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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Was a Flop
Though it feels as if it has little to do with the games series it is based on, this groundbreaking film endures as a milestone for CGI animation, with a stellar voice cast
TL;DR
- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, released in 2001, is a military science-fiction film, not a fantasy, based on the game franchise.
- The film features groundbreaking CGI animation for its era, including 60,000 individually rendered hair strands for the character Aki Ross.
- Despite its technical achievements and a stellar voice cast including Ming-Na Wen, Donald Sutherland, and James Woods, the film was a box office failure due to its enormous budget.
- Aki Ross was conceived as a digital actor, a concept that saw renewed interest with the rise of AI.
- The film explores themes related to the Gaia hypothesis and environmentalism, with a plot involving a war between humans and mysterious beings called Phantoms.