Final Fantasy is two powerful words to gamers ears & has spanned over ten years as one of the most popular & most successful role playing game series. Fantasy has been successful due to the complex & detailed stories & worlds involving strong unique character that are dynamic with their own individual histories usually with a mission to save the world from mass destruction.With any successful comic book or video games follows the recent & mostly dismal trend of turning these forms of entertainment into a live action film. Some comic adaptions have come with some success while video games adaptions have led there own path of destruction & have not been very successful to date. To disprove this, Final Fantasy takes the same route into movies but it relies on the medium of Animation to create the first ever full length totally digital photo realistic animated feature to use humanoid like characters. The Spirits Within is entertaining & visually stunning that on another level that contains some of the best animation I have ever seen on the big screen.It is definitely the best film based on a video game but it lacks involvement of the audience to the characters as well as a really strong story that could have made this movie have an impact of epic proportions. OVERALLFinal Fantasy is so visually amazing in quality that you really believe it’s live action as you watch it in certain parts of the film. Unfortunately so much attention was given to creating outstanding effects & to make the characters photo realistic that everything else including the characters & the story were secondary.You watch everything else but the effects & notice things such as the story are lacking doesn’t contain an even flow, it’s just straight story the concerns with one area only. The script as well as the score for the movie are definitely areas that need work as well but was overlooked. PLOT One advantage that Final fantasy has on all of the failures of video game adaptions is that it’s not going in & just recreating existing characters & world from games. but The Spirits Within takes all of the great aspects & feel of the games & creates new characters & a new world but without compromising & doing something completely different. You just have more freedom in creating something that not by the book. The story is somewhat complex by it’s set in 2065 & most of earth’s cities have been destroyed & laid in waste from aliens that landed on the planet thirty years ago. The remaining population that left are scientists & military organization know as Deep Eyes & are trying to wipe out the aliens that have caused so much destruction. A scientist by the name of Dr Aki Ross is seeking a less destructive method by harnessing 8 spirits found in life forms in the wastelands of earth that may disrupt the energy of the Phantoms. Her theory is challenged by General Hein of DeepEyes.GRAPHICS The effects & animation especially all of the holographically interfaces are really the highlight here & make the movie. I’m not sure there is an appropriate word I could use to describe how awestruck I became viewing the break taking moments of each scene. Each character moves with a graceful style & there is absolutely no kind of jerkiness or mechanical movement that I could see at all in the film. The three areas that really brought forth the realism was definitely the environments, textures, & the hair that was used for the characters. The environments themselves bring a uncanny realism that portray a great setting for the movie. Everything from the great skin tone textures & the phantoms to the 60, 000 strands created for the graceful secondary motion of Aki hair are all elements that has never been created with as much detail until now. DVD FEATURES: 9.5 As expected this DVD is completely loaded with extensive extras from the process involved in making the animation from the key people in the production. All of the special features including on the DVD are outstanding to watch providing info on the concept process & animation as well as specs on the characters & vehicles. Final Fantasy is shown in a 1:85 widescreen aspect radio format & represents a flawless picture quality that is transferred. Most of the special features are filled up on the second disk in a list format. Most of the menu of the special effects contains some animation when you enter each selection but not as much as I was expecting as most is stationary. I would have like a more holographic approach to the layout as was shown in the various displays of the movie. I would have also loved to seen more of the concept art & storyboards separate from the brief showing during the behind the scenes The features contain a couple of commentary track by the lead animators & various directors about the animation process, personal stats & info on the character & vehicles in the movie, reedit 12 separate clips of conference room, watch the original test animation & rough edit of movie, & some funny jokes outtakes in rough format. This disk includes a hilarious parody of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video that located at the bottom right hand corner below the DVD-ROM content. It includes a full rendered version of all the characters plus a few alien creatures dancing in the exact formation to the video which made me almost fall on the floor laughing, it’s priceless to watch. PROBLEMS The issue that I have with plot is that it really only goes in one direction with no existing sub-plot to speak of. As the story progresses there seems to be one aspect of power that seems to exist in other movies as well as this one. It seems that characters that are in power seems to have the ability to do things themselves that should require several people to accomplish. That really is the only thing that doesn’t make sense to me, if you have seen the movie you’ll understand why this bothers me. The main reason that Final Fantasy may not have been so successful in the theater besides the screenplay & weak dialogue, would be the anime feel with the mystical & spiritual background of the lifeforce of Gaia. Many seemed confused by the story surrounding the Gaia but I really did have a problem with it. The movie told a journey that was quite refreshing & different that most movies don’t provide. The problem with creating such extreme realism in human like characters is that it causes you to pick out the imperfections of motions & gestures. Anyone knows how people are suppose to move because you see it everyday even if you not consciously thinking about it. The issues I have are mainly found with the facial animation. I’m sure this was difficult enough but the lip movements didn’t quite match with the voice overs & they couldn’t expand as much as they could during certain words. With those problems came the fact that there really was no dynamic expression of any kind & all of the characters seem to be made out of stone. CONCLUSION Entering this new world of photo realistic animation one can’t wonder where we can go from here. Final Fantasy contains all of the fanatasic animation & effects that everyone expected it to have but it does come up short in regards to everything else. Granted movies need to have a complete package with a great story & characters that in involve the audience but this doesn’t take anything away from what was achieved . Square pictures took a big risk in creating this world & they are headed in the right direction & hopefully they will make a good profit on the DVD so more animated features can be created from this studio with even better animation & more dynamic stories