The increasing role of A.I. in the creation of art has been a hot topic recently. First it was confirmed that James Earl Jones’s voice would be digitally recreated for Darth Vader going forward following his retirement from the role (with the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi already using this technology), and then it was reported that Bruce Willis had sold his likeness to allow for the creation of a digital twin who could appear in future projects. While a representative for the actor has since denied this to be the case, Willis has previously appeared via deepfake technology in a phone commercial, a hint that his digital counterpart may crop up again. All of this comes as the dependence on de-aging and CGI ever increases, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that hiring an actual actor may so be a thing of the past. The technology is far from perfect, but it represents a significant change that could alter the very nature of cinema. But while these techniques have steadily become more widespread, the concept of a CGI actor has roots stretching back decades, and one of the most notable examples comes from a 2001 film that attempted to revolutionize the industry with the first computer-animated actor — the science fiction film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

A spin-off of the titular video game franchise, The Spirits Within took advantage of the most sophisticated technology of its time to create a photorealistic CGI blockbuster unlike anything audiences had seen before. While the story itself is a standard science fiction affair — a team of scientists battle to save a post-apocalyptic Earth from an invading alien race called the Phantoms — its selling point came with its lead character Aki Ross (Ming-Na Wen), a collection of over 400,000 polygons who was set to become the first artificial actor. Square Pictures intended for her to appear in multiple films across multiple roles, with the option to modify aspects of her appearance (such as her age) depending on the project. Ming-Na was ready and willing to reprise the role, and Aki’s inclusion on Maxim’s “Hot 100” list (the first fictional person to do so) raised her profile considerably. However, the subsequent failure of The Spirits Within (grossing just $85 million against a budget of $137 million) brought those plans to a swift end, with her only other appearance being a short film included as a bonus feature on the DVD release of The Animatrix. Whether she would have ushered in a new kind of acting had her debut performed better remains unknown, but given the recent news about A.I. that is bordering on this happening again, it’s worth reflecting on her failed potential.

Not As New An Idea As You Might Think

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The idea of a fictional celebrity is nothing new. Perhaps the most famous example is Mickey Mouse, with his variety of roles in Disney’s early films (ranging from a sailor to a sorcerer and everything in between) being not dissimilar to what Square Pictures had planned for Aki. The difference is that Mickey Mouse is a highly stylized character, sporting an iconic design with a unique voice that makes him identifiable to even the most casual of moviegoers. No matter his outfit, his lovable personality and penchant for adventure always shines through. It’s this versatility that has made him such an enduring character, and his success laid the groundwork for other mascot characters like Mario and Sonic that tried to replicate his flexibility.

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Which brings us to The Spirits Within. The film is unquestionably an important stepping stone in the development of animation, but it’s also one that failed to reach its potential. It opened to middling reviews from both critics and audiences, and 21 years on that reaction hasn’t improved. As previously mentioned, the story is nothing sci-fi fans won’t be familiar with, and while that could have been used to make a derivative but still enjoyable adventure, any attempts at this fall flat. The characters are walking clichés, and our investment in them comes solely from the A-list cast voicing them (with names including Donald Sutherland, Alec Baldwin, James Woods, and Steve Buscemi). Compounding this is how dull the film manages to make an alien invasion, with scene after scene overflowing with exposition that only succeeds to make things more confusing. It’s ironic that it owes its origins to a video game since The Spirits Within feels like watching a two-hour prologue to a 20-hour game that the developers forgot to include. Final Fantasy games are not the most elegantly written experiences, but they’ve got an undeniable charm and likable characters who are more than capable of carrying their narratives through any shortcomings. The Spirits Within lacks this, and the result is a film that wouldn’t have made a splash if not for its name recognition.

A Stunning Achievement — For Its Time

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But at the center of it is Aki Ross, and it’s here where The Spirits Within becomes far more interesting. The intention was for her to follow in the mold of other mascot characters, but there’s one crucial difference between Aki and her competitors — her design. Aki wasn’t supposed to be the first computer-generated actor, but the first photorealistic computer-generated actor. The director of The Spirits Within, Hironobu Sakaguchi, summarized this when he said that he wanted people to look at her and “be convinced that she’s a human."To be fair, she is a stunning technical achievement, and audiences of 2001 must have felt they were on the cusp of computers taking over when they first saw her stepping off her ship and into the barren ruins of Old New York. Her hair alone is worthy of praise, consisting of 60,000 strands all rendered and animated separately. But, rather crucially, she was a stunning achievement for the time, and it didn’t take long before she was beginning to show her age. Technology is in a constant state of flux, and what passes for cutting edge can be rendered obsolete in the blink of an eye. The consequence of this is any piece of art that bases itself heavily around its technical prowess being destinated to age poorly, and The Spirits Within is no exception. Viewing it today feels like doing battle with the uncanny valley, and while a more stylized design would have helped to mitigate this, that would have been incompatible with Sakaguchi’s goal to make her feel believable.

But this blind determination for realism does far more than just make the film look dated. Watching The Spirits Within now, knowing that its main character was supposed to appear in multiple films, makes for an interesting experience, mainly because there’s nothing about her that would suggest she would work as a recurring actor. She doesn’t have a distinctive voice or appearance that makes her immediately recognizable no matter the project, and her personality is standard for all action film protagonists — she’s smart, empathetic, capable of looking after herself but always remembers the importance of teamwork, etc.

The Case for Human Actors

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More exaggerated characterization would have helped the case for her to appear in more films, but that would have conflicted with Sakaguchi’s hope that audiences would see her not as a computer, but as a person. Not that this means she’s a bad character. In the context of The Spirits Within she works perfectly fine, and her commitment to ending the war peacefully despite witnessing firsthand the atrocities committed by the enemy makes her a compelling character. But since every aspect of her is so closely linked to this particular story set in this particular world, it’s hard to imagine her in another film unless her characterization underwent radical changes, which then begs the question, why bother?

Her brief appearance in The Animatrix’s bonus features summarizes this perfectly. Aki, sporting a new haircut and one of the franchise’s iconic leather outfits, battles against a sentinel, defeating it in less time than it takes to hit play on your DVD remote. While the short length of the footage makes it hard to form any real judgments, it demonstrates just how little is gained from reusing her. The pacifist scientist we knew from The Spirits Within is gone, replaced by a kung-fu badass so far removed from her original form that people might not even realize it’s her if we weren’t told during the intro. One of the animators mentions that they “just grabbed our lead character Aki” when making this footage, a rather casual comment but inadvertently reveals a lot. She’s a model reuse — nothing more, nothing less, and judging by the plans Sakaguchi and Square Pictures had for her, that’s likely all she would have ever been.

It’s easy to suggest that Sakaguchi should have hired more than just Ming-Na Wen’s voice and made The Spirits Within live-action, but perhaps that’s missing the point. Sakaguchi wanted to push the boundaries of CGI, and judging by the widespread acclaim he received for the film’s visuals, undoubtedly he succeeded. The Spirits Within has earned its place in the history of animation alongside other technical masterworks like Terminator 2 and Avatar, and the outdatedness of its tech does not negate any of its importance. However, while the live-action approach would have removed the uncanny valley problem that will only grow worse, that still leaves the untapped potential of a computer-animated actor. It’s a fun idea in theory, but in practice it wasn’t so much of a radical shift in how we made films as it was a minor rearrangement of the pieces. Aki was not a self-aware A.I. capable of picking her own roles and then interpreting them as she wants — instead her every action was dictated by an armada of animators in a way not dissimilar to how a regular actor is treated, with their performance truncated and manipulated via cinematography and editing. She was essential an elaborate wig who could have some hair dye thrown in and then plonked down where needed, and when she’s going to have such little continuity between films, you might as well just design a new character.

The recent news about A.I. and its role in filmmaking is just the tip of the iceberg (lord knows it’s only a matter of time before we get a film whose screenplay was entirely computer generated), but that doesn’t mean the industry is about to become automated. An artificial program can replicate human emotions, but it can never create them organically. To the actors of the world, feel free to breathe a sigh of relief, because you will remain essential parts of the filmmaking process for a long time to come. Aki Ross may not have succeeded in becoming the first CGI actor, but she did remind us of the importance of the human experience, so at least she has that.