'Final Fantasy' realistic, but story's dull

By David Germain
AP Movie Writer

"Final Fantasy," based on the sci-fi game, delivers pretty pictures, but doesn't offer much of a story. The movie from Sony's Columbia Pictures is rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence. Running time: 106 minutes

If this ill-conceived sci-fi adventure proves one thing, it's that computer-created humans can be just as dull as real actors when cast adrift by a sluggish, featherbrained screenplay.

The one advantage here is that we haven't had to watch the "Final Fantasy" performers parade their way through the talk-show circuit, gushing about how they'd always dreamed of doing a film about fighting alien ghosties in a post-apocalyptic netherworld.

The film does deliver on its promise of fabricating fairly realistic people and settings through digital imagery. Inspired by the "Final Fantasy" videogame series, the movie renders an impressive mock world of doom and devastation.

But as "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" showed just weeks ago, it takes more than videogame visuals and a PlayStation premise to spin a good tale for the big screen.

Like "Tomb Raider," "Final Fantasy" wallows in New Age mysticism, offering an infantile interpretation of the Gaia myth — that the planet is a living thing with a soul of its own.

Set in 2065, "Final Fantasy" traces the remnants of humanity as they battle an infestation of life-sucking phantoms that landed on Earth aboard a meteor 34 years earlier.

Leading the struggle is Aki Ross (voiced by Ming-Na), a beautiful scientist who's gradually succumbing to a phantom that has infected her body. She's fetching enough to make you wish she were real, but alas, there'll be no win-a-date-with-Aki-Ross sweepstakes to promote the movie.

Aki plays field agent for her mentor, Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland), who dispatches her around the globe to gather a collection of "spirits" — life forces that can counteract the phantoms and boot them off our little rock.

Joining Aki and Sid are Capt. Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin) and his alien-butt-kicking SWAT team (Peri Gilpin, Ving Rhames and Steve Buscemi).

Then there's Gen. Hein (James Woods), who favors a military solution: the Zeus Cannon (no, really, that's what they call it), a giant space bazooka that Aki and Sid fear will harm Mama Gaia.

Director Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created the "Final Fantasy" games, manages the dark, moody atmosphere well enough. But the script by Al Reinert and Jeff Vintar bogs down in cryptic yammering and leaden techno-prattle, remarks such as, "Overall phantom density remains the same," or "I'm scanning the city for the seventh spirit."

Who would have thought the end of the world could be so tedious?

The one great achievement of "Final Fantasy" is Aki. The detail in her features is remarkable, down to her eyelashes, pores and freckles.

Yet so much effort is expended on Aki that other characters — especially Hein, Edwards and his stormtroopers — seem to have gotten shortchanged, coming across as amorphous mannequins.

The real problem is that there's simply not much story to "Final Fantasy." The filmmakers were content to make pretty pictures and pile on tree-hugging conceptions about the circle of life and vague notions of some collective Earth spirit.

What's the point of creating these pixel people if all they do is elicit yawns? Surely, we all can find real people in our lives to bore us without having to pay money to see fake ones do it in a movie theater.