Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is the last thing the creator of the series ever directed or produced for the franchise. It was a Box Office flop and it destroyed Square Pictures and did some damage to the whole of Square financially. Square managed to quickly return to profitably thanks to the efforts of Sony and Square's Product Development Division 1 led by Kitase, Toriyama, Nomura and Hashimoto which these days is the 1st Production Department led by the same people.

 

But back to the actual movie, the movie is at times confusing and you're left wondering what? And sometimes this story might be better suited to an episode of Doctor Who.

 

However, the movie does it have it's moments and some good characters including General Douglas Hein voiced by the James Woods, and the military style scenes prove entertaining. Sadly, the main character, Dr. Aki Ross leaves a lot to be desired. I found her uninteresting and with hardly any back story. In fact, the movie in general has little back story with does leave some things even more confusing.

 

Thankfully the movie isn't too long or short. Running at about 106 minutes.

 

I'm also left wondering what happened next, I assume they planned for a sequel....the ending has hardly any closure and you're left thinking "what was the point of that?" "what did that solve?"

 

Of course I must praise the animation for it's time, it must have been truly amazing back then.

 

In the end this is a good movie that I enjoyed. Considering it's available to Buy and/or Rent on the PlayStation Store, iTunes Store, Google Play Store, Amazon Instant Video and BigPond Movies along with being available cheaply on Blu-ray and DVD I recommend you watch it.

 

6/10

A.K.A the movie that almost lead Square Soft to bankruptcy before Enix merged with them to form Square Enix

 

Sure the movie on it's own isn't the worst thing ever,but why add the name final fantasy when the movie has nothing to do with FF aside from one character named Cid(oops I mean Sid) ?

 

If it was titled just "The Spirits Within" instead of adding FF to the title people wouldn't have been angry at it and it wouldn't have been one of the biggest box office failures in movies history

I remember watching it as a child, and just being amazed by the amazing graphics! I just wish the story was a little better, and that they didn't kill off every single character! 

I don't think it's worth a 7.2, but good review

A.K.A the movie that almost lead Square Soft to bankruptcy before Enix merged with them to form Square Enix

 

Sure the movie on it's own isn't the worst thing ever,but why add the name final fantasy when the movie has nothing to do with FF aside from one character named Cid(oops I mean Sid) ?

 

If it was titled just "The Spirits Within" instead of adding FF to the title people wouldn't have been angry at it and it wouldn't have been one of the biggest box office failures in movies history

 

I feel if it didn't have "Final Fantasy" in the title it would have made less money.

I remember watching it as a child, and just being amazed by the amazing graphics! I just wish the story was a little better, and that they didn't kill off every single character! 

 

Agreed.

I feel if it didn't have "Final Fantasy" in the title it would have made less money.

 

Agreed.

Dude the movie made no money in fact it made them lose billions of money to the point Enix managed to merge with Square Soft and become Square Enix after years of rivalry

 

If it was an original movie called the Spirits Within people would've gave it more of a chance

 

But when you add the "Final Fantasy" to the title you kinda set the expectations for the audience to expect regular FF stuff like crystals,chocobos,fight against menacing villains with great powers....etc not a freakin Star Trek Adventure.Cuz the only FF thing about that movie is Cid....oops I mean Sid

 

 

Wanna know the reason why Enix merged with Square....it's this movie cuz after this movie's failure Square's stocks were so low that both Sony and Enix bought some shares of it with Enix deciding to go through the merging process

Dude the movie made no money in fact it made them lose billions of money to the point Enix managed to merge with Square Soft and become Square Enix after years of rivalry

 

If it was an original movie called the Spirits Within people would've gave it more of a chance

 

But when you add the "Final Fantasy" to the title you kinda set the expectations for the audience to expect regular FF stuff like crystals,chocobos,fight against menacing villains with great powers....etc not a freakin Star Trek Adventure.Cuz the only FF thing about that movie is Cid....oops I mean Sid

 

 

Wanna know the reason why Enix merged with Square....it's this movie cuz after this movie's failure Square's stocks were so low that both Sony and Enix bought some shares of it with Enix deciding to go through the merging process

 

It made $85 million at the box office, but yes it made them lose a ton.

 

And actually, they were going to merge before the movie bombed. It delayed the merger until after FFX and KH1 made them profitable again because Enix didn't want to be associated with a company losing money.

It made $85 million at the box office, but yes it made them lose a ton.

 

And actually, they were going to merge before the movie bombed. It delayed the merger until after FFX and KH1 made them profitable again because Enix didn't want to be associated with a company losing money.

1This 85$ million is nothing compared to what they've lost and how much Advent Children made later on

 

2Yeah but Square rejected the merging offer from Enix back then but after the movie Enix's president back then Yoichi Wada pitched the merging offer again after the movie bombed and they pretty much had to accept it cuz they were really short on money with FF X-2 being a huge example of that with recycled monsters and assests from the previous game

1This 85$ million is nothing compared to what they've lost and how much Advent Children made later on

 

2Yeah but Square rejected the merging offer from Enix back then but after the movie Enix's president back then Yoichi Wada pitched the merging offer again after the movie bombed and they pretty much had to accept it cuz they were really short on money with FF X-2 being a huge example of that with recycled monsters and assests from the previous game

 

Ummm, this has nothing to do with X-2. X was a massive success with over 8 million copies sold. They were ready to make XIII or another new major title then but they decided to make a sequel after Japanese feedback to Eternal Calm.

Ummm, this has nothing to do with X-2. X was a massive success with over 8 million copies sold. They were ready to make XIII or another new major title then but they decided to make a sequel after Japanese feedback to Eternal Calm.

I know but I mentioned X-2 as an example of them running out of budget during development as it recycles a lot of assests , this has nothing to do with X and X-2's sales man,and no XII was in development before XIII and XIII began development a bit in the middle of XII's development where it was originallly supposed to be for Ps2 but was shifted to Ps3 and Xbox 360 later on

 

Also I doubt the feedback of Eternal Calm demanded Charlie's angels kind of storycharacter designs

Edited July 13, 201411 yr by Annoying D Waluigi

I know but I mentioned X-2 as an example of them running out of budget during development as it recycles a lot of assests , this has nothing to do with X and X-2's sales man,and no XII was in development before XIII and XIII began development a bit in the middle of XII's development where it was originallly supposed to be for Ps2 but was shifted to Ps3 and Xbox 360 later on

 

Also I doubt the feedback of Eternal Calm demanded Charlie's angels kind of storycharacter designs

 

Oh, I'm well aware of XII beginning development in 2001 shortly after IX. And yes, XIII begun development in 2004 after X-2's International version was finished for PS2 before changing to PS3 after feedback on the VII Tech Demo and later a port for 360.

 

The feedback wasn't in favour of any type of story of character designs and I don't care if you didn't like them. The feedback was to see what happened next after Eternal Calm resulting in X-2, a sequel rather than a new entry in the series which likely would have been XIII.

I remember seeing parts of it was confused I might have to re watch it again.

I always appreciated that Auron's voice actor was in this movie too.