First of all, if by chance you can read French (and understand it
), run on the very good topic Storm had started a while ago in Cinemad, =>here<=.
If you don't understand french:
- send your complaints to Storm
- check the topic anyway as she has choosen a nice set of pictures comparing the designs of Final Fantasy VII game characters and the ones of the same characters in the movie.
As announced, this movie is a premiere, as far as I know, beeing indeed the direct sequel of a videogame and not any videogame.
The Final Fantasy's series is one of the most popular series in the videogames' World. Just look at how many people around here have Final Fantasy's characters as aliases or avatars, not forgetting that Renzokuken, Apoc and co's Final Fantasy Omega website.
As I'm talking about, Final Fantasy Omega , let's see their comments about Final Fantasy VII, which well help the ones who don't know the game to link to the story and ... will prevent me to do a synthesis already well done
Final Fantasy Omega wrote:The Shinra Corporation is draining our planet of its life-forces. Cloud Strife a cold-hearted mercenary, accepts a mission from a group of eco-warriors, unaware that it will lead him on a journey that will change not just his life, but the lives of every soul in the universe…. Welcome to Final Fantasy® VII –an epic adventure on 3 CDs where sorcery and science collide, where friendships are lost and won and where one man can make a difference that lasts forever!
Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the Final Fantasy series not to be released on a Nintendo console. Final Fantasy VII started a whole new style of gameplay. This was if not is the greatest Final Fantasy of all time.
Final Fantasy VII opened up a new dimension of graphics and play style. The materia system is my personal favourite of all the magic and summoning systems introduced in a Final Fantasy game. It allowed you to level up your magic in a way, which had never been seen.
Final Fantasy VII throws you into the action right from the start. The story starts off with Cloud completing a few missions for cash and soon blows up into a collossel fight for the greater good of the planet as Cloud and team leave Midgar behind to save the planet from Sephiroth.
Released for the first time on many platforms, Final Fantasy VII has conquished many more players. The game was so well done, so marvellous to watch and the catching that, like all who have tried the game I think, I've spent MANY hours in front of it.
The story of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
takes place 2 years after Cloud & company have defeated Sephiroth and destroyed him.
A non-contagious disease known as Geostigma is spreading across the Planet. Children tend to show signs of Geostigma first, though adults are susceptible to the disease as well. Tifa Lockheart's bar, the Seventh Heaven, serves as an orphanage for children stricken with Geostigma. Symptoms of Geostigma include mental weakness, pain and even death. Cloud suffers from this disease though he hides his affected arm beneath his sleeve.
Cloud Strife also seems to haven't recovered of Aeris' death (as Storm indicates and illustrated in her topic, the scene of the game has been redone for the movie) and tends to isolate himself, loosing contacts with his friend and only maintaining "Strife's Delivery Service", whose headquarters is located in Tifa Lockheart's bar, .
He receives a phone call of Shinra, Inc. president, Rufus. Rufus asks him for protection from a mysterious man named Kadaj. Cloud has already crosses the path of this Kadaj, a man who calls him "brother" and looks for his "mother". The problem for Cloud is that Kadaj and his brothers Loz and Yazoo seem to think Cloud know where their "mother" is.
Little by little all pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle will fit and all the original team of FFVII will join Cloud to fight these new vilains...
It's then a real gamer pleasure to see all these characters back after all the time spent together 5 years ago.
I can't deny then that the mark at the end of this topic won't be as objective as I'd like it to be and can't wait to have opinions from people who hadn't played the game. I do think that all who have played the game are already conquished looking at the pictures.
The pictures are one thing, the animation is another and for once again Square Enix teams are more than ready to show you what they've got
The movie doesn't have much "slow down", actually you've got some action scenes which seem never end. But where it usually becomes boring, especially in asian cinema where imho of western man, the final combat takes too often a far too important time, here you've got so actions going on everywhere that you cannot break to look at your watch
The last third of the movie just never stop from rebounding to rebounding in a 300 mph shooting which manages the exploit to stay readable.
In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children you see swords and guns fights between characters on motorcycles
, you see heroes jumping from building to building while fighting a huge monster in the city with a just astonishing final to that fight , so many incredibles action seens I've never seen before in a movie !
To do a synthesis, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children makes the Matrix trilogy looking like retirement house's pensionnaries' amateur action movies
However good it was, Square Enix had severly disapointed Final Fantasy's videogames fans in 2001 with its previous and first movie: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (which had even been titled Final Fantasy: The Movie in some countries
). If the SFX were as impressive as expected, sadely the storyline had quite nothing to do with all the fantastic elements which many gamers take for granted after many episodes of the game. Even if the episode are independant and not sharing the same storyline (except for FFX and FFX-2), there is a real coherence between all these episode and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within simply used none of this basis built in the time.
Now, Square Enix has clearly choosen to please its first costumers which are the gamers who follow Final Fantasy rpg games, some of them for more than a decade now.
Probably thinking that it won't be a sufficient population to make this movie a success in movie theaters, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a direct-to-video which is too bad as indeed it will indeed maintain this movie in a small circle.
But, as said earlier I can't be objective about this movie being a fan of Final Fantasy's saga and of Final Fantasy VII particulary
You'll even find some winks only gamers will notice like Loz cellular's ringing which still makes me laugh thinking about it :lol: Now I understand why you were laughing at my cellular's ringing Swyms (I have the same)
For these reasons, I can't wait to read comments about people who would have discovered this movie without knowing much or anything about the original game.
Doing my best to stay objective, I'll mark Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children with a very well deserved 4/6 while the fan inside me screams for a 6/6
Chevvie 8)
PS: Watch the credits till the end !! The end of the credits shows a Cloud on his motorbike in a real environment. Just to show you they can even do better than what you've just seen
