What Everyone Expected: A movie based on a Final Fantasy game? Holy crap. Given that they were easily the most popular games in the series at the time, it had to be an adaptation of either 7, 8 or 9... What Actually Happened: The Spirits Within sadly has nothing to do with any pre-existing Final Fantasy story (and as each game is typically standalone, that perhaps shouldn't have been too surprising), though it is faithful to the franchise as a whole in so much as the plot is almost incomprehensible and the overall tone is relatively similar. Still, remove the Final Fantasy name and this could pretty much just be any anonymous, vaguely intriguing sci-fi animation. It was a benchmark for animation for years following its release, yet in steering too far from the known FF universe and also failing to accommodate newcomers, it ended up pleasing almost nobody. What It Should Have Been Called: The Spirits Within, obviously.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
