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ffspiritswithin2012-07-03 02:55 pm
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punctualdork: Common Arguments: Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within

k, let’s be honest - the most common argument you hear about The Spirits Within is that it doesn’t have anything to do with Final Fantasy. Seeing as how I have (a) an open mind, and (b) an extensive knowledge of the Final Fantasy series, I find no issues in saying that whoever thinks that is both wrong and ignorant.
Let me break it down for you folks, by looking at the COMMON THEMES of the numbered series - excluding Final Fantasy 11 and 14…cause fuck MMOs. ALSO, spoilers ahead - so cover your ears if you don’t know the basic plots of the games…even if you’re reading this.
1. Religion & Philosophy.
Anyone who’s read Final Fantasy and Philosophy isn’t unaware of the importance placed on motives in the series. Religion, divinities, theologies and their related philosophies play an important part in the Final Fantasy series. Kefka from Final Fantasy 6 for example demonstrates the principles of Madness and Nihilism in his quest to destroy and become singular god of nothingness - and he ends up being successful. Final Fantasy 7’s Lifestream represents something more religious and the process of Mako creation is a question of moral ethics. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the effects of Sin and Yevon on the populous of Spira. All in all, every game has examples of different philosophies and religious beliefs affecting judgment, and Spirits Within is no different. There is a moral conundrum over whether to hurt the invading Spirits, and different beliefs as to how to combat their encroachment. Much like in the games, these characters live in a world divided by belief systems - and these systems play a major role to the plot.
2. Plot Elements.
To stay along the main vein, we should probably talk about how there have been similar plot elements throughout the series, and how Spirits Within falls within the same lines. Many entries in the Final Fantasy series involve broadly similar plot points, such as rebellion against a major economic, political, or religious power, or a struggle against an evil which threatens to overtake or destroy the world. Final Fantasy 8 embodies this to a tee - much to the delight of Spoony, Squall and friends have to combat the Galbadian Government, Sorceress Edea, the past, a rebellion within Garden, and Ultimecia. Final Fantasy 4 saw different governments with different belief systems come together to fight united against a greater threat - Golbez. Spirits within also has a perceived ‘Big-bad’, a crazed government leader, and enemy forces. All this leads to the point that the set up of Spirits Within is VERY Final Fantasy.
3. Dualism.
The Final Fantasy Wiki was one of the first places to make this point - and I completely agree (while also giving them full credit for this point in this publication I made for educational purposes). This dualism is expressed in a variety of ways, including two worlds, two different heroes/heroines, or most commonly, dualism between antagonist and protagonist. Most often this dualism is thrown out of balance by outside forces, forcing the protagonists to restore balance. Sometimes, the final villain is a being who wishes to return all things to nothingness, and restore balance in the most extreme way possible.
Let’s look at some examples from each game:
- Final Fantasy 1 - An imbalance is created when Garland (a villain shrouded in darkness) creates a time-loop. The warriors of light defeat him in order to bring balance back to the force and avoid further time alterations. Garland turns into chaos-itself and the warriors of light represent order.
- Final Fantasy 2 - The Emperor splits into two when he dies - the light side rises to heaven and his dark side descends to hell. The heroes have to defeat both to bring a balance to the world.
- Final Fantasy 3 - There is quite literally a world of light and a world of darkness. The warriors of light require help from the warriors of dark to overcome the cloud of darkness and return the world to where it should be.
- Final Fantasy 4 -The blue planet has two parallels - the red mood and the underworld. There are 4 crystals of light in the world and 4 crystals of darkness. The red moon also has 8. Cecil in himself also represents Dualism as he moves from being a Dark Knight to a Paladin. As a paladin he faces his direct nemesis - his dark knight brother Golbez (thus making it another struggle between light and darkness).
- Final Fantasy 5 - The world is split into 2 two contain the power of the void. Each world has a set of 4 crystals. Exdeath escapes his seal and unleashes the void by destroying the crystals. This forces the worlds back together. 2 generations of the warriors of dawn then have to come together to destroy Exdeath and recreate the crystals.
- Final Fantasy 6 - There is direct conflict between technology and mysticism. Espers are gathered and abused by technology in order to seek ultimate power. The main protagonist - Terra is an amalgamation between these two worlds and when the world-itself is torn asunder and destroyed by Kefka, she rises to return the world to its pre-apocalyptic state (risking her well-being in the process).
- Final Fantasy 7 - Another conflict exists here between science and nature. Sephiroth - representing science and a genetic experiment of Shinra summons meteor with the black materia in order to exact vengeance against the planet. Aerith - last of the Centra - attempts to use white materia to summon holy and save the planet. Also, the creation of Mako requires draining of the Lifesteam - another conflict between science and nature.
- Final Fantasy 8 - Squall and his rival Seifer are both alike and dissimilar. Representing two very different paths that could have been taken. Ultimecia attempts to compress time and the SeeD’s that she inadvertently caused the creation of, stop her and return the flow of time to normal.
- Final Fantasy 9 - There are two worlds - Gaia and Terra. The Terran world was destroyed many centuries before the game began, so the Terran people attempted to assimilate Gaia by sealing themselves in sleep and gradually replacing the souls of Gaia with those of Terra’s. In the end, it turns out that Zidane and Kuja( the games protagonist and antagonist) were both created as Terren angels of death…until they work together in the end to finish the cycle.
- Final Fantasy 10 - A direct conflict of god-less machina and Yeven. I would go more into detail about how that happens, but the whole SIN plot is complicated and we’ll touch on that later on.
- Final Fantasy 12 - A example of despotism vs self-management…which ends up being a conflict between the creatures of the world and their divine controllers.
- Final Fantasy 13 - the floating Cocoon and Gran Pulse two separate worlds that both view the other as corrupt or evil plays on the Dualist theme. Additionally the roles of fal’Cie and humanity on each world is also reversed - in that on Cocoon humanity relies upon the fal’Cie for survival while on Pulse the fal’Cie are almost indifferent.
WHAT DOES THIS ALL LEAD UP TO?
Simple. Me restating my point that dualism plays a large role in the Final Fantasy series. That role doesn’t exclude The Spirits Within.
In The Spirits Within you have 2 societies: Humanity and The Phantoms. Each have both territory and their own motives. There is a Dualism between Aki and General Hein - she seeks to use the spirits in organic material to save humanity and put the phantoms back on their course. Where Heim wants to used the man-made technology - Zeus Space Cannon to destroy the phantoms and eliminate them from the universe. There is also a difference between perception and reality when it comes to the phantoms. They are perceived as being invaders attempting to destroy humanity. In reality, they are a veritable Noah’s Ark of deceased animals from a destroyed planet. They had no intention of hurting humanity and are a by-product of a calamity. Aki in the end liberates the planet by transferring the completed spirit into Gaia and sends the phantoms back into space - finally at peace.
4. Sacrifice.
Final Fantasy is notorious when it comes to self-sacrifice. Whether it be Cid, Palom & Porum, Yang, Aerith, Shadow, Sir Auron, Vanielle & Fang, or Baltheir & Fran - People are ALL TOO WILLING to fuck themselves over for the good of the world. The Spirits Within is no different. By the end of the movie, just about every supporting character dies in an effort to help Aki liberate humanity from the Phantoms. Once more, her lover bites the big one in an effort to complete the final spirit. She walks away from the crater with her life and a preggo belly because everyone else died for her.
5. Meteors.
Meteors are fierce fuckers in the Final Fantasy universe. Meteors play a significant role in the plots of Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy 7 - and it’s aftermath, and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Hell the phantoms themselves arrive on a meteor.
6. Airships.
Just about every Final Fantasy has them. The spirits within is no different. They look futuristic in some senses, but I think they could be put on par with Final Fantasy 13.
7. Cid
…Sid, rather.
SO every fantasy since Final Fantasy 2 has had a Cid in various forms. Usually he is one of the heroes or supporting characters, but every now and then he is a massive crazy ass hole that deserves to die a painful death.
…
Such is not the case with Sid in Final Fantasy: The Spirits within. Sid continually supports Aki - Much like earlier Sid’s in the series.
SO
Hopefully those points make a decent case as to how Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is very much similar to the main Final Fantasy series games.
OTHER ARGUMENTS
“Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’s character don’t feel like Final Fantasy characters”
To this I call BULL SHIT.
Not because that argument is necessarily wrong, but rather looking at a movie’s characters through the scope of a video game is not fair.
LET’S BE REALISTIC FOLKS
In any given Final Fantasy, we are given 30-100 hours to better understand a character’s motivations and personality. In a movie, you are given less than 2 hours (106 minutes in the case of this movie). How are we ever suppose to connect with them the same way?
And SERIOUSLY - FUCK the people who will say that they liked the characters in Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children YOU ALREADY KNEW THOSE CHARACTERS. The only new ones that were introduced were Denzel and Kadja and his brothers - characters who are all cardboard cut outs.
Kadja is only remotely relatable because he IS SEPHIROTH.
So let’s just take the characters as they are and accept the fact that they belong to another medium.
NEXT ARGUMENT
“It just doesn’t look like Final Fantasy”
Before anyone has the right to say this statement, I want them to sit down and think really hard and long about what Final Fantasy looks like in terms of setting.
Thinking yet?
That’s right.
The setting varies by the game. Sure the early games were all castles and witches and wizards, but from Final Fantasy 6 onward there are influences of various time periods, technological capabilities, and vehicles. Final Fantasy 7 and 8 are militaristic, Final Fantasy 10 is incredibly rural and spiritual, Final Fantasy 13 has high tech influences, and even the games like 9, 6, and 12 that have castles, also involve high technology in one way or another.
No Final Fantasy has a set them of castles and crystals anymore - THAT WOULD BE LAME.
This argument is dumb.
NEXT ARGUMENT
“No one saw this movie.”
I wouldn’t go that far. It made about $85 million at the box office - and considering that this is a videogame movie - that’s nothing to snuff at. I will give credence to the fact that it’s considered to be a box office bomb. The budget ended up being $137 million, but if we consider the fact that the original budget was supposed to be $70 million, this could have been profitable…given a little restraint. And while it did cause the temporary demise of Square Pictures, who’s to say they didn’t actually make the money back? Many directors have gone on record as saying that Box office is just a commercial for DVD release - which tends to generate much more revenue. Also, I don’t believe the hype that the movie caused Square to be in such a state of duress that they had to merge with Enix in order to survive. At the time, the two companies were both profitable but saturating the market with too many of the same games. The merger deal was put in place before the movie - talks actually started in 2000. In reality, Enix delayed the deal because of the movie losing money and making them nervous.
NEXT ARGUMENT
“This movie ruined Hironobu Sakaguchi’s career."
Sadly, while this movie didn’t do what he thought it would for his career, it certainly didn’t destroy it.
Things hadn’t been super awesome at Square for a while for Senior Sakaguchi. His role at the company - despite founding one of the largest videogame series in the world - was diminishing.
In fact, he started working on Mistwalker - his new company back in 2000, before he left Square in 2003 and Microsoft helped him officially open the doors to this new studio in 2004.
Mistwalker is now flourishing, and he is doing just fine.
FINAL ARGUMRNT
“Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is emotionally removed, the story has poor pacing, and it’s pretty boring in general.”
Umm…well, yeah actually. You’re absolutely right.
I’m never going to be the guy to go out on a limb to say that it’s an awesome movie - or even a good one for that matter.
But it is Final Fantasy. Whether you like it or not.
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Unfortunately I don't know much of FFX because I hate that game.