dannyboymw
I'm writing this review two hours after seeing the movie for the first time. And after glancing through the reviews of both users and critics, I haven't seen a review that fully represents the movie accurately. The critics acknowledge the visual beauty but claim the plot is convoluted and that the performances are bad. Yes, visually, The Spirits Within is beautiful, even 16 years later. A couple lines were flat, sure, and the dialogue was occasionally (in the last 30 minutes) a little hokey, but not to the point of making the movie, itself, bad.On the other hand, those who have given it high ratings say that the poor reception is a result of the west not used to Asian storytelling. I like anime and adore the Final Fantasy franchise, and Asian Cinema is among the best there is. I'm not going to talk about the visuals or the "asian way of doing things", because both have been done to death and I thought were fine. I am going to talk about the story and characters.The first 25 minutes was great. World building, exposition, and character introductions were handled masterfully. In short, it was set up to be a great movie. The minutes devoted to developing plot points and the main characters were also done well, where the movie suffers is when it hits the back half. For those who have seen the movie, the pros are obvious, so I will only address the cons. Starting with, in my opinion, the biggest flaw.the following contains story spoilersThe Antagonist: the General is introduced and set up beautifully, but early on he is suspicious of Gray, when he has no reason to be. From that point, he behaves with evil intent, but we are never told his reason for the way he is until he makes his move. For most of the movie, he is just bad for the sake of being bad, with no motivation what so ever, and when we are finally told it was, for me, unsatisfying. As a military man, it is his job to protect humanity from all invading forces (which the Phantoms appeared to be), but collateral damage be damned because "phantoms killed my wife and child." His objective for the entire movie is to fire the Zeus Canon and so he drops the shield to motivate the council to action, but when his plan backfires his change of heart comes out of nowhere, and so of course the only logical thing to do is commit suicide (again coming out of nowhere), but it has to be done in front of the computer that controls the Zeus Canon. Did I say he had a change of heart? When the council approves use of the canon, all remorse for his actions disappear because his plan succeeded, and collateral damage be damned! When he assumes command of the orbital space canon, they realize that if they fire on the target, civilians will be killed, but since they are in the way of the General's objective he doesn't care. Naturally the crew doesn't question it and they fire the canon to the point of the system over heating. Since the general is overcome with obsession (again, coming out of nowhere) he overrides the system and keeps firing until the canon, and him, explode. To be clear, I have no issue with his decent into madness or any of the things he does. I think he had potential to be a great antagonist, but each development in his character has no reason for it. His motivation does not explain his actions. As it is, he was a criminally undeveloped character.The hanger scene: they left Ryan injured by the car with a gun. Sid was supposed to go back with his medical kit, but once he got to the ship, he just stayed there. Jane had time to find energy packs and return, but the doctor didn't have time to find a med pack (which is probably in a very specific place), or maybe he just didn't care. We don't know because the story also forgot about Ryan until it was convenient for him to save the day... why wasn't he fighting earlier? If he was in range, there were plenty of phantoms to be shooting at, particularly when Neil and Jane died... was he just watching that happen? In speaking of which, when Jane unloaded the rifle a) the fact that the rifles had limited ammo was distracting since up until that point, as far as we knew, they had unlimited ammo b) Neil had a gun. Why didn't she use Neil's gun. He didn't use it in that scene. Was he carrying an unloaded gun the whole time?Conclusion: It is an entertaining movie, but since it had a terrible antagonist and convenient Deus Ex Machina's, it is not a great movie.
kkinne
This film was made at least five years too early. Which was sad, since it had a fairly good storyline. However, the level of CGI technology in 2001 was simply not up to the point where the animators could have been able to avoid the "uncanny valley" phenomenon which ultimately doomed the movie at the box office. That, and the staggeringly high production budget of over $137,000,000. The biggest problem that I had with the animation was that the characters simply were unable to emote convincingly, and their eyes, especially, looked dead and quite creepy.The story, which had NOTHING to do with the popular Final Fantasy game line, deals with Earth being devastated by the alien ghosts which arrived upon the debris left over from the destruction of their home world. The story is dark and excessively depressing, which puts it at odds with the Final Fantasy games, whose often-dark plots are balanced out with a hopeful undertone. Also, many plot threads are simply abandoned, such as the social conflicts brought about by the lead character's "religious" beliefs. Also, many might be disappointed by the fact that a much-promised nude scene of the heroine, Aki Ross, was apparently taken out at the last minute and replaced with a simple shot of water going down a shower drain. Kind of prophetic for the overall movie...More tragic than the storyline of this movie was the fact that the box office loss was so massive that it resulted in the closure of the Squaresoft movie division. Even more sad was that several years later, the crew was briefly reassembled to create a sequence for The Animatrix. Oh, what could have been...
Jaymz13
This movie was some serious eye-candy. Other than that, however, it was a waste of time. Too bad good movie making has gone out of style. It preached and nagged about gaia/mother earth to the point of making me sick. Go push your religion down someone else's throat. I'm sick of it. Anyway, that seemed to be the whole point of the movie was to convince me that the earth is some sort of living being. its a huge rock covered with water and air, okay? Volcanos are destructive to the environment and all life around them. Does that mean gaia is a wrist-cutting, self-mutilator? In that case, she needs rehab and counselling. In short, this movie sucked! ...but it looked good doing it.
