Why hate on Spirits Within?

[Ishin Ookami]

Personally I cant understand it. When I saw the film in theatre's it took my breath away. It was a masterfully edited, expertly directed, perfectly written cinematic film that actually gave you some food for thought.

A friend of mine makes a point by saying it wasn't a very "commercially entertaining" film such as mummy returns which was released at the same time. I'll agree to that statement, but also in the same regard cinematic classics like "A Christmas Carol", "King Kong" and "War of The worlds" weren't very "commercially entertaining" either. King Kong was something of a social commentary, the big ape was drugged, captured, taken from his island and turned into a circus exhibit until he escaped and was killed. The whole point of the film was clear, even to a five year old child as I was when I first saw the film. We initially saw King Kong as a monster, akin to godzilla. Yet the film shows humanity as being the true monsters, exploiting kong, then killing him. War of the Worlds took the sci-fi (aliens invade earth) genre that was theatrically popular at the time and injected it with some spirituality and Religious overtones. And while spirits within is a far cry from attempting to make social commentary on the same level as these two cinematic greats (the War of the worlds novel was originally launched as HG wells's critique against britain's savage colonization efforts at the time) It still manages to pull the heart strings and stir the thoughts from time to time. The opening fight in the church, showed that in this future world there was nothing sacred, with the statue of the virgin mary being shot to pieces just to gun down a few phantoms. This picture continued with Aki's recounting of a 7 year old girl, embracing death rather then hope. The characters were all well done and realized, nothing super fancy but I didn't feel as though I was watching a collection of pixels like I did with Advent Children.

also one of the reason's I suspect the majority didn't like this film was that most of them were turned on too final fantasy with Nomura's direction, and Spirits Within was Sakaguchi's baby. Sakaguchi imagines Final Fantasy mainly by fantasy, with Sci fi elements thrown in and deep subject matter such as the meaning of life, hope, tragedy, and moral character. Nomura on the other hand likes to infuse final fantasy with a vibe I find more parallels a anime version of Charlies Angels. Advent Children being proof of his style over substance attitude, whereas sakaguchi prefers substance over style.

In the end, Spirits within is a damn well made film that managed to pull on my heart strings and actually made me feel something for the characters. I found Sakaguchi's direction to run parallel to Hayo miyazaki in the ecological themes and the nature of his Apocalyptic plot twists. Even in the most light hearted of miyazaki's films, there is always a plot twist or two which takes a previously established happy and upbeat theme, and utterly destroys it with death, blood, and despair. Its an effective technique which when used Sparingly, establishes intense drama and tension, and I found sakaguchi used the technique admirably in Sprits Within. I don't give a crap that none of the game characters came in, or we didn't have any summons (though the Zeus cannon made quite the dramatic CGI scene I found), Instead we had complex themes, torn characters dealing with real life issues, and underlying themes of tragedy, hope, and love. This alone dwarfs the redundant girl on girl fight scene at the end Of Advent Children any day I find, and I personally really cant understand why there is so much hate towards this film.