Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

I've never played any of the Final Fantasy video games.  I don't know anything about the characters, background, mythology or worlds therein.  I don't even know if the video game shares anything in common with this movie other than the name.  Thanks to Wikipedia, I know that this was the first photorealistic computer animated movie and it took 200 people four years to make.  Their work is evident, since the animation still holds up pretty well today, living as we do in a post-Avatar world.

Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na Wen) is a scientist on a post-apocalyptic Earth, trying to discover a way to combat a race of soul-stealing aliens called Phantoms that have invaded.  She and her mentor, Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland), are working off a heretical idea of using spirits to create a weapon to neutralize the Phantoms.  General Hein (James Woods) distrusts their hippy-dippy theories and favors blasting the alien headquarters to pieces.

I think the biggest problem I had with the movie is that all the voices are by really famous people but none of the characters resembled them at all.  If they had used traditional animation, I don't think it would have been as jarring; likewise, if they had cast more obscure voice actors.  It kept throwing me off hearing Steve Buscemi's voice coming out of a guy who doesn't look anything like Steve Buscemi.  That might also be because I'm used to motion capture at this point so it just seems weird to me that this isn't mo-cap, just computer animation.

I remember that this was an absolute flop in theaters and I can't say that I recommend it to anyone not interested in the early days of computer animation.  The plot isn't well laid out, the characters are stock, and the resolution is boring.  Maybe it means something more to people who enjoyed the games, I don't know, but for me, this is destined for the donation box.