Quotes / Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

The reason to see this movie is simply, gloriously, to look at it...it's like you're witnessing a Heavy Metal story come to life. Is there a future for this kind of expensive filmmaking ($140 million, I've heard)? I hope so, because I want to see more movies like this, and see how much further they can push the technology...In reviewing a movie like this, I am torn between its craft elements and its story. The story is nuts-and-bolts space opera, without the intelligence and daring of, say, Steven Spielberg's A.I. But the look of the film is revolutionary. Final Fantasy is a technical milestone, like the first talkies or 3-D movies. You want to see it whether you care about aliens or space cannons. It exists in a category of its own, the first citizen of the new world of cyberfilm.

—Roger Ebert