A painting of me

Final Fantasy: Advent Children

   20 September 2005, late at night

My brother Ahilan and I have differing opinions on what is the greatest Final Fantasy game of them all. I am of the opinion that Final Fantasy 6 (released as Final Fantasy 3 here in North America)is the best. I don’t think the others can touch it. That is all I’ll say on that. Ahilan is of the opinion that Final Fantasy 7 is the best, which is the game I want to discuss. And I suppose I’d like to talk about Advent Children.

Final Fantasy 7 raised the bar for everyone else that makes RPG games. I think when it was released no other game for the Playstation came close to the sort of graphics and game play the game had. I still remember how amazing the advertisements for the game were. Final Fantasy 7 was the reason my brothers and I bought a PlayStation. I can remember Tony driving us around to pick up the system and the game. Even though I don’t think Final Fantasy 7 is the best game SquareSoft put out, I do think it’s damn good. The story line was intense. When the game ends you are left wanting more. I suppose that is the sign of a good game.

The game ends with one of the characters, Red XVIII, running with what one assumes are his children. That’s the very last shot in the cut scene that concludes the game. Final Fantasy: Advent Children begins with this same shot. I have been waiting years and years for this film to come out. It has been a long time since I played Final Fantasy 7. When I speak about it now, you reading this will have to filter out all the nostalgia that colours what I am saying.

Advent Children takes place 2 years after the game ends. The film is entirely done using computer graphics. Advent Children is what the Final Fantasy movie should have been.

The action sequences are insane. Being entirely animated lets the director and animators do some pretty amazing things. There is plenty of gravity defying stuff going on. The computer graphics are exquisite, though someone like Ju-lian would probably have to weigh in on if they are actually good or not.

The movie has a typical Final Fantasy plot. It’s all pretty fantastic and over the top. Basically, people are getting sick, and the sickness all relates back to events from Final Fantasy 7. The movie is probably watchable if you haven’t played Final Fantasy 7; it might be a little confusing at times, but since the movie’s plot is so light, I don’t think it detracts from the enjoyment of the film. If you have played the games I think you’ll probably enjoy the movie that much more.

I can’t believe I’ve written this much on a video game movie. I liked it though—a lot.

|  

Comments

  1. 6 was great, blowing up the world and starting up with a secondary character like Celes was crazy….But no one is more badass the Cloud…and the greatest Villain in any game is Sephiroth…Hence, 7 is the greatest RPG and game ever!....And yeah AC was bloody insane….I hope they continue on with the characters….but that all remains to be seen

  2. ok, i’ve never understood the FF games. Does every one of them have a completely different story and characters? my 2 cents, since i’ve never played the games, i remember the trailer to FF8 blowing my mind when it came out.

  3. Each game has a different story, with the exception of Final Fantasy X-2, which was a sequel to Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy 8 had really good graphics. They were much nicer than those of Final Fantasy 7.

  4. FF7 did have some of the coolest characters. Sephiroth and Cloud are great characters. It also had some very intense scenes. But ff3 is still the best though. And AC was amazing. It would have been nicer if it was a little longer

  5. Ram knows….playing it from the original…..and as I told you earlier..they releasing FF2 on the GBA…so that should be cool, with new characters and areas to explore….I stand firm that FF7 is still the greatest game ever made…You don’t kill a playable character..that shit is downright crazy…..

  6. The graphics are pretty good. I’m no art director but it looks like they were avoiding photo-realism on purpose. In particular, the characters all had an artificial look about them. I know it’s still very difficult to get truly realistic people but if you take a look at Fight Night PS3 screen shots, it looks better in realtime than this movie. Again though, I’m not sure how much they actively avoided trying to make the characters appear real.

    I think their biggest improvement over their last movie is the animation. Well, the hair, I think, is a fair bit better but the last movie had run animations that triggered the “there’s something wrong with that” reaction. It looks like the mocapped the normal stuff, or at least spent a lot more time on it.

    On the whole, I thought it was well done. A good step up from the last one visually.

Don't be shy, you can comment too!

 
Some things to keep in mind: You can style comments using Textile. In particular, *text* will get turned into text and _text_ will get turned into text. You can post a link using the command "linktext":link, so something like "google":http://www.google.com will get turned in to google. I may erase off-topic comments, or edit poorly formatted comments; I do this very rarely.