Halfyard/The Music of Fantasy Cinema, 8. The Tritone Within: Interpreting Harmony in Elliot Goldenthal’s Score for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

The chapter examines Elliot Goldenthal’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Hironobu Sakaguchi and Moto Sakakibara, 2001). It argues that a certain disproportionality, albeit leading to an ultimately positive outcome, underlies the musicological analysis. Compared to the technical and artistic mastery evident in Goldenthal’s score, the cognitive dissonances presented in the first part of the chapter are quite minute. However, they contributed to the discovery of more subtle meanings, having the potential to enrich the artwork significantly by encouraging a closer, contemplative survey of the intricacies of its semantic and dramatic landscapes.