THE MARCH OF THE DIGITAL HUMANS

There's been a lot of great computer animated movies since Tron came out back in the early 80s. We've seen Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Shrek, and bug movies from both Disney and Dreamworks. All these films had fantastic visual effects and engaging stories, but they all lacked one thing... They couldn't really render people realistically. Sure, its easy to give toys emotions, or cartoony bugs who talk like Woody Allen, but REAL people seem to always look blocky and unconvincing. Whereas the house, toys and other props in Toy Story looked fantastic, the kid who lived next door who liked to barbecue Barbies still seemed like a series of polygons and color layers.

All this has changed with the release of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. They've done it. They've made computer animated people look so real that there are countless times during the film that you can hardly believe that what you're seeing isn't a flesh and blood actor. From the individual strands of their hair to the tiny pores on their skin to the eyelashes and the subtle expressions on each characters face, this is the next step up in animation and leads to a whole range of cinematic possibilities we haven't even scratched the surface of. More on that soon...

First, the film... It's a beautiful work. Every shot is a money shot. Whereas some of the big Hollywood movies wow you with the one super expensive special effect that they proudly wank at you in the ads and trailers, each frame of Final Fantasy could easily kick almost any other movies ass when it comes to spectacular visuals. It looks like a work of art, and it is... Taking an international team of animators 5 years to complete. The story is compelling as well. It's very Eastern, with a few new age undertones (the Gaia "life-force" of the planet is a major element of the plot), but there is always a balance with the skeptical Western objective materialist view of things, and all so-called "spiritual" ideas are always explained and proved in the Final Fantasy world with the latest technology, so we always have the mechanical data backing up the philosophical concepts. The alien monsters are also extremely well done, each one rendered in luminous colors that make them look like something out of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos mixed with semi-transparent Chinese dragons. They look like they exist between dimensions, and we find out later in the story that this indeed may be the case (but I won't give too much away!)

The concepts presented in this movie are actually quite deep, and this isn't light entertainment in the way that Shrek and A Bugs Life movies were. The story here is extremely involved and definitely requires multiple viewings, both for the plot and to simply marvel at the artwork. The tale isn't for young children, as most of the main players don't make it through to the end, and the conclusion isn't watered down with any of them coming back from the dead and giving a "thumbs up" sign. Death in Final Fantasy is dark and disturbing, but works to the advantage of the film. To me, it showed that this was not catering to the "family audience" by sacrificing an engaging and realistic plot by throwing contrived Hollywood formulas into the mix. So with this leap forward in cinema animation, my imagination can speculate on a few things that might come next. What about doing movies with dead actors?

We've already seen the John Wayne and Fred Astaire commercials and the beginnings of this type of digital rendering in Forrest Gump and other similar movies, but now that we can make people look like real people on the computer, how long will it be before we have the return of some of Hollywood's biggest icons back again for more? How big would a movie starring James Dean and Marilyn Monroe be? What about a Beatles reunion using a John Lennon that looks so real even Paul, George and Ringo would be convinced? You can take it further by doing body scans of actors and actresses in their prime and having them able to do movies in 50 years looking like they're in their early 20s or 30s. Concepts like "too old" could be a thing of the past as the Hollywood elite won't have to rely exclusively on plastic surgery anymore to make them look "forever young".

You could have Julia Roberts starring with a young Frank Sinatra in a movie made 100 years from now and by then no one will think this is out of the ordinary. A few critics have speculated that this type of technological feat will make real actors obsolete, but I think there will always be a place for flesh and blood in the cinema. But with the range of emotions and expressions conveyed by the digital cast of this film, one has to wonder. Who knows? Maybe in 100 years having an actual human being really acting in a movie again will be seen as just as novel a concept as Final Fantasy's Aki and Grey giving each other the most realistic animated kiss in cinema history (So far!)

My hats off to the team who made this movie. This is a vision of things to come, hopefully not in terms of the fate of mankind (which would suck), but in terms of animation and the endless possibilities of movie magic.