Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children: A quick warning: this movie is mostly for people who have played and loved FFVII. This movie relies HEAVILY on the fact that anyone watching it has a working knowledge of these characters and the world that they inhabit. lets just start this off with a great quote from a friend of mine: Final Fantasy VII was the defining moment in the ultimate innovation of the RPG genre. Final Fantasy had never looked so much like a movie or brought about so many emotions. With the aid of powerful cinematic cut-scenes, mini games, 3D graphics, and an improved battle system backing an epic story unlike anything we could ever imagine, it quickly became known as THE BEST GAME EVER by most gamers. So when the rumors started flying about sequels, we all popped about a thousand boners each. I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea, because this move is awesome but, That being said, We can point out that this movie apparently wasn't made to carry on any impressive plotline based in the videogame (actually, what you can discern of the plot is quite good, but it's lack of "discernability" is what makes it difficult), yet was produced entirely as eye candy to rabid fans of the game. Which doesn't make it bad in any way at all. I was more excited by this movie than any other i've downloaded recently, and it held up it's end of the bargain quite well. the animation is pretty well flawless as far as i can tell. Mostly you're in for 101 minutes of great fight scenes between all of the character's from the game (mostly Cloud, and Tifa) and a gang of new upstarts lead by Kadaj, an offspring of Jenova, trying to bring about the apocalypse that his mother tried to induce with Sephiroth (who, of course, makes a "suprise" appearance). One flaw i will say about the movie is that it's pretty humorless. there was really only one funny scenario, in which the loser of a fight's cell-phone rings and the ringtone is the victory theme from FFVII and a slew of others. Any other humor in the movie is purely coincidental. This lack of comedy doesn't take anything away from the kick-asstude of the film itself, which is now slated for release in the USA in late november. Possibly with better subtitles, the plot may fill out a little more, here's for hoping. The voice actors are great, in japanese. You can really tell what the characters are going through, and more for the great voice acting than the mediocre subtitles. I'm not sure how well this film would go over dubbed, but based on most pieces of asian entertainment that i've seen dubbed, it would probably suck pretty hard. You can't talk about anything that has anything to do with Final Fantasy without a not to Nobuo Uematsu. The man behind the music, the wonderful, eargasm producing music of Final Fantasy, and I doubt I speak alone when i say that FFVII was his best work. Familiar tunes from the game are juxtoposed with new pieces of brilliance by Master Uematsu. If a soundtrack is available, i'm sure it's selling like hotcakes to fans of the series. But i digress, point is, the movie is completely awesome despite all it's flaws, if you've played the game.
Ay mi, apologies. i didn't see that there was already a thread about this in "sci-fi". it totally belongs in "Art and Culture" though.
It was a terrible movie. The plot sucked, the only character that mattered was Cloud. In the game, you got to learn lots about all the characters. Not so in the movie. The Turks were comedic relief in classic anime style. They got beat up all the time. And then made exaggerated movements, and I assume a Jap somewhere laughed at it. Entirely disappointing. One thing I've never understood about anime is how the super bad villain kills babies and is half demon and kills without remorse, yet for some reason they never kill the slapstick guy. The Turks were totally outclassed by the other gang, yet they never died. And Barret's character was completely relegated to bumbling guy who should be funny.
Visually stunning yet lacked alot of substance. A typical Japanese headfuck movie that tries to be extremely clever and philosophical and to be honest they never hit the mark with me. The only one that got slightly close to me liking it was Casshern. I personally thought the turks were the best bit about the movie, I think it was their attitude and the fact he always had a spare pair of glasses. But I did not see how Barrett was a bumbling guy. He was basically a normal (over muscly) guy with a chaingun for an arm and I think they tried to reflect that. And the bit where they throw Cloud in the air...da fook! And Cloud looked too much like Barry Pepper
Compare the super powers of all the characters to Barret's. In the game he was one of the most powerful characters. He could tank, had a good attack and an excellent ultimate. In the movie he was absolutely ineffectual.
