Final Fantasy has been known since the PS1 era for its elaborate CGI cutscenes that always push the console to its limits. In 2001, Square attempted to make a film with an innovative CGI technique called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but the film was a complete flop.
What is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within?
- It is not based on any of the previous games
- Directed by the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi
- It was the first fully CGI animated film
- Through motion capture, it aimed for the closest representation of real humans for its time
- The film cost 137 million dollars
Despite all these risks and innovative techniques, the film flopped at the box office and among critics, resulting in over 90 million dollars in losses when accounting for marketing costs. This also marked the end of the studio.
There was also a significant loss in the German video game industry this year:
Giant flop leads to a German game studio no longer making its own games
A flop that destroyed the studio
Square, then not yet merged with Enix, founded the studio Square Pictures specifically for the film. The film also featured a relatively well-known cast with actors like Alec Baldwin and Steve Buscemi.
However, despite the new technology and a relatively high budget of nearly 140 million dollars, the film flopped and received mixed to poor reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic score is at 44% and the user score at 48%.
Although the groundbreaking animation was praised, the film itself did not fare as well. It also bore little resemblance to the known Final Fantasy universe and leaned more towards sci-fi stories.
In 2006, the film, with its loss of over 90 million dollars, was one of the four biggest box office flops of that time according to boston.com.
For the studio, their first film was also their end. Although they were allowed to produce a short film for the Animatrix series afterward, the significant loss from The Spirits Within sealed the studio’s fate.
Two years after the film’s release, Square and Enix merged to form what is now known as Square Enix, and later new films followed that are more in line with the Final Fantasy universe. This includes Advent Children and Kingsglaive.
Have you seen Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and what did you think of it? Let us know in the comments.
However, that was certainly not the only major flop in film history:
One of Hollywood’s biggest flops made “only” 15 million dollars in profit, despite featuring 6 stars
