Review of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
EVERYBODY has played the original Playstation classic, Final Fantasy 7. It was one of the best selling PSX games of all time and the very first 3D Final Fantasy game. It is also one of the most beloved in the entire franchise. Advent Children is part of a collection known as the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. This includes Crisis Core for the PSP, Dirge of Cerberus for the PS2, Before Crisis for mobile phones, and of course Advent Children. I don't even know where to begin with this film. I grew up with the game so I feel like I must write a properreview for this amazing film so this will be much longer then my normal reviews.
Story: 10
The story I don't really need to get into because every Final Fantasy VII fan already knows what to expect when coming into this movie, plus if you wanna know it so bad you can just look at it's main page. All I can say is that wow, Square-Enix really pulled out all the stops for this one.
Art: 10
The art speaks for itself. It's one of the most beautiful films ever made. Every element of it's art direction is stellar beyond words. FF7 fans finally get to see these beloved characters in all their CG rendered glory. Cloud looks badass, a certain bad guy looks amazing, Tifa looks gorgeous as does Aerith. Water, fire, light, wind, sky..everything just looks amazing.
Sound: 10
Now I gave the sound section a 10 not so much because of the sound effects but because of the musical score that series veteran Nobuo Uematsu composed for this film. Every Final Fantasy fan loves his music and this movie is no exception. "Divinity Part 1 & 2" are incredibly hard hitting scores that really get you pumped up. "Aerith's Theme" is composed beautifully and is almost sad to listen to. But, my stand out track is of course "Advent: One Winged Angel". Sephiroth's infamous final battle theme song returns in an Orchestrated/Metal hybrid that defines the word EPIC!
Character: 7
Okay, this one didn't get a 10 because I was very disappointed in how 2 dimensional the characters are. The creators put more time into creating mindblowing battle sequences rather then fleshing out the characters. Mind you, they were all fleshed out in the PSX game so maybe that's why.
Enjoyment & Overall: 10
If you grew up with the series, chances are you have already seen this. A new director's cut is coming out soon on Blu-Ray called Advent Children: Complete which features new scenes and stuff so if you have not seen it yet, go for the Complete version. I haven't seen the Blu-Ray one. I bought this movie on it's release day on UMD PSP because all the damn DVD copies were sold out. When I watch this movie, I get a deep feeling of nostalgia. The game was funny, breath-taking, exciting and even heart-breaking. Those feelings will come back to you the moment you see Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie, Cid, and everyone else again as they come to life. As I write this review, I am listening to Aerith's theme from the soundtrack and I feel sad for some reason..