Here is my critique to the "official" epilogue to one of the highest selling game of all time.
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Creator: SQUARE ENIX
Distributed by: SONY Home Video
Director/Main Character design: Tetsuya Nomura
Original Concept: (not credited though) Hironobu Sakaguchi (Mr. Final Fantasy)
Music: Nobuo Uematsu
W A R N I N G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Some Spoilers AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 years after the battle of "Life Stream" against Meteo, the "Planet" is in a period of reconstruction. At a terrible price, a lot of lives were lost......especially the flower girl Aerith Gainsborough. People thought that they were on the mend when a strange sicknesshas spread among the populace............geostigma (sort of like leukemia).
The heroes from the game have now taken separate paths, but we'll focus on old spikey hair and the buxxom beauty Tiffa. Besides playing Midgard's FedEx man, Cloud Stryfe isalso running an orphanage together with Tiffa, the trouble is, he is still racked by guilt of not saving Aerith, to the point that he is ignoring Tiffa's obvious affections toward him ( its hard to have a "memory as a rival). Besides this, he is also afflicted with the geostigma (incurable?)
A rogue group of former Shinra super soldiers led by Kadaj is also causing a lot of trouble, they are searching for the lost head of Jenovah (ref. FFVII game, a fossilized remains of a female super-being mistakenly thought to be a Cetra/Ancient, Aerith Gainsborough's race) and it seems that Shinra (the previous bad guys from the game) has some connection to them ( though it seems covertly). How does Cloud get into the mix? He used to be one of them right?(again reference to the game) This is as much as I will tell so you all can enjoy the experience.
Objective Observation:
CGI are all topnotched, almost life like. This is what our beloved characters would look like in real-life (initial photos prior to the movie in the web got a bad angle of Tiffa looking like Aki Ross, I thought........blearchh, but it seems they fixed the problem) It really reflects the conceptual reality of what the world of Final Fantasy 7 would look like..............dystopian, futuristic with a mix of magic.
Action scenes: Over the top anime rock and sock 'em action.
Storywise: on a scale of 10, I'd give it a 6 (for those who haven't played the game) 'cause this seems to be a hodge podge of all the generic plot lines you'll find in any anime sans the tentacle sex hehehe.
DVD Easter Eggs: (Region 1) I am kinda disappointed though, it may have included the deleted scenes (though understandable as to the cuts) but as I will compare the movie with that of Superman 1, couldn't they have incorporated the cut out scenes into the main flow of the story, or an edited a version together with the full monty?
The japanese version is said to have the anime retelling of the events that occured 6 years before FFVII called Crisis Core ( Cloud's flashbacks in the game) but it seems this will be a stand alone feature for the International release.
Voice overs: Competent, I noticed some names as having done Metal Gear series Quinton Flynn............Kadaj aka Raiden (the girly man from MGS: Sons of Liberty), Mena Suvari as Aerith, Yuffie (Kim Possible's voice actress.........Romano) etc.
Others: trailers, E3 trailers, language menus, a sort of epilogue showing Cloud on his Fenrir and other present and upcoming FFVII related video products, Making of FFVII interviews.
Subjective Critique: For those who played the game 5 times
, cracking all the secrets, searching for the resurrection scene and the Ghost at the Church.............you must see this movie!
On a scale of 1 to 10 I give it 9 ;D. That for a fact that we have some closure to"did she die or what?" As expected the fluffy, over the top action sequences may have taken up a good chunk of the pacing (errhm Star Wars Episode 1,2 and 3, Matrix 2 and 3 etc) so I plead GUILTY!
Unlike some game to movie clunkers (exception of Silent Hill and MK One), this was done by the same creators of the game......thus the thrust of the story never veered too far away from the original plot.
Either the game............err movie is quite good 'cause I found it kinda short or did I just enjoy it too much to see that time was flying to fast.
Recommendation: Fan/buy, if not, play the game first to get into the story, emphatize with the characters then go buy the movie................you won't regret it.
, cracking all the secrets, searching for the resurrection scene and the Ghost at the Church.............you must see this movie!
keeping the site active as a place to dump info for easier backtracking.