Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

Normally when Harry's in LA, we try to stack screenings in, as many as possible, but this time, our schedule just didn't allow for it. That's a shame, since we almost worked out a way to see FINAL FANTASY on Saturday. I'm very curious, and the fact that the word of mouth I'm hearing is all over the map only makes me more curious. Check out this fairly disappointed reaction from first time spy "Tokyo Joe"...

Fifty years from now when film historians look back at the history of Computer Generated Images in movies, a few early films will stand out- The Abyss, Terminator 2, Toy Story, Star Wars Episode I. If these historians are doing their research, they’ll also be sure to note the historic importance of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. But for those not doing their research, the importance of this film will probably be quickly forgotten, much like the first 3-D CGI movie character, the “Stained-Glass Knight” from Young Sherlock Holmes was forgotten. For despite all its technical wizardry, FF:TSW is a fairly average film in a genre where only the great titles are remembered.

Don’t get me wrong; FF:TSW is much better than the trailers and the lousy rainbow colored billboards would have you believe. The film stars Dr. Aki Ross as herself and Ben Affleck as Captain Gray (for some reason, dubbed by Alec Baldwin who’s impersonating Kurt Russel’s Snake Plisken). She’s a passionate scientist with a ghost spore living in her chest, he’s the gruff leader of a band of doomed space marines. Of course they have a romantic past together, and of course it only takes two minutes stuck in an elevator shaft for them to get back together. Unfortunately for the supple-lipped couple (their kiss really does look good. I was most impressed), the EVIL General Hein wants to blow stuff up, and if that means blowing up the anti-blowing-things-up Dr. Ross, so much the better.

Let me speak for a minute about the EVIL General Hein. For some reason, every video game designer feels that because their villain has a better motive than Donkey Kong to throw barrels at Mario, that they are creating something with real, life-like characters. The Final Fantasy team seems to believe they have created the deepest villain since Lucifer was banished from Heaven. Well, Hein is the darkest shade of grey that grey can be without being black. Imagine Ed Harris’s villain from the Rock, then imagine how sympathetic he would be if he wore black leather gloves and a perpetual sneer.

Back to the story… You see, the reason General Hein wants to blow stuff up, is because he has a big gun that he thinks can destroy the Phantoms, “invaders” from another world which feed of the life energy of Earthlings. Dr. Ross, and her mentor, Dr. Sid, think they have a better plan. By assembling the Eight Spirits from various plants and animals around the globe that have resisted the Phantoms, they believe they can create a wave of positive life-energy that can neutralize the Phantoms. Plus, they can’t let Hein fire his gun, ‘cus it might hit the glowing ball of blue energy that is the Gaia, or the Earth’s lifeforce, which resides just below the Earth’s crust.

With the help of the rag-tag “Deep Eyes” company, led by Captain Gray, they of course manage to find the 8 spirits, but as this is a PG-13 film and heavily influenced by Aliens, the mortality rate is quite high.

Despite the standard action scenes, which are often derivative of Aliens, and the stock supporting characters, FF:TSW does deliver a definite WOW! factor. The CGI ships and buildings are incredible. Often times Aki’s ship looked more like a plastic model than actual plastic models in similar films (I don’t know if this is a compliment or not). The designs of the Phantoms, especially in the dreamworld, are very beautiful. The film may be set on Earth, but there is some room for the Final Fantasy folks to show of their imaginative visuals.

Where this film really breaks new visual ground, however, is in the character animations. It’s a mixed bag, but overall it’s a very admirable effort that is 70% successful. Dr. Ross is consistently “almost real.” Her skin looks a little too plastic (but not so plastic that men wouldn't ogle it in Maxim), but she is very expressive. Gray looks as handsome as Ben Affleck, and can act almost as well, but that character is weakened by Alec Baldwin’s one-note voice acting. Steve Bucemi’s pilot character, Neil, is the least successfully created in the film. He oftentimes looks like an outcast of Thunderbirds, bobbing unnaturally, and his voice doesn’t quite match his face. It doesn’t help that his attempt to be the comic relief is undermined at every joke by lousy writing. Interestingly, the black-skinned characters are by far the most realistic looking. Ving Rhames’ Ryan is the only character that you might confuse for a real person on a regular basis.

There is one character that Square Pictures nailed dead on, 100% perfect: Dr. Sid. This guy doesn’t necessarily look “real,” but he is a real character. The voice acting by Donald Sutherland is wonderful, and his character is the most expressive and detailed in the cast. Of all the characters, he’s the only one that the film leaves you wanting more of. If the film could have focused even more on this character, I’m sure I would have liked the film even more.

Inconsistently brilliant animation would have been easier to overlook if the “actors” had more interesting lines to say. As it goes, however, the script is a dud. Any time the marines are talking, it seems as if their lines were cribbed from Aliens, only with any sense of wit removed. Remember when Hudson asks Vasquez “Has anyone ever mistaken you for a man?” and She says, “No, have you?” Well, FF:TSW rips of this same joke in the same context with characters that are almost the same in appearance and manner. The rest of the dialogue is pedantic and occasionally preachy. After seeing the wonderfully written animated film Atlantis, the dead-on-arrival jokes of FF:TSW are unforgivable.

Likewise, Eliot Goldenthal’s soundtrack is a watered down imitation of Aliens. The music throughout is completely forgettable and “Mickey Mouses” with the action as only mediocre soundtracks can. The film ends with two vocal themes- the first of which is a pleasant, if silly, vocalizing of the Gaia theme. The end credits song, by anime fan favorite band L’Arc-en-Ciel, is lackluster j-rock. Don’t expect any Oscar nominations for the music.

As a longtime fan of Hirobu Sakaguchi’s work on the Final Fantasy games, my main complaint with the film, and the only reason that I left the theater with a heavy heart, is that the director chose to use this amazing new technology to mostly show us things we’ve already seen in ways we’ve seen before. Granted, there are moments that wouldn’t have been possible without CGI. What really irritates me is that the producers have the nerve to call this a new genre because of the technology involved. This is mediocre sci-fi, plain and simple. This is in Pitch Black, Screamers, and Supernova country- not Blade Runner, Aliens, or Dark City. Hell, this isn’t even Starship Troopers.

After having spent hundreds of hours in Sakaguchi’s imaginative video game worlds, I just wanted to spend 100 minutes in a photorealistic, big-screen version of those visions. The filmmakers seem like they are more interested in proving the potential of this new form of storytelling then they are in actually telling a story. Well, I’m impressed, but am I interested enough to want more? Not really.