Aki Ross is a scientist working on a way to destroy the aliens that have infested Earth for the last thirty-four years. She is nearly finished with her solution, but what's left of Earth government believes her solution is superstitious pseudo-science and is leaning towards the military option, which Aki believes will destroy the living spirit of the planet (which no one else believes in).

The aliens are horrors out of nightmare; normally invisible to human sight, they kill humans with one touch. When made visible, they appear as a dazzling array of glowing jellyfish-type creatures with tentacles and giant teeth, malevolently homing in on any living thing and sucking out its spirit.

Fans of the long-running video game series will notice similar themes and styles in this story. The script is far from spectacular, and has painfully awkward moments, but it's not far from the average Hollywood script these days. (It's certainly far better than the Dungeons & Dragons script, for example.) I also have quibbles with the extremely two-dimensional and unnecessary villain. Interesting plot elements were glossed over or skipped, and other obvious, tenuous, or inconsistent plot elements were overemphasized. But this is all par for the course in the average Hollywood movie these days, so why should we hold Final Fantasy to a higher standard?

And the graphics. Oh, the graphics. For all their flaws with regards to rendering of human figures (which is an amazingly difficult problem, but very obvious to human eyes) there's still a phenomenal list of achievements. There has been much hype over the individually-rendered human hairs, which were impressive, but even more so to me was the realism of people walking. This has been a nearly unsolvable problem in CG up till now - for whatever reason, you could either make them look like they were actually managing to make contact with the ground or give them a natural movement - not both. Square has managed to solve that problem better than anyone else I've seen yet. So what if the people don't breathe.

The future technology highlighted in the film was also wonderful. The virtual-reality displays that the humans used were like those I've always pictured, but never seen on film until now. The metamorphosing spaceships brought back all the gleefulness of playing with Transformers as a kid. Beautiful free-fall scenes and spectacular alien beasties make the picture complete, bringing you fully into the world of Final Fantasy.

The graphics get 4.5 stars; the plot and writing gets 2. It all averages out at 3.

Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12