Surprisingly, Final Fantasy has only ever tried to make two forays into the movie business. The games are chock-full of stories that could make for proper trilogies with how long they are. It'd also be a question of whether a JRPG style story would transition well to a movie audience, and neither of their attempts has given a firm answer to that question.
Both Spirits Within and Advent Children are flawed movies that are beautiful to look at but have plots that didn't always connect with viewers. Most would say Advent Children was the better of the two, but Spirits Within has more strengths than people realize.
10 Spirits Within: It Pioneered A New Brand Of Animation
For as big a box office bomb as Spirits Within was, its ambition can't be denied. Square pictures wanted to be the first photorealistic animated film in existence, and they succeeded, only it came at the cost of going under. The film cost far more than they expected, sinking the company before it got off its feet.
However, the greatness they achieved with the character models can't be taken away from them. They pushed the boundaries where no one else would and created animation a decade before its time.
9 Advent Children: It Has Recognizable Faces In It
When it comes to films about a video game series, having familiar faces is a plus. It gives fans of the series someone to instantly connect with, and in this case, there are multiple people as most of the cast were all in Final Fantasy VII, save for three characters.
As the most popular game in the franchise, even those with only a passing interest know who resident hero Cloud is. His sword is one of the most iconic parts of the franchise, even getting him in a second video games series because of it.
8 Spirits Within: It Doesn't Require You To Play A Game To Understand What's Going On
For as nice as the recognizable faces are in Advent Children, it runs into a massive roadblock in its story. Given who the main antagonist ends up being, viewers need to have played the seventh game to have any idea of what's going on.
The movie expects viewers to already know who these characters are, making it unwelcoming to new viewers. Spirits Within doesn't have that issue, making the story something newcomers to the franchise can follow.
7 Advent Children: It Provided Good Character Development To Cloud
While the plot moves fast and focuses more on the fight scenes than anything, Cloud gets plenty of focus. The development Cloud receives in Advent Children is top-notch, forcing him to confront his past and the thorn in his side that will never leave, Sephiroth.
He's able to fully move past them by the end of the movie when he's lying in the church. With his friends surrounding him, he realizes that not only is it not time to join Aerith in the afterlife but that he's no longer alone.
6 Spirits Within: The Cast Is Loaded With Hollywood Actors
Spirits Within spared no expense when it came to getting actors for the movie, pulling in well-known bit actors like Ving Rhames and Steve Buschemi to leading men like Alec Baldwin and James Woods.
The cast was star-studded by 2001 standards, something non-Disney animated films rarely saw. None of the actors mailed it in for an easy paycheck either, all of them bringing life to their characters and doing the best they could with the plot.
5 Advent Children: Far Superior Fight Scenes
The fight scenes in Advent Children are incredible. Even those that were completely lost by the plot could stop to appreciate the smoothness of the battle sequences. The animation in it was smooth by today's standards, let alone 16 years ago.
It pushed the boundaries of what an animated fight could look like, and it wasn't just the final fights either. It was all of them. Tifa vs Loz may be the best in the movie, and it happened early on.
4 Spirits Within: Aki & Gray's Relationship Helps Carry The Journey To Collect Spirits
While the plot of Spirits Within is a little out there, even by Final Fantasy standards, it's a more personable story than Advent Children is. Advent focuses more on the battles, while Spirits Within is more about the characters.
That's no more true than the relationship between Aki and Gray, two former lovers, who rekindle what they once had. It doesn't happen with a snap of their fingers either, progressing to the point that the viewer feels bad when Gray has to sacrifice himself at the end.
3 Advent Children: Its Antagonists Had An Actual Personality
When ranking Final Fantasy villains, few are ever going to rank as highly as Sephiroth. He's the iconic villain of the series, who has one of the best themes of any video game bad guy ever. The rivalry between him and Cloud is shown beautifully well in this movie, even if it'll be a little confusing for newer viewers.
Even Loz, Kadaj, and Yazoo are solid villains in comparison to what's shown in Spirit Within. Antagonists are the biggest weakness of that whole movie.
2 Spirits Within: The Stakes Feel Real & Actions Have Consequences
For as fun a movie as Advent Children is, there are no real stakes or consequences to anything. It's nothing more than a fun popcorn movie at its core. Spirits Within tries to be more than that, presenting a problem that puts the whole world at risk, and slowly whittles the cast down until there are only two people left at the end.
By the end of the film, the viewer knows that if Aki and Gray fail, the entire world will fall, and it's not a given the movie will have a happy ending.
1 Advent Children: The Music Made It Feel Like A Final Fantasy Movie
The music is spot-on in Advent Children, making the film feel like a genuine Final Fantasy movie. Any fan of the series will tell you how important the music is to the series. Even more than storytelling, music has always been one of its strengths, helping set scenes and pull out emotions incredibly well.
Advent Children manages to do that, especially when Sephiroth's theme slowly starts to kick in, and you know he and Cloud are about to fight.