonetheless remains very much its own film – and, hopefully, the first in a new cinematic wave. There’s a lot more to it, with more than a few surprises along the way (if other reviews don’t reveal any of them), providing a welcome alternative to the general dumbing down of recent Hollywood blockbuster fare. Hackett) propose to wipe out the intruders using the Zeus Cannon – a giant laser gun orbiting the Earth – which could destroy one of the eight spirits prior to its gathering. Sid (voice: Donald Sutherland, character animation: Louis Lefebvre), who believes (to simplify plot complexities) the aliens can be defeated by the gathering of eight spirits, inexplicable survivors of the extra-terrestrial onslaught.Īlas, the military under the command of the implacable General Hein (voice: James Woods, character animation: Matthew T. Aki is the protégé of much maligned genius Dr. Beautiful and brilliant scientist Dr Aki Ross (voice: Ming-Na Wen, character animation: Roy Sato) is plagued by dreams in which she comes face to face with armies of the aliens on their home planet. So too does the movie.Įarth (and its attendant spirit Gaia) have been attacked by aliens, its human and animal populations decimated, its cities deserted. Each successive version of the game has featured a small group of protagonists, one of whom is named Sid, defending the world from annihilation. But then, the computer technology here is way ahead of another of this year’s animation highlights, the cartoony Shrek (Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jensen, 2001).įFTSW’s Japanese origins lie in the role-playing game (RPG) Final Fantasy. Most of them, true, though not quite all. Mouth movements spouting pre-recorded speech doesn’t quite come off every time while the facial expressions haven’t quite managed all the subtleties of human visages. The characters’ movements are taken off real people and fed into a computer by a process known as motion capture, which also provided the incredible moving freeze-frame moments in The Matrix (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999). The lead heroine’s hair and the creases in the characters’ clothing both convince utterly. The first computer-generated movie to dispense with real live actors in favour of their computer-generated counterparts – at least as far as the visuals go – Final Fantasy The Spirits Within proves as radical a departure as the first animated feature Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937), the convincing computer-generated characters of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and the first computer-animated feature Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995). PG – 106mĮarth (and its attendant spirit Gaia) have been attacked by aliens, its human and animal populations decimated, its cities deserted – review originally published in Ad Hoc magazine, 2001 Directors – Hironobu Sakaguchi, Motonori Sakakibara – 2001 – Japan, US – Cert.
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