A MUST SEE for sci-fi fans and movie lovers

This is, honestly, the best movie I've seen all year. Okay, okay. The film has great computer generated images. Glad we've moved past that. But what else does it have?

Well, before I do a review such as this I always like to check and see what other people have to say (meaning, if I liked it, I'd like to know why other people didn't and visa versa). And I have to say that one of the best things about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was the story, so if you saw the film and think there was no story you either didn't understand, didn't want to understand, or just aren't smart enough to look at the big picture.

I will let it be known, off the bat, that I AM NOT a fan of the FF games. In fact, I've never even played them before, so I had no clue what this movie was really about, and I refused to look things up on it just to see how well the film held up on its own. The basic plot is this: 37 years from the film's future setting, an asteroid impacted on the surface of the Earth carrying a wide array of ghost-like aliens known as "The Phantoms". These Phantoms sort of feed off of the life force of living things (in other words, they steal your soul). Humans have been combating the Phantoms without success, for, every attack on the asteroid (the origin of the Phantom aliens) causes them to dig deeper into the earth, like a tumor. Dr. Aki Ross (voice of Ming-Na Wen) and her mentor Dr. Sid (voice of Donald Sutherland) have a theory that may destroy the Phantoms, but they must collect eight 'spirits' from around the world for the process to work. They have five already. Now, if only they can find the other three...

Now, if that's so hard to follow then, like I said, you must've made up your mind that you weren't going to enjoy this 'cartoon' for anything besides the visuals, which is only half of the reason why I love this movie. The past several sci-fi movies I've seen that have been released in the U.S. have sucked so horribly the lot of you should be on your knees begging Final Fantasy director and creator Hironobu Sakaguchi for this magnificent gift he's given us; the very first step to animated adult story making for the U.S. audience. No damn talking animals or insects, but representations of human characters used to tell a story. Of course, I will always prefer flesh and blood characters over CGI ones, but it's quite refreshing to see something this new and unique out there in our "make the movie dumb so everyone can enjoy it" Hollywood driven marketplace (which is probably why A.I. is tanking right now).

This summer I've seen Tomb Raider, Pearl Harbor, The Mummy Returns, and Swordfish, all of which don't hold a candle when compared to Final Fantasy in the action, direction, visual, character, dialog, and story departments. Sure, the movie's not perfect. It has its flaws just like any other film, but very, very few. Some parts are cliched, others not as astounding visually, and some others that I might've fast-forwarded through on tape, but I could not allow myself to blink. I FELT for these characters, these 'fake' characters. More so than I have for much of the other garbage that has come out in years past. This has to have been the best Sci-Fi movie I've seen in quite some time (especially after the disappointment of Star Wars: Episode 1).

I can only hope that audiences will see this film for what it is: a true milestone in the realm of CGI filmmaking and a precedent in visual story telling. And by all means, this IS NOT a kid's movie. And the reason I say that is because American audiences associate animation with kids flicks. And it's that exact reason that I fear many audiences (mainly the more adult groups) will see this film as nothing but just another 'cartoon', not something they can laugh at like Shrek or Toy Story, and not the involving story it promotes, but just as some parody of reality. And those are the close-minded idiots that will probably cause Hollywood or any studio to take a chance on this type of movie. If audiences turn out in droves to see some piece of trash "real" movie with no story or characters and shun an achievement such as Final Fantasy, then it's no wonder no one likes this type of movie. Much like A.I: Artificial Intelligence it's much too smart, imaginative, and over the heads of the general public that people would rather choose to hate it than understand it. If that's the case I may have to start ordering films from Japan just to get some good, serious, astonishing animated story telling.