10 Awesome Musical Scores That Deserved Better Movies

A video game movie with no discernible connection to the game with which it shares a title, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an exceedingly odd beast of a film. This weird space ghost story appears to have been mostly designed as a showreel for its cutting edge 3D computer animation techniques. In particular, lead character Aki Ross was supposed to be the first completely photorealistic "actor" who could then go on to a career in other films.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Aki was more creepy than convincing as a real human and had a personality that was a lot more two-dimensional than her animation.

At least the score, from the eclectic Elliot Goldenthal, managed to marry tradition and forward-thinking experimentation in a much more satisfying way.

Goldenthal's Final Fantasy score has more of the epic orchestral grandeur and less of the avant-garde modernism of some of his previous sci-fi work, such as Alien 3, but that doesn't mean that it isn't odd and challenging in interesting ways. There's a huge crashing brass section that could be almost overwhelming, but the score also provides an evocative lyricism.

A number of critics suggested Goldenthal's score, some of his finest work, deserved some notice from the Oscars in 2002, but a film this bad could never have been in consideration even with music this good.