Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

[Drunk Monk]

I got some random recommendation for this because it leaves AP tomorrow so I gave it a pass. It's a CGI animated feature based on the game by the creator of the franchise. Amazing voice cast - Ming-Na Wen, Steve Buscemi, James Woods, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland, Alec Baldwin. Didn't make a lick of sense tho. Or maybe I just wasn't tracking it because of the visuals. 

It's very visual. I'm surprised how well 20 year old CGI holds up. The faces are fairly stiff, but some of the details are amazing, like Aki (Ming-Na). Her hair is amazing. Apparently Aki was designed to be the first digital actress, but the film got so bloated that it flopped and took the production house down with it (although I imagine Aki's program still exists somewhere). 

It's some involved story about a post apocalyptic earth infested with phantoms, which are these ghostly monster bugs, flying serpents and tentacley things. Those were cool too. There's soldiers and scientists, and lots of tech hardware space ships and guns. The look of it all is astounding. There's some talk of Gaia theory, which is the basis of it all. 

This is one of those films that I might have enjoyed more if I turned off the sound and played some crazy dub step instead. It's incredibly visual but I lost track of the story.

No sword fights. Not DOOM recommended.

[Greg]

Wait. Is it based on a video game? Enough said.

[Drunk Monk]

For sure. It was me trying to answer my own question here:

Now I'm trying to recall any videogame movies that rose to Greg's cinematic expectations. Tomb Raider maybe? Did you see Double World?

I had heard that this was worth checking out, and FWIW, I'm glad to have seen it. It was visionary in its scope. It just wasn't cohesive as a story, and there were other hiccups keeping it from being great. Perhaps that's some of the frustration - it's another one of those films where you watch it and you're staggered by the resources, but it still misses despite having the technical bits in place. 

What strikes me about it all is that Aki predates Hatsune Miku by over half a decade.