Final Fantasy The Spirits Within - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that is a tasty plasma maybe I could sneak in and watch Final Fantasy spirits within I don't care what anybody says that's one of the best sci-fi films ever made okay hold up we've discussed a few movies here at what happened already but thanks to big boss Trey Adams down at the flophouse via patreon I'm now forced to talk about another one and this just might be among the most infamous money wasting film disasters of all time and who would have thunk it it just so happens to be based on a video game I didn't see that coming while we've already covered the cinematic tour de forces that were Super Mario Brothers and MK annihilation those were monumental Shining pinnacles of excellence when compared to Final Fantasy the Spirits Within a project that failed so hard by every quantifiable metric it should be taught in some type of fail film school for big floppy failures now I know what your sign yeah that movie was kind of weird not what I wanted but like whatever no it's not just like whatever because well you could write off this experimental marriage between video game cutscenes and theatrical cinema as an inoffensive forgettable sci-fi romp it's the behind the scene ska the business deals the wildly ballooning budget and its giant stinky miasma that's the real story here spirits within affected several big companies and prominent figures in ways you can't possibly imagine in fact it's beyond all you can imagine this is where failure becomes reality so in and around 1997 executives and higher-ups head Squaresoft let's not mince words we're getting blazed as hell and throwing around cash like it was going out of style bolstered by the monster success of Final Fantasy seven a fast track the next game in the franchise and basically never stopped after that square had bet big on seven they'd spent a lot of money on things like four disks lots of employees fancied 3d models and getting to our point big expensive cgi cutscenes the quality of these animated sequences blew people away in the late 90s because around this time you'd typically be getting stuff like this [Music] [Music] the Squaresoft bigwigs decided why just limit this to video games let's use all parts of the chocobo and spin this technology off into other mediums with motion pictures be in the next logical choice to do this they need to prove it was even possible thus a team within square set to work on a proof-of-concept pitch titled the gray project which was an appropriate title in more ways than one it focused on two characters arguing which while not terribly ambitious was intended to convey human emotions as well as realistic cloth and hair physics when the test animation was completed the feedback within square was very positive so they went about setting up a studio to build off what they had learned on the gray project to then turn it into a major motion picture and to get the most eyeballs on it it would be based on squares flagship RPG series so far so good now just a few years previous Toy Story already broke through the mainstream to prove that CG animated films could be accepted and even embraced by the mainstream so Square trying to leap ahead to produce something more realistic and from older demographic seemed well timed but of course since this is what happens so far so good can only last for so long square did not have enough room within their own Japanese offices to accommodate for this massive new project as they need an additional 200 employees while their main workforce was already feverishly slaving away on junctioning and gun blades there for a new office would need to be opened and thus square Pictures was founded in Honolulu Hawaii in early 1998 and was comprised of a more international team taking advantage of the location as it was a nice middle ground between the u.s. and Japan the problem here though is that while being able to tap from both east and west talent pools as well as technology was a positive the price tag of setting up a brand new cutting-edge studio in an offshore island state was exceedingly costly estimates pegs square pictures studio around 46 million dollars to start up as they needed to buy Pentium workstations that were so expensive that only the four richest kings of Europe could own them the studio got straight to work and this would kick off a four-year journey that would see final fantasy of the Spirits Within released in the summer of 2001 to ensure the success of this ambitious and has will see risky venture square would turn to one of the most reliable creators final fantasy Father Hironobu Sakaguchi who had settled into more of a shepherd and producer role in recent years the film must be co-directed by Sakaguchi LaMotta nori sakakibara who logically also directed the CG cutscenes from both ff7 and eight now the core story of Spirits Within was also handled by sakaguchi which is pretty obvious as some of the general concepts of his past work make a return here however this screenplay meaning the actual character dialogue and such was handled by Al Reinert and one Jeff Venter Al's credits include Apollo 13 and vinter would go on to write 2004 I Robot so you can see that Sakaguchi's ideas that include things like the fate and destiny of a chosen hero ambitious but misguided villains and powerful ancient streams of life emanated from the earth let's just call them Vita strings might clash when paired with docudrama style space exploration and sci-fi but there's no might about it the story and dialogue were constantly at war with each other but you know more on that later though I gather this will be somewhat of a rough ride doc you've got a talent for understatement square pictures despite the proof of concept that was the great project still had so so so many more things they needed to work out unlike say a traditional film or a script is finalized before a shoot or tweaks during principal photography the script and dialogue for his spirits within was ever-changing during the four years of that principal photography which was basically 200 animators sitting at the desks now even for an animated film four years is I'm typically incredibly long time for just one movie help the entire lord of the rings' trilogy took less time to film this is because to render just one frame of Final Fantasy it took like a thousand minutes or like an hour it took a while doesn't matter the exact figures because every virtual character or actor was composed of over a hundred thousand polygons which was unheard of at around this time frame hell in 1998 leras breasts were so composed of like three so hundred thousand polygons being rendered on the most bleed enos of bleeding edge tech frame by frame by two hundred people for four years that's gonna cost a lot of Gil and at some point that cost the technical achievement of Spirits Within was viewed as the most important factors and in terms of the bottom line yep that's true but what was viewed as secondary was everything else the story the characters and the dialogue now Sakaguchi cut his teeth working on rpgs long drawn-out narratives that would stall out character motivations backstories and the grander plot gradually over the course of dozens of hours but then someone came up to him and said yeah can you do all that but like in - oh sorry aha I meant one hour and 46 minutes because it'll cost too much we make it any longer than that okay great see you later that's [ __ ] up so with that in mind I don't think Sakaguchi was the best person to write this given this restriction in fact I don't know who would have been the correct person because it's just not a very good idea cramming all this rich narrative into a theatrical film I mean why couldn't there just been a final fantasy anime and said hey look what I've got for you hold on it's alright there you go it's Doka Doka Doka chocolate for you Oh anyway while the technical progress was slow but impressive the script was getting more and more convoluted which was weird because it was also simultaneously shockingly simple the talent to bring these characters to quote-unquote life would be Ming nozaki Ross Donald Sutherland as dr. Sid no not not that Sid but spelt this with this SID for some reason the shadow Alec Baldwin as gray Edwards aka every videogame protagonist from 2002 to still now and real life a key supervillain James Woods as your Sephiroth stand in general hein aliens invaded the earth decades ago and to stop them it all comes down to a clash of ideologies as a key Sid Grey and the rest all race against the clock to collect a bunch of ghosts when it's in a backpack I don't get it before Hein uses the BFG 10,000 to nuke all the aliens and I guess the world in all of my research I'm not sure why this setting was chosen but I can hazard a guess Square teamed up with Sony naturally on the film and Sony turned to one of their own Studios Columbia to distribute perhaps at some point executives / producers felt that spiky-haired anime boys are genetically engineered red lion dogs and comically oversized nonsense swords wasn't the best choice to appeal to a mass worldwide audience so what are we left with um soldiers wearing grey armor or t-shirts or everyone's just wearing grey sometimes blackened you know you don't want to scare off the normies this was another decision that doomed the project from the outset not enough final fantasy to appeal to fans of final fantasy but still too weird in its themes and story to appeal to anyone else so when trailers first started popping up I on a personal level remembers hearing everyone saying how amazing the film looked visually but being confused as to why this was even called final fantasy where is the magic the Phoenix downs the chocobo is the airships the fantasy even seven and eight as different as they were still managed to keep some series tropes intact just another example that if you try to meet vastly different demographics halfway you're almost always not going to meet any of them it was around this time where more and more focus was being put on the film as visuals instead of you know talking more about the story and the characters well with one exception a key raw story gained pushed as a virtual actress which back then who is a ridiculous statement to make but nowadays it's even more ridiculous the concept would be that a key would appear in other films after Final Fantasies assured success become a star within the hollywood digi verse now when you start talking more about future plans over the current film you're supposed to be advertising then you may be losing the plot regardless where in columbia kept pushing and even had a key appear in Maxim's Hot 100 in a bikini no less listen if you're gonna pull a claim like stunts leading into the launch of your heady sci-fi space opera you know something's up but when it comes down to it though I don't blame them they needed to make sure this thing would be a success so they utilize the two oldest marketing tactics known to man violence and Diddy's the violence part comes via the trailers or Spirits Within which took the very few action set-pieces and edit them to look like starship goddamn troopers despite action making up the smallest sliver of the movies running time this is most likely due to executives and producers and pretty much everyone else who worked on it realizing that was shaping up to be an incoherent mess in terms of its story presented themselves but it looks so good though let's let's just focus on that guys which again given the circumstances was probably the right play so during interviews or in general marketing did throw at all those aforementioned metrics one hundred thousand polygons 915 Pentium three workstations 1327 shots 140 1964 frames and it took 120 prison years yikes to complete cool what's the story about I don't understand you don't have to understand so now for all of those of you playing at home how much take a guess what was the final budget for final fantasy of the spirits within Honolulu studio for years the newest and CGI trickery throw out a number if you said 76 million dollars then your rights here's a firm but brief virtual handshake that I would be giving you if the project had stayed on that original projected budget but instead things kind of got out of hand because 177 million dollars this was more expensive than Terminator 2 Waterworld and was for time only bested by Titanic in terms of money spent leading to release the film squaresoft producer John Ida admitted we did end up spending more than what we planned but it's not by any means a massive number compared to what other major studios have spent on similar features which as we discussed is not very true at all so Final Fantasy launched on July 11th 2001 which was literally the best time it could have ff9 had just released the previous year and was well liked by both critics and fans except for kids who started with ff7 of course and only a few months later Final Fantasy 10 was set the light ps2 is ablaze as it was the most pre-ordered game of all time in 2001 so this was right smack dab in the middle of Final Fantasy fever therefore was logical to assume those same fans will come out and support its big-screen debut but again throw out a number what was its weekend tally where you make the most money how much of a dent did they put into that 177 million dollar price tag eleven million dollars final fantasy belly flopped into fourth place for that summer weekend with Legally Blonde topping the list but it's not all about the North American weekend haul how did the movie do worldwide surely that'll offset them oh okay The Washington Post called it bewildering and sraight LA Weekly felt it was soulless and the New York Post said it had both a predictable yet nonsensical plot coupled with laughably lame dialog however the late Roger Ebert did give the movie a positive review stating the story is nuts-and-bolts space opera lacking the intelligence and daring of many others in the genre but the look of the film is revolutionary final fantasy is a technical milestone like the first talkies or 3d movies you want to see it whether you care about aliens or space cannons and that's the common thing among many reviews yeah this isn't very good but it still looks so stunning how even in 2020 looking back I'm shocked at how well it holds up aside from those tiny victories the box office was just too embarrassing and not only did his doom square pictures it got close to destroying squaresoft itself this was such a catastrophic loss 94 million dollars that threatened the merger that Square was negotiating tricks themself and fellow publisher Enix talks between the two Japanese giants have been happening since 2000 but the sudden downturn in business shook Phoenix's confidence why merge with a company that was doing poorly so it actually delayed the negotiations for a few more years and to square thankfully bounced back thanks to a money injection by sony computer entertainment along with the brisk sales of FF 10 and Kingdom Hearts and Enix his confidence was fully renewed square pictures as you can imagine was folded back into the main workforce and its honolulu office was closed but not before they finished their last contracted work which was the Animatrix short flight of the and yeah that's that's it however there was one more person that took the failure Spirits Within harder than the rest and that was her Renault boo Sakaguchi as is a common thing in Japanese business if you are the head of a failed project like a really failed project a lot of the onus is placed on you even if it's not exactly fair the sakaguchi voluntarily left square in 2003 and sites spirits within as one of the reasons why since his departure final fantasy has been let's say shaky-shaky is accurate but after enough time had passed they tested the waters once again with two other CG films like Advent rising I mean Advent Children and Kings Glee which got even worse reviews than spirits within some house so if they haven't completely abandoned the idea just mostly now this isn't just a case of a thing being made that wasn't very good but rather a confluence of decisions that led to ultimate failure sure if the movie still had a nonsensical plot that came in under budget they would have at least broken even or if the movie's plot had been executed well and featured lots of fun you know final fantasy stuff might have even made more money or at least be looked back on more folly rather than being requested to appear on this show almost weekly relieved today on this quote from squares Jen Ida who had this to say shortly before the movie opened I hope that we will be producing final fantasy 23 with Columbia when I have much more gray hair hopefully there will be many more projects to come thanks again to Trey Adams for requesting this episode and you'd like to request your own head on over to the flop house VIP patreon to make your fantasy a reality or whatever that tagline was see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 377,682

Rating: 4.8996801 out of 5

Keywords: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy The Spirits Within, Movie Disasters, Bad Movies, Movie Bombs, Documentaries, Wha Happun, What Happened?, Matt McMuscles, Flophouse

Id: JzJ8MWDg350

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/NorrisOBE]

Man, someone should've told Sakaguchi-san and every other Japanese developer back in the day that it's okay if your video game series doesn't appeal to the West like Mario and Resident Evil.

[u/taratekitugen]

I remember watching with my parents at home pretending to know about the movie ''Ah yes the desert, that's where the big monster are'' having no idea what the fuck was going on, because i used to play the games, it's honestly a good cg movie for the time thought.

[u/Jiko27]

Did he mention that this movie was rendered on the GS Cube?

The product of 16 PS2 boards fused together and sold by Sony privately in the hope people would use it to prerender cutscenes?
And was used for such movies as The Matrix 1, Resident Evil and Antz?
And nobody wanted to use them because it had shite bandwidth connecting to external sources?

And afterward were all sent back to SONY and dismantled?

[u/FrequentLecture]

Hella rad. Tight AF. This slaps.

[u/mateoboudoir]

I still unironically love this movie.

[u/The_Draigg]

The lesson I’m getting out of this is that the Final Fantasy V sequel OVA is probably the best animated Final Fantasy show we’re going to get.

[u/PlzNoArchways]

Is Wha Happun the most successful thing any of the boys ever did (collectively or not)?

[u/CeSoul06]

I've watched this movie twice in my life and still dont know what is even going on. 8 should probably watch it as an adult. 😂