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Episode 733: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Patreon)

Published:
2025-11-28 08:00:07
Imported:
2026-08
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In 2001, Square Pictures released Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: a VERY high-budget cinematic adaptation of the newly-popular (in the West) video game series. And while this film brought moviegoers something they had truly never seen before, the bleeding-edge tech on display wasn't enough to make it a hit. The resulting failure shuttered the studio, caused its creator to step down in disgrace, and forever changed the path of Square as it ventured into the 21st century. On this week's episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish and Diamond Feit as the crew peers back nearly 25 years into the past to figure out why The Spirits Within never became a silver screen success story.

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TheLupineOne

Fair play to Square; this was the movie that completely fooled the pre-teen me. I thought those were flesh and blood actors on screen; that The Spirits Within was an animation was a huge revelation to me. But, as someone whose only prior FF experience was FF7, I also felt like I was mis-sold a promise. Where was Cloud and his pals? Where were the chocobos? I guess the movie I'm asking for here would be Advent Children, which I still need to watch...

littleterr0r

Jeremy also read my mind when he brought up NES games proclaiming a certain amount of copies sold in Japan such as on the cover of Lode Runner and Splunker.

Faizel Razak

Always a pleasure to have Jeremy, Bob, and Diamond together on a podcast. I wish every episode had the three of you! I wonder how Square's fortunes would have been different if a version of FF7: Advent Children had been the first major film from Square Pictures, rather than a brand-new story.

Brian Silvers

Despite the absolute disaster that this movie became, I feel Sakaguchi should not have had his career at Square destroyed like he did. As touched upon in the episode, Square suffered badly after he left and, I feel, never fully recovered.

Andrew O.

I went to the theatre with friends to see this and I can still remember the mix of disappointment and bewilderment 25 years later.

Robbie

The real tragedy was not seeing Aki Ross cast in other films. Maybe a rom-com where she works in a zany bookshop in London and meets a digital Hugh Grant could have brought Square Pictures back from the brink?

Wood Duck [Legacy Edition]

Parish with his caves of Steel joke out of nowhere got an explosive laugh out of me. The line between straigt/funny host oscillates wildly as usual.

Donovan

I can't help but roll my eyes any time someone on this podcast complains about the word "content". I've listened to the 1up archives many times through and content is a word that is frequently used in that era but never once bemoaned. It's a modern hangup.