But Can She Act?

When we were designing the cover for last month's issue--which featured Aki Ross, the virtual star of the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within--we considered running a headline that asked "But Can She Act?" The idea was that, sure, she looks amazingly realistic in still images, but would she be able to deliver a believable performance?

This question seemed fair because it would judge this ambitious film--the first with an entire cast of realistic-looking digital humans--on its own terms. Indeed, the movie's director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, who more than a decade ago created the Final Fantasy computer game, stated, "I want the audience to feel as if they were ...