Review of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
It was alright. It's nowhere near the masterpiece that I thought I was going to watch, based on my friends' excited, rather fanboy-ish reactions, but I can't say that it was a waste of my time. I definitely do recommend it, but with the following disclaimer: don't believe the hype, just enjoy the action, but don't expect anything too lasting. The story, first off, is a trainwreck. I'm not going to regurgitate the details here since I'm not supposed to and I trust the reader has access to Wikipedia, but let's just say it's an insult to the FF7 legacy, andI'm saying that as someone who thought FF7, while a fairly good RPG, a classic for sure, isn't, say, in the top 10 of my list and likely not even top 20. The antagonist is a generic raving, cackling lunatic and almost none of the FF7 protagonists save for Cloud and Tifa get any reasonable amount of character development or even dialogue. It's just ridiculous. They basically threw characters into the movie just to placate the angry mob of fans that would be disappointed if their favorite wasn't in.
The entire movie is just an extended series of fight sequences. Very good fight sequences, actually, probably some of the best I've seen in my life, as far as CG goes. But still just fight sequences. For anyone who has not played FF7 or does not have any background in the material (not myself but a few of my friends who watched with me), none of it will make any sense whatsoever. Heck, I played the game a long time ago and so even I was occasionally confused, wondering "who the hell is that?" during the scene with Aeris and Zack [<-- didn't figure out it was him until after the movie]. They never really gave the characters a proper introduction.
The sound accompanying the animation is very good-- basically new, usually improved versions of the FF7 original soundtrack in most cases. Can't use the MIDI's, after all. So, no complaint there, as it would be improper to introduce significantly new music.
So, um, I'm not sure where that leaves me. I want to write more, but there's so little to write about. The overall content is quite shallow. They would've been better off just animating FF7's original storyline, with some cuts here or there. Instead we get a pale shadow that tries to steal all the best parts of the game, going so far as to even recreate a "new Sephiroth." Sigh.
That's not to say that there aren't any decent scenes in the movie. There's some good humor, particularly the famous scene with Tifa and the cellphone (can't spoil it). But the overarching storyline is quite weak and million dollar action scenes are no excuse.
Conclusion: great action scenes, wonderful animation. Some of it is genuinely ground breaking. A must watch for that reason. But don't believe the hype. This is not a classic, and altogether, it is a somewhat disappointing ending to Cloud's story.