The Turning Point of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series represented a special time in video game history. It was a time when games were booming with new ideas never done before, a time when the medium’s previous constraints were constantly being circumvented in creative ways or broken entirely; vast, imaginative worlds begging to be explored, beautifully crafted visuals that thrive on the limitations of early technology, in-depth stories and characters that could only be expressed through the interactive capabilities of the medium, music so dense and catchy that it could stand alongside the great composers of the past. At that time, just seeing “Final Fantasy” on the cover of a game guaranteed an experience like never before, with each title consistently innovating on the developments of its predecessors and pushing the medium to new heights.

Fast forward to the 2020s and “Final Fantasy” is no longer the seal of quality that it once was. A far cry from the creative juggernaut that it was in the 90s, when titles were pushed out at breakneck speeds, sometimes as little as a year apart from each other all the while offering some of the most magical experiences the medium has to offer, “Final Fantasy” now more accurately equates to egregiously long and messy development cycles, chasing mainstream trends instead of setting them, or taking more than two decades to reiterate a game that was already fully complete way back in 1997.

What happened? How did Final Fantasy devolve from a fountain of original ideas others looked to for inspiration, to a cesspool of technically impressive, creatively defunct titles desperately trying to imitate the spark of its former glory?

Following the success of Final Fantasy VII in 1997, series producer Hironobu Sakaguchi sought to capitalize on Square’s highly advanced CG graphics for the time, establishing Square Pictures with plans to produce full-length CG animated movies. The studio’s first major project, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (released in 2001), would also become its last, now infamously known as one of the most catastrophic financial failures in cinema and game-related history, forcing the closure of Square Pictures and nearly driving its parent company Square to bankruptcy after substantial losses.

Despite the phenomenal technical achievements of Spirits Within, being the first movie targeted towards mature audiences to be fully created using photorealistic CG animation, the commercial failure of the film highlights the importance of brand consistency, and how even a technical milestone of CG animation can fall out of touch with its audience due to the emphasis on Western realism clashing with fans’ expectations of the long-established stylized fantasy aesthetic associated with Final Fantasy, while simultaneously being too strange for audiences of the West to connect with.

The choice of visual style was integral to the core of the film. Whereas contemporary studios often lean towards live action when adapting game franchises, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within opted to utilize CG animation to digitally produce life-like, realistic portrayals of sci-fi environments and human-likeness with the aim to evolve the capabilities of CG technology beyond what anyone had ever seen at the time. Although CG films had existed prior, Spirits Within differentiates itself with its hyper-realistic visuals geared towards older demographics, rather than the cartoonish, family-oriented direction of a Disney or Pixar film.

Spirits Within: Cast of characters

While the film’s highly detailed CG animation was undoubtedly its greatest strength, many compromises had to be made in order to sustain that level of graphical fidelity throughout the duration of its 1 hour and 46 minute runtime. For instance, due to the excessive amount of time and effort required to render and animate the characters’ hair and clothing, the majority of the supporting cast were restricted to basic wardrobes and short hairstyles apart from the main character Aki Ross, whose hair was still arduously taxing to animate despite being below shoulder length. Furthermore, the difficulties of reproducing realistic facial expressions were evident throughout the film, as the characters’ facial animations did not always reflect their feelings in context, nor did the lip-syncing accurately match their speech, creating an uncanny valley effect where the characters look human enough to be perceived as such, yet behave unnaturally to the point of breaking the immersion.

Another issue stemming from the expensive CG visuals was the budgetary pacing. In order to save financial costs and production time, the more impressive spectacles and computer effects were reserved for the very beginning of the film along with its final 30 minutes, while the rest of the film largely revolves around static, uneventful dialogue segments between the characters, featuring minimal movement or variation in scenery. These production setbacks rendered Spirits Within as more of a technological showcase than a fully realized work of expression, prompting the question as to why the film had to be created in CG when it does so little to justify that decision, treating CG as more of a novelty than a creative necessity.

Left to right: Warrior of Light by Yoshitaka Amano, Cloud Strife by Tetsuya Nomura, Aki Ross by Shuko Murase

On the mention of why the film had to be created in CG if the goal was to emulate reality, no other example encapsulates this better than the character designs. The possibilities for imaginative, yet thematically appropriate character design is limitless in the realm of animation, but since Final Fantasy VII was a massive hit in The West with its ground-breaking CG cut-scenes for the time, Spirits Within attempted to steer further in that direction, eschewing the stylized, fantastical elements of the franchise in favor of grounded Western photorealism with hopes of garnering global appeal, distancing itself from the so-called childish or nerdy stigma associated with Final Fantasy amongst audiences of mainstream Western Hollywood cinema. The result of which was a stark tonal whiplash from the established art styles of previous Final Fantasy titles, as evidenced in the character designs.

Seeing as the lead character designer Shuko Murase was assigned to produce believable portrayals of human proportions and appearances, the main character Aki Ross was designed with so little stylistic liberty to the point that she could have belonged to any project rather than specifically a Final Fantasy title, while much of the supporting cast are nearly indistinguishable from one another due to the similarities in clothing, hairstyles and facial features, resulting in a sterile art direction far removed from both the ethereal, medieval fantasy style of Yoshitaka Amano, as well as the more anime-leaning cyberpunk aesthetic of Tetsuya Nomura’s designs.

Left to right: Ultimecia’s Castle (FFVIII), Cleyra (FFIX), Earth 2065 (Spirits Within)

In addition to the character designs, this cultural shift seeped into the setting of the film and the environments within it, as for the first time in a Final Fantasy title, Spirits Within is set in a futuristic depiction of the real world; a radical divergence from previous entries, which, leading up to that point, were all set in unique fantasy worlds, detached from reality. Not only did the shift to Earth pose restrictions to the imaginative sceneries previously allowed in fantasy settings, but it also further dilutes the established identity of the brand, as it no longer indicates any specific type of experience.

Even the film’s soundtrack feels totally out of touch with that of the games. In its attempts to blend with the ethos of Hollywood cinema, it trades the timeless, densely melodic music of Nobuo Uematsu for a more cinematic score that typically resides in the background without making itself too noticeable, much like you would expect from a modern Hollywood flick. This is a massive loss when we consider how many of Final Fantasy’s most powerful and iconic moments were bolstered by the music of Uematsu. Imagine if the infamous death of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII lacked the heart-breaking accompaniment of Aeris’ theme and the built up significance of its motif being repeated throughout the game’s soundtrack, or if the Eyes on Me sequence between Squall and Rinoa in Final Fantasy VIII featured a generic film score accompaniment rather than the endearing, metacontextual song that speaks more about the characters’ relationship than any piece of dialogue could ever match. Spirits Within sadly lacks these highlights, as even its most significant moments are backed by nothing more than corny, awkwardly voiced dialogue over a forgettable score without a single line of melody worth remembering.

It’s easy to see why Final Fantasy fans at the time were repulsed by this direction, though it was only part of a much larger series of catastrophes that all contributed to the film’s failure. One of the major consequences of the film’s enormous budget was that Square had to recoup their losses through any means necessary, placing immense pressure on the film to succeed. As such, the many tonal inconsistencies previously discussed can be attributed to the fact that Spirits Within was never meant to be a Final Fantasy film to begin with, originally conceptualized as a stand-alone project titled “Gaia”, referencing the narrative’s philosophical themes around the cycle of death and rebirth, later rebranded as a Final Fantasy title as a means to mitigate the risk of launching the company’s most expensive project yet by capitalizing on brand familiarity.

Spirits Within tagline taken from the trailer

Despite the stark dissonance between Spirits Within and its parent franchise, promotional material emphasized the Final Fantasy aspect, pairing it with action-heavy cinematic sequences contrary to the slow-paced, dialogue-driven direction of the film, deliberately and disingenuously misrepresenting the nature of the film for the sake of securing wider appeal. There are a few superficial similarities with previous games, particularly Final Fantasy VII with the industrial sceneries akin to Midgar or the themes of grief and inherited will through the passing of a loved one, though this was more likely an outcome of the film being conceptualized shortly after the release of Final Fantasy VII than an attempt to tie the film together with the franchise at large. There’s even a character named Cid to uphold a long-standing tradition within the series, but without any other stylistic motifs of the same nature that are retained from the series, it feels more like an aimless obligation at this point than a cheeky recurring joke.

Given the tonal mismatch between promotional material and the film itself, Spirits Within ended up as a bold, ambitious experiment that, despite its efforts to attract as wide an audience as possible, ultimately failed to satisfy anyone. Because of the misleading portrayals in pre-release advertisements, fans of Final Fantasy were highly critical of the film’s direction, seeing it as a Westernized betrayal of the franchise’s stylistic legacy, while audiences with no prior engagement with Final Fantasy were put off by the photorealistic character models and unconventional storytelling, with its slow-moving structure failing to keep mainstream viewers engaged.

Aki Ross in Spirits Within, Aki Ross on Maxim Magazine

Even amongst the small contingent of viewers who praised Spirits Within for its narrative undertakings, marketing ploys such as the protagonist’s inclusion in an issue of Maxim were seen as crude misrepresentations of the film’s deeper philosophical themes, downplaying their authenticity, as the uncharacteristic portrayal of Aki Ross clashes with her presence as a stoic, professional scientist in the movie.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. While the reception for Spirits Within as a movie was overwhelmingly negative, praises were sung for its impeccable visual fidelity, displaying a level of realism which was unheard of in CG animation at the time. In particular, the film’s most impressive cinematic spectacles showcased the capacity for computer graphics to depict large-scale explosions and colossal supernatural entities within the same realm as a cast of expressive, believable, originally designed human characters, crafting a sense of visual cohesion that could only be achieved through the use of CG animation.

Had Square focused on communicating its strengths, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within could have been positively received based on the prowess of its CG animation alone, provided the film’s scale was reduced to include more of its cinematic spectacles under a shorter runtime. Unfortunately, the emphasis on selling it as a Final Fantasy movie, combined with catering to global demographics while attempting to tell an unconventional story all at once, led to its technical achievements being overshadowed by the lack of direction, missing the demands of any of its intended audiences.

When glancing at the shortcomings of Spirits Within and the current state of Final Fantasy, it becomes evident that the lost magic of the series wasn’t a recent phenomenon, but one that was already set in place back in 2001 when the film released. Much like Spirits Within, more recent titles like XV, XVI, or the infinite barrage of VII off-shoots are stylistically antithetical to that of old Final Fantasy, namely in their obsessive pursuit of extremely high fidelity, hyper-realistic visuals, cinematic background music, or unimaginative character designs, and many people would understandably point to Sakaguchi as the source behind this paradigm shift for the series.

Having said that, there is a distinct difference that needs to be identified between the financial failure of Spirits Within and the creative failures of modern Final Fantasy. Take away the “Final Fantasy” title from Spirits Within and you would have a flawed, yet phenomenal achievement in CG filmmaking that likely would’ve been better received without the ties to a larger franchise, but take away the same title from modern entries in the series and you would have yet another attempt to cash-in on the fame of open-world gameplay in XV, or a shallow, overly self-serious Devil May Cry clone in XVI.

In a way, Spirits Within ironically embodies the heart of Final Fantasy more than any subsequent entry following Sakaguchi’s departure from the company. Not because it carries the same name, not because it shares elements with Final Fantasy VII, nor because it happens to have a character named Cid, but because it strived to break the boundaries of what was previously believed to be possible; because it brought ideas to the medium that no one else had ever envisioned, and because it was willing to risk everything to materialize that vision, just as Final Fantasy did in 1987.

Hironobu Sakaguchi, The Last Story

To further substantiate the point, Sakaguchi continued to push the envelope throughout his later projects despite budgetary constraints, innovating with titles such as Lost Odyssey and its novel-like storytelling segments which explore the grim reality of finding meaning in growing old and consequently outliving your dearest loved ones, not to mention The Last Story with its unique style of active tactical gameplay blending action RPG combat with cover-based shooting mechanics, or the beautifully crafted handmade dioramas of Fantasian Neo Dimension which the game’s backgrounds are modeled after. By contrast, what has Square Enix done with Final Fantasy since the breakup with Sakaguchi? Apart from the heaps of predatory gacha slop or the dozens of sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes of Final Fantasy VII banking on the very legacy built by Sakaguchi, Uematsu and others, all of which Sakaguchi himself would’ve vehemently opposed back in his time at the company, as he famously believed that a game should provide a satisfying, self-contained experience without the need for follow-ups, let alone more than two decades of them.

So while the visionary core of Final Fantasy had long since withered away in its surrender to corporate interest, being reduced to tasteless, derivative cashgrabs, its soul carries on in the works of Sakaguchi and creators like him who continuously aspire to breathe new life into an otherwise stagnant industry. As such, Final Fantasy lives on; perhaps not by name, but certainly in spirit, through creations that resonate with audiences by the sheer power of their creative merits, rather than their desperate attempts to meet the binary standards set by others before them.

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