It seems like video game adaptations are extremely popular these days, from the still ongoing Sonic the Hedgehog movies, to TV shows such as Arcane. However, some of the first video game movies, especially around the early 2000s, really struggled to get going. This includes Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a movie inspired by the Final Fantasy series, which is directly blamed for the demise of SquareSoft and its production company, Square Pictures.
This sci-fi movie follows two scientists, Aki Ross and Doctor Sid, as they work to stop a deadly alien race that has invaded Earth. These Phantoms can kill someone with simple physical touch, though a brief interaction with them merely infects them. After Ross is infected but stabilized, she realizes there’s a way to save Earth if she can gather eight spirits, which are unique energy patterns that come from different lifeforms. They have to hurry in their search, however, as General Hein is working at the same time to try and end the Phantoms but through a more violent way that could hurt Earth. No matter how interesting the story was, however, it doesn’t affect the fact that this movie, and eventually the company, bombed.
Final Fantasy Was a Box Office Bomb
At the time, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within was the most expensive video game movie. Its record held for almost a decade before Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time took the throne. The easiest way to say why the movie brought down SquareSoft is that it didn’t make back this budget. The final budget for the movie was around $137 million, and it only made around $80 million back; adjusted for inflation in today's money, the studio lost roughly $91 million. That much of a loss, especially in the early 2000s, was enough of a hole in their pockets to sink the company.
It could be a case that there wasn’t much of an audience for the movie: it’s one of the biggest reasons any piece of media can fail, because no matter how well-made it is, without the audience it will never kick off. However, it seems that many people felt there were issues with the story as well, finding it a bit dull at the time and not evoking the emotions it was supposed to. It seems they didn’t introduce the topic well enough either, as many people who watched it weren’t entirely sure what the Earth spirit was or why it was so important. Considering video games were even more of a controversial topic back then, and weren’t nearly as popular, it’s not surprising that the movie ran into these issues and didn’t perform as well as the studio wanted it to.
Production Issues and Length Caused Inflated Budget
Most mainstream movies are going to have a big budget, no matter whether it’s live action or animated. From paying the actors and crew, to physically or digitally building the environments around said characters, making a movie is no small task. However, this production seemed intent on racking up a bill. From rendering the movie with some of the most advanced technology at the time, to its full four-year production, the budget just kept increasing over time. Around 200 people worked on the film to bring it to life, and combined, put in a total of about 120 years worth of work.
Considering the original budget of the movie was around $70 million, SquareSoft would have made its budget back and might not have collapsed had their project not taken so long to keep up with the salaries of all of their employees. Though they did use motion capture for a lot of the movies to make animation easier, there were some movements that simply didn’t work right, and all hand and face movements were done manually. This, combined with completely hand-drawn backgrounds, all contributed to the time it took and the technology they had to use, inflating the budget and making the studio lose too much money to stay afloat.
Uncanny Valley Was Apparent Everywhere
The movie aimed to be, and was, the first photorealistic computer-animated feature film, but it came too early. Now you see realism in games everywhere, from realistic mud and snow footprints as you move your character around, to perfectly animated lighting and sunrays. Game companies continue to be praised for their realism as technology continues to develop and make everything even more realistic. If you watch older movies and TV shows that use CGI however, you’d probably know that this was not the case back then, as everything looks off-putting and, in some cases, cheesy.
While this might have been the height of computer animation back then, it certainly wasn’t the greatest, and putting it on a big screen didn’t help either. No matter how the story was, the characters were the real issue. No audience member could truly get into the movie thanks to the uncanny valley effects. From flat expressions and reactions that didn’t truly feel human, to something always feeling a little off about them, the photorealistic animation actually hindered this movie and turned people away from watching it. Square Pictures had planned more films, but the failure of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within sank the studio, which closed its doors and instead became absorbed into Visual Works.