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Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Dub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie
I HATE Final Fantasy VII, let's get that out of the way. Yes, I know it's one of if not THE MOST iconic RPGs of all time, but I seriously don't give a ****. The early 3D looked awful, the combat was painfully average, and game is riddled with infuriating obstacles, and the narrative COULD NOT help itself writing Cloud into the most insufferably cliche bachelor position I've ever seen in a game. It's not enough that he gets flashbacks to his mom harpin' on him to get himself a girlfriend, but when Aerith starts hangin' off him and pestering him if "Tifa means something more" I want to strangle her and tell her to SHUT UP!
****, Aerith was worse than Navi from Ocarina of Time.
I'm more of a Chrono Trigger person, myself.
Now, what do I think about the movie? Well, I think it's Friggen' Awesome! You only need to know a little bit about the game to follow the plot and if you really wanted to know who these people were and what significance Sephiroth has, besides the brief get-you-up-to-speed bit at the beginning there's a DVD bonus feature that essentially gives you a rundown of the plot of the game (which in my opinion is the best way to experience the game).
Basically, in a world where the planet's "lifestream" is a tangible thing, a power company called Shinra tapped into it to become evil greedy bastards while working on a project that creates supersoldiers from alien genes. Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth were such soldiers, but Seph went mad, Zack died, and Cloud joined a motley crew of RPG characters to prevent the apocalypse.
The movie picks up in the aftermath during which a disease has developed born of these rogue alien genes and a Terrible Three have shown up to resurrect Sephiroth. Meanwhile Cloud's gotten over his girl problems and is instead grief-stricken over the death of the most spoiled video game secret in history: Aerith Dies (Yay!).
I can dig a plot involving Cloud resistant to step in and engage in battles where people could get hurt, but I think this suffers somewhat from the fact that Cloud is beastly. He could solve so many problems if he just... DID, you know?
This also gets muddied up in the "Complete" version of the movie where we get some great development for the character of Denzel, but we also supercede the emphasis of Aerith's passing with Zack's who died much earlier in the series continuity and it doesn't make much sense by this point to be affecting him so much more strongly.
On top of that, the Complete version changes some dialog unnecessarily and even extends the final fight scene which would be GREAT, but it now falls out of sync with the background theme, One-Winged Angel and that bothered me.
Altogether the 7-8 fight scenes are increasingly great and the metal-infused soundtrack is suitably awesome for this kind of movie.
Whether this is the sort of action you can appreciate depends on how much you like "Anime Physics", which essentially translates here into: giant swords, wallrunning, air juggling, Superman jumps, and fights atop motorcycles with little regard for friction.
IF THAT SOUNDS COOL TO YOU, watch this movie.
Beyond that I'd concede that the tempo of the movie is really stop and start. The fight scenes are breakneck, but the drama in between is slow and quiet.
Some people are inclined to complain about the character models which don't hold up under close-ups but I can easily forgive that (I played FFVII for ****s sake), especially since I think the character designs are pretty cool, especially on Cloud, though I think Bahamut got the short end of the stick, he looks really unattractive compared to his iteration in Final Fantasy X.
I don't think the emotional elements of the movie are very strong, but it more than makes up for it with it's superb action scenes including one of the sickest final showdowns I've ever seen (which is only fitting for a videogame adaption).
Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]
Movie
****, Aerith was worse than Navi from Ocarina of Time.
I'm more of a Chrono Trigger person, myself.
Now, what do I think about the movie? Well, I think it's Friggen' Awesome! You only need to know a little bit about the game to follow the plot and if you really wanted to know who these people were and what significance Sephiroth has, besides the brief get-you-up-to-speed bit at the beginning there's a DVD bonus feature that essentially gives you a rundown of the plot of the game (which in my opinion is the best way to experience the game).
Basically, in a world where the planet's "lifestream" is a tangible thing, a power company called Shinra tapped into it to become evil greedy bastards while working on a project that creates supersoldiers from alien genes. Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth were such soldiers, but Seph went mad, Zack died, and Cloud joined a motley crew of RPG characters to prevent the apocalypse.
The movie picks up in the aftermath during which a disease has developed born of these rogue alien genes and a Terrible Three have shown up to resurrect Sephiroth. Meanwhile Cloud's gotten over his girl problems and is instead grief-stricken over the death of the most spoiled video game secret in history: Aerith Dies (Yay!).
I can dig a plot involving Cloud resistant to step in and engage in battles where people could get hurt, but I think this suffers somewhat from the fact that Cloud is beastly. He could solve so many problems if he just... DID, you know?
This also gets muddied up in the "Complete" version of the movie where we get some great development for the character of Denzel, but we also supercede the emphasis of Aerith's passing with Zack's who died much earlier in the series continuity and it doesn't make much sense by this point to be affecting him so much more strongly.
On top of that, the Complete version changes some dialog unnecessarily and even extends the final fight scene which would be GREAT, but it now falls out of sync with the background theme, One-Winged Angel and that bothered me.
Altogether the 7-8 fight scenes are increasingly great and the metal-infused soundtrack is suitably awesome for this kind of movie.
Whether this is the sort of action you can appreciate depends on how much you like "Anime Physics", which essentially translates here into: giant swords, wallrunning, air juggling, Superman jumps, and fights atop motorcycles with little regard for friction.
IF THAT SOUNDS COOL TO YOU, watch this movie.
Beyond that I'd concede that the tempo of the movie is really stop and start. The fight scenes are breakneck, but the drama in between is slow and quiet.
Some people are inclined to complain about the character models which don't hold up under close-ups but I can easily forgive that (I played FFVII for ****s sake), especially since I think the character designs are pretty cool, especially on Cloud, though I think Bahamut got the short end of the stick, he looks really unattractive compared to his iteration in Final Fantasy X.
I don't think the emotional elements of the movie are very strong, but it more than makes up for it with it's superb action scenes including one of the sickest final showdowns I've ever seen (which is only fitting for a videogame adaption).
Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]