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Needless to say, everyone is skeptical. But apparently Dr. Sid is the Dr. Phil of his time, so no matter what he says, he’ll always have a job. So after a series of beautifully rendered but emotionally inert events, Aki joins forces with an old flame called Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin) and his plucky, conspicuously multi-racial squad of elite Space Marines. But while they’re out in the field looking for “spirits”, the General manages to dig up enough dirt on Aki to force the council’s hand and take matters into his own sinister, black-leather-gloved hands.

Now, that should be all we need for a great movie. You’ve got an alien invasion, and to fight it off you have a strong and competent, totally non-sexualized female lead. You’ve got Alec Baldwin leading a plucky, conspicuously multi-racial squad of elite Space Marines. James Woods is playing one of those cool villains who dresses like someone who eats kittens for breakfast, but he also has surprisingly legitimate point of view. And ladies, allow me to reiterate the Big Ass Space Cannon, along with Alec Baldwin’s buttery smooth voice. It must be so cool to be him.

All you need now is the requisite action beats – two reluctant heroes join forces with a fatherly scientist to fight aliens. A sympathetic villain tries to murder everyone while Space Marines open fire on anything that’s not human. Throw in a little betrayal, a big turning point, someone dies, there’s a climactic battle, planets explode, and if time permits, maybe there’s even a little computer generated people-making-out action in there, too. In fact, every one of those things is in Final Fantasy. But two things all but ruin the film anyway, at least from a narrative standpoint. One is the clunky, dispassionate way the story unfolds. The other is the culturally tone deaf nature of the subject matter. And unfortunately, both issues feed into each other.

Plenty of cultures believe that the earth itself has a “spirit” of some kind, and that’s okay. The problem is that this movie was specifically made for and marketed to an American audience. But the central concept here - that we’re killing the spirit of the earth - is something about as accessible to Americans as pickled squid. And the film’s attempt to break through that barrier absolutely crushes the pacing of the story, making it confusing AND frustrating. That’s two annoying fatal flaws at once - in the most negative way possible, this is a brutally efficient movie. I think an opportunity was missed, because the general setting of the story (a near-future post-apocalyptic alien invasion space marine explosion salad) is an excellent place to start. And the look of the movie – holy God, 13 years later, it still looks absolutely astonishing.

Put an asterisk by that, though. The biggest criticism of Final Fantasy’s motion capture animation has been the supposed lack of facial expression, which most people find unsettling. I can’t say there are no dead-eyed doll faces to be found but for the most part, it’s not quite “Polar Express” weird. Still, Final Fantasy looked and felt so realistic I occasionally forgot that it wasn’t - until someone’s face went dead. It’s as though the technology that makes CGI people emote only works about 60 percent of the time. Right in the middle of a conversation, characters’ facial expressions and physical mannerisms realistically respond to conversational nuance, and everything looks utterly convincing. And then Lieutenant Blankface walks in and makes it weird.

This I can forgive though, because what ultimately breaks this movie is a cornball story executed with dull, workmanlike precision. If only Final Fantasy were as dazzling on the inside as it is on the outside. If only the story were as engaging and accessible as the visuals. If only the movie left you wanting more, instead of wondering what the hell the point was. All the dead-eyed doll faces in the world couldn’t keep me away from a movie like that.

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