The Spirits Within

[Chris]

Why do you think it failed so miserably? I thought it was a very exciting movie. Ok, so it didn't really feel like a Final Fantasy product, but if you look aside that, it's still a pretty good movie.

I think a lot of fans were expecting to see Cloud and Sephiroth battle it out, so when they didn't get to see that, they immediately wrote it off. People expect too much from FFVII, and they will never truly be statisfied with anything less than a movie based around that particular game.

Now that they have that, do you think people will able to look beyond FFVII and actually appreciate this movie for what it is? Which is a damn good movie.

[Zeromus_X]

I've actually never seen it, but I've always wanted to. I guess it was too sci-fi for some people, but it looks very interesting to me.

[Zechs]

It was mainly the fact it carried the main title of Final Fantasy and it had nothing to do with what the games were about. It would have done better without the false FF hype. Being titled The Spirits Within probably would have given it a better chance.

[LunarWeaver]

I watched it after Advent Children, which was the fan service I wanted in the first place, to see if I would like it better. Overall, it's got a lot of neat ideas in it and some good plot. But the design of the world, the characters, and the structure of it simply defies the Final Fantasy title.

So I just took Final Fantasy away and pretended Square made a movie out of nowhere. Even then, it's still riddled with some silly stuff. I understand it's a movie, but I was basically coming in at the end of a story with no previous material to back it up. Everything had kind of already happened and the whole backstory is told in 2 sentences by Aki at the beginning. The villain human runs around doing what he does for no particular reason, and Aki and Grey's relationship was kinda pointless.

Their technology in this movie is insanely advanced. Why are they all killing themselves by fighting Phantoms just to get earth back. Go build a new planet.

Anyway, Final Fantasy bullhockey aside, I think it's good... a little above average for a sci-fi movie. Worth seeing at least once, anyway.

[starseeker]

I found the characters disconcerting to look at. I don't like dolls to begin with and the characters just freaked me out. Also, I wasn't able to follow the plot for probably the only time ever. Both things made it hard to watch and took the fun out of it.

[Sefie1999AD]

The Spirits Within has excellent visuals and good quality audio, music and voice acting. I also like the bittersweet ending of the movie. The problem is that the film is pretty much a normal sci-fi action movie, and the only real thing that makes it stand out are the CGI graphics. It doesn't really have that memorable characters, interesting species, fun action scenes or anything which makes movies such as Star Wars stand out. This is what prevents it from being an excellent movie for an average viewer.

As for Final Fantasy fans, the movie doesn't really have an FF feel because there are hardly any FF elements in the movie. There are a few FF references, but they're quite subtle, such as Aki Ross wearing a Chocobo shirt in one scene (IIRC), the similarities between Gaia and Lifestream, General Hein and Rufus are somewhat similar characters and I can also see a bit of similarities between Zeus Cannon and Sister Ray.

[Chris]

Okay, so it didn't stand out. But I still believe that people would have payed more attention, had they used a different title.