1. The action -- Or lack of it, rather. I know this may sound weird
since there were plenty of exciting scenes, but overall the movie seemed
unusually passive. It seemed to
always tell and never show. Like with the alien "invasion" (that would've
made the most awesome opening sequence), or how Aki came up with the Gaia
theory, or how she
gathered the other spirits, or how she got infected, etc. They could've
made extremely dramatic scenes with these ideas, but in the movie they
just sliced them down and give
them to you in a can. By the way, who else thinks that a human phantom
vs. alien phantom final battle would've absolutely ROCKED?!
2. The actors -- The lip-synching was good, but the characters themselves
never really had much to talk about. Instead, they conversed almost completely
in corny cliches,
and it really hurt the movie as a whole. And if your dialogue is so
bad, your character development probably is, too. The movie never stopped
to tell you what the characters
actually felt, who they actually WERE. It's like they just threw you
in the middle of relationships already in progress, so you never got to
see them go anywhere. Of course,
it's not like they could anyway, since they had no personalities to
speak of.
I really wished they had developed Hyne more, though; he had the potential
to be a very deep villain, but instead they turned him into a pathetic
man who could never win. A
bit ironic, considering Hyne was supposed to be a god in Final Fantasy
VIII. Don't get me started on Niel, though...arrrghhh, Niel must die. Oh
wait, he did. ^_^
3. The lighting -- Urgh, I probably would've enjoyed the movie more
if they'd turned the brightness up a notch or two. I could hardly see anything!
There wasn't even a single
scene in broad daylight except at the very end (which I'll talk about
later ;) ). It also made all the characters look like they had a layer
of wax covering their skin, creating very
unnatural skin tones.
4. The story -- Ah yes, the core of all that is Final Fantasy. Unfortunately,
The Spirits Within has a ROTTEN one. Well, actually, it was okay, but it
just left so much to be
explained. For example, for example one of the things that bothered
me most was how just a tiny chunk of the alien planet could carry enough
phantoms to populate the entire
Earth. I mean, pffff, what's up with that?
And what's so special about the "spirits" anyway? I mean, what makes
something a spirit? And why do you just happen to need exactly eight of
them to make a super
anti-alien weapon? And when they're used to "neutralize" aliens, what
happens to the aliens? Sure, their waveforms are supposed "cancel" each
other out, but what happens
when they turn off the ghostbuster?
And how do aliens "infect" humans? What's the point of doing that? Do
the humans eventually spawn baby aliens, or turn into aliens themselves,
or just plain die? And why do
aliens feed on human phantoms? Does it actually keep them alive (errr,
so to speak)?
5. The ending -- Okay, can someone tell me again, WHAT is up with the
giant blue energy beam, and the tiny little blue pixies? "It's...warm..."
>_< Puh-LEASE. Not that it
wasn't cool, but it had NO purpose whatsoever. It's like they just
HAD to throw them in there because EVERY sci-fi flick has to have a giant
blue energy beam. It actually
reminded me of StarCraft's ending, but there was actually a reason
for that one...Anyway, after that, the ending felt sort of truncated to
me. It definitely gave me a Japanese
feeling, though...but I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad
thing. :/
Conclusion: Watch it, darn you!
