Hewlett posted:

My Pitch: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

Production Budget: $137 million
Total Domestic Gross: $32 million (Worldwide $85 million)

If The Spirits Within didn't have Final Fantasy in front of its title, I fully believe it would have been more positively received than it was in its 2001 premiere (which bankrupted the studio that made it, being their debut film). A slightly-derivative but completely gorgeous space opera, the film features a wonderfully realized future setting, ahead-of-its-time production design, a dynamically Gothic score by Elliot Goldenthal, and so much more. The film's environmentalist message (with hints of Eastern philosophy) is unconventional for a film of this genre, and its solid cast does a surprising amount with their stock characters. (Not many adolescent sci-fi actioners feature an antagonist moments away from killing himself in disgrace.) All of this results in an interestingly flawed film that does just enough right and different to justify a second look.