Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Set in the future where an alien species has landed on Earth and almost completely eradicated it. The survivors live in giant cities behind shields that the 'phantoms' cannot pass through. Two scientists, Dr. Cid (Donald Sutherland), hee hee Cid,  and Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na) are close to a solution that could rid the world of phantoms once and for all. The only problem is that the council doesn't have time to wait and General Hein (James Woods) wants results know. The only way he knows he can get them is with the Zeus, an orbiting super weapon that would destroy the main lair of the phantoms.

With the Council on their side for the time being, Aki and Cid race to find the last few 'spirits' they need to make an counter-bio... thingy that will destroy the phantoms. General Hein places a military team with them to spy on the scientists for him. As it turns out the commander, Captain Edwards (Alec Baldwin) is a former flame and sparks are still flying.

While Aki is finding the eight (out of nine) and trying to interpret the strange dreams she's having about the aliens, General Hein is discrediting her and Cid's theory about the Earth having a spirit called Gaia. Also, to speed things up he lets some phantoms past the shield and into the city. Only they completely get out of hand.

Aki finally figures out that her dreams are the aliens trying to tell her their story. They were in a civil war of some sort and destroyed their planet. It blew up and one of asteroid bits flew through space and crashed on Earth. The ghosts of the aliens and the animals that were dragged along for the ride, are quite upset are feed off the life force of all other things. Or so I'm assuming.

Anyway Hein makes it to the Zeus and fires it at the asteroid at the exact moment Aki and Edwards are trying to locate the last spirit in the crater itself. Finally they complete the bio thingy and all the phantoms are... to be honest I'm not sure if they are destroyed or they go to their form of afterlife...or whatever. The point in that they will no longer be on Earth, so the world is saved. But not before Hein almost destroyed it all with the Zeus.

The main problem I had with this movie was that it felt like a video game with all the fights taken out of it. My fingers were itching for the PS controller while watching this movie.  I've played Final Fantasy VII, as much as Final Fantasy VIII I could stomach, Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy X and it has the exactly the same feel as those. With good reason of course, Hironobu Sakaguchi who both wrote and directed this film with Moto Sakakibara both have worked on the video games. I think I would have enjoyed it much better if they made it a video game. Then we could have gone the adventure of finding the spirits and fighting the phantoms while learning the plot little by little. It felt very rushed in the film.

Also General Hein, who was supposed to be the villain, but wasn't one. He was the main antagonist, because he set up obstacles that Aki and the team had to go against. But he wasn't an evil 'I want to rule it all' kind of bad guy. I mean he wanted to save the planet. He really did. He though Zeus was the only way to do it and he refused to believe any other theory, either because of arrogance or pride. Then he goes and does something completely stupid like letting the phantoms in without knowing how they would react to being inside the shielded city. I know he was impatient, but that was a little extreme don't ya think? I don't know what the big hurry was. They lived 32 years with the phantoms hunting them, one more day wouldn't have matter. He should've let Aki finish her project and when she failed, bring up the Zeus once again. He was too evil (not to mention dumb) to be one of those arrogant people that are against the main hero while out for their own goals. But he was too 'I'm going to save the world' to be an actual villain.

Grade: 6.5/10