Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Looks pretty, acts pretty, but dreadfully mediocre deep inside; a major economic flop for Sony. I was very shocked; the only Final Fantasy game I ever played was Final Fantasy: X... I never completed it due to complicated reasons, but it was ace, and as I read the spoiler synopsis online, I was mezmerised; nothing short of beautiful. How could Spirits Within be allowed to carry the FF title? There had to be retrebution. And there was, in the form of a magazine on CG animation I purchased a while ago with a big fat headline: Final Fantasy "Aquare Enix talks exclusively about Advent Children - the full-length movie" I was mortified until I read "baised on the FF VII game"
I never played FF VII, nor had I any previous idea about it, but with the dreadful anime movie selection where I live, I gave up hope of ever watching Advent Children, so I did no research on FF VII. Then on a fateful afternoon, in the tiny anime selection in the DVD store, I saw a light blue box with two figures facing me, and above them: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I was almost broke, but quickly bagged it at the expense of a decent dinner... boy was it worth it. Before I even unwrapped the transparent paper enclosing the DVD, I did research. I used the web to find information on the whole game; spoilers were hard to find... but I needed them. Eventually, I found a huge website with 30-odd pages of story detail; sublime. After 3 hours of reading (and headaches) the truly magnificent story was in my head and I loaded up Advent Children at long last. Here is where the review officially begins. I came to call this movie "Final Fantasy: Don't Blink", it is absurdly fast; what should have been 3-4 hours of viewing was shrunk into a mere 100 minutes. Normally, I dislike movies that end too soon, but AC does what it does so well that the 100 minutes seemed like far far more. The CG animation is sublime; it's JUST real enough and JUST anime enough... if the world was anime, this is what it would look like. It's amazing how perfectly anime it was despite the CG; it looked, sounded, felt, and moved just like an anime would, only it was real and beleivable. The movie's most amazing moments come in the form of fights that would make Jedi Master Yoda wet his pants; the fights are so fast, so seamelessly progressive, blinking would cause you to miss a great deal. They fly, they swing, they ride, they shoot, then they swing some more, what seems like an hour of fighting was actually 4 minutes or so. The fight between Tifa and Loz left me dumbfounded, the first time I watched it it seemed to have been like 9 straight minutes of fighting; the second time I watched it, I was shocked that it was over in little more than a minute. Magnificent and flawless. Story-wise, it follows the events of the game, where Midgar is in semi-ruins and an illness is spread among the people, especially the children. Cloud is living as an exile, but needs to gather his courage once more to fight an all-too familiar evil; Sephiroth is coming back. A young group of three is searching for a way to bring him back, and only Cloud can stop them. This trio of villans, Kadajj, Loz, and Yazoo, take all the children with the illness, known as Geostigma, and turn them into pawns to acheive a greater evil. I wil not spoil the movie anymore though, but not one detail is spared, not one word is useless, and in typical anime fashon, every little thing has a significance, and instead of mouth-feeding you details, the movie leaves you to think and figure out what happened. When you do figure it out, you not only feel as though you accomplished something of great significance, but are left drooling, waiting for more. The music is goregous throughout, ranging from orchestral, to rock, to both, used in all the right moments and scenarios. The voice-acting is marevlous... the Japanese voice-acting at least; the engish cast would have been better off playing emotionless monotonous robots. Seriously, dead fish can speak with more emotion and feeling, especially Marlene, the little girl; good thing I watched it in japanese dubbed initially. The final battle had a magnificent mixture of hard rock and latin orchestrals as a background, and is one of my favorite themes. You feel the characters throughout the whole movie. Think about it this way: the faults of live action and the faults of anime are destroyed once they merge; the characters are the perfect combination of anime and live-action not seen in any other movie... ever. The only faults I could dig up, and beleive me it was really hard digging up for faults, is that sometimes the fight scenes are just too fast; during my first time watching the movie I managed to keep up with all the battles quite well, except the last motorcycle battle in the tunnel... I got a bit dizzy there, but loved every moment of it. Final Fantasy fans will be absolutely mezmerised when they see the glorious incarnations of their favorite characters, especially Sephiroth, whose infamous "burning scene" was re-rendered into an immensely powerful short cutscene, and Aeris, who appears in all the right places. Aeris's scenes were among the most beautiful scenes I endured in the movie, especially when she extens her hand to a flying Cloud, and at the very end, when we finally see her face. The appearance of all the AVALANCE team from the game when fighting the Sin Bahamut (sp?) was glorious as well, and the entire fight with the massive creature was a rollercoaster ride of jumps, drops, shooting and skyrocketting. I will not reveal any details on the movie's trio of villans, only that they are searching for a certain "mother"... Summing everything up: a sublime masterpiece of storytelling and live-anime-action. The fight scenes, while lightning fast, tell you "hey, I'm not real! I'm an anime"... this movie is loaded with tricks; whenever you start to beleive it is live-action, it throws you a punch and tells you otherwise. This is the first time I ever watched a 100-minute movie and was fooled into thinking it was three times as long; action is nonstop, camera angles take you places a live-action movie never could and characters fight in a way youv'e never seen anyone fight before. Final Fantasy indeed; Sony saved itself from the mediocre Spirits Within with the magnificent Advent Children. I am currently watching it for the 30-somethingth time and still come back for more; it's just that good. Whether you like Final Fantasy or not, Whether you like anime or not, whether you even like movies or not, I implore you to buy this and experience the action-adventure ride of your lives! |
