Category: CGI Movie Articles

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Kingsglaive vs Advent Children: The Consequence of Pointless Action

Transcript:

Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children feature epic battles with giant monsters, magic, high-flying sword fights, high-speed vehicle chases, and overall ridiculous levels of action. Are they really comparable films though? I’ve pointed out in previous videos that these movies have big differences from one another in terms of how they communicate information visually. As action movies, Kingsglaive and Advent Children make their action scenes a spectacle, but what separates a bad action movie from a good one is how well they communicate why each battle matters in addition to making them look awesome. How well do Kingsglaive and Advent Children show the characters’ locations, goals, and thoughts during a fight? Let’s compare the final third of Kingsglaive to three scenes it resembles from Advent Children.

The final third of Kingsglaive features the protagonist Nyx fighting the antagonist General Glauca, the enemy empire Niflheim’s daemons fighting other monsters, Nyx’s friends Libertus and Princess Luna escaping the city of Insomnia, and a parallel scene featuring Niflheim’s chancellor and emperor. The monsters the daemons fight are referred to as the Old Wall, brought to life as a last resort to defend the kingdom of Lucis from its enemies. In the process, they destroy Lucis’ capital Insomnia. Don’t worry. Lucis’ future doesn’t depend on its citizens’ survival. What kind of kingdom needs people?

Libertus and Luna escaping from the city has similarities to the final motorcycle chase in Advent Children. In Kingsglaive, Libertus must escort Luna out of the city so she can deliver a magical ring to Prince Noctis to save Lucis’ future. Their escape is actually pretty uneventful compared to everything else going on in this section of the movie, which is odd considering that Luna and the ring are the only things that matter in it. General Glauca breaks off from his fight with Nyx once to try to stop them, but when a section of missing highway dislodges him, he returns to killing Nyx rather than continuing his pursuit of the most important items in the movie.

In Advent Children’s motorcycle chase, the protagonist Cloud must stop the antagonist Kadaj from using Jenova’s cells to reincarnate Cloud’s greatest enemy Sephiroth. Kadaj also has a mostly carefree escape, but that’s because his brothers forcefully separate Cloud from him. This whole scene is about Cloud fighting through Loz and Yazoo to get to Kadaj rather than two guys just killing each other because they forgot their purpose for fighting.

Actually, Nyx and Glauca do have a reason to fight, but it’s not what you think. Glauca says that he wants the ring, but he and Nyx move ever farther away from it, which suggests he has another goal. This final battle actually symbolizes an ethical debate. Is it better to surrender to your enemy to save the people who haven’t died yet, or should you continue fighting for what you believe no matter the consequences? Glauca wants Lucis to surrender to Niflheim to end the war while Nyx believes that Niflheim could never rule a just future. Neither of them are wrong. Both choices are awful, and either choice could lead to a terrible future.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Nyx and Glauca are equally terrible people, considering how little they care about the wanton destruction and death surrounding them, and Lucis is just as bad as Niflheim. Lucis’ King Regis hoards his son and magical objects behind a wall while forcing his people to fight a losing war to protect them. The final scenes show this blatantly; his own magic kills his own people. Meanwhile, Niflheim murders thousands of civilians whenever it has the chance.

In essence, Nyx and Glauca kill each other simply because they have different beliefs. That’s right! If someone doesn’t believe what you do, just kill them.

This battle mirrors the battle between Cloud and Sephiroth in Advent Children. (Kingsglaive, you can’t just use Advent Children physics without setting them up first!) Among their differences though, the characters have clear motivations, and we can even sympathize with one of them. [“What I want Cloud is to sail the darkness of the cosmos with this planet as my vessel.”] Cloud must save the planet. Simple! Done! Now we can watch the fight without wondering why we should care about two people murdering one another while a city and its inhabitance falls into ruin around them.

Actually, no one in this scene dies. If Cloud fails, everyone on the planet will likely die, but the battle takes place in an abandoned city. Cloud doesn’t even kill Sephiroth in the end. [“I will never be a memory.”] And when Kadaj reappears, Cloud shows him sympathy. He isn’t some psychopath who can murder his colleagues while ignoring the deaths of thousands around him. He can barely handle his memories of two friends who died years ago. Advent Children doesn’t present morally gray questions to mull over, but personally, I prefer its message, “choose life,” to Kingsglaive’s morally reprehensible message, “Kill everyone who disagrees with you and also your allies.”

Finally, most of Nyx and Glauca’s battle takes place on top of a giant monster battle similar to a scene in Advent Children where Cloud and his friends fight the monster Bahamut. The problem with Kingsglaive is that the monsters only add to the visual chaos on screen. Some of the monsters of the Old Wall look and sound like General Glauca. [“Rawr!”] [“Argh! Ugh!”] The monsters on both sides destroy so much with little to no reaction from any of the characters that it all seems pointless.

Additionally, Nyx and Glauca’s battle takes place on constantly moving settings: fighting monsters, collapsing buildings, flying airships, falling debris, and racing cars. They can also teleport anywhere within throwing distance at any time. Kingsglaive seems to think that because of this, it doesn’t have to show how the characters move from one area to the next. Nyx and Glauca can just appear on top of giant monsters or airships whenever it looks cool.

The movie, however, often has to cut to other useless scenes just so that moving Nyx and Glauca from one place to the next makes some kind of sense. The characters can’t jump from a collapsing parking garage and reappear falling from an office building roof, so let’s see what’s going on with Libertus and Luna. [“That’s not something you see every day.”] Nothing. Great. Why are these guys still here? Didn’t they say half an hour ago that they were leaving? Why do we need to hear this information again?

The battle with Bahamut also contains many fighters, some of which fight on top of the monster. The difference from Kingsglaive is that Advent Children constantly shows the location of the fighters, including the monster, in the scene and in relation to one another. The battle takes place in one area that all looks very similar but has landmarks that even serve as an element of combat. In the middle of the battle, we briefly cut away to a scene where Kadaj discovers the location of Jenova’s cells. This scene, however, exists to break up the action and reveal new information rather than to move all the characters to new locations. When we return, the fight picks up right where it left off.

Attacks from the monster also mean something to the characters, especially considering that they’re fighting to save themselves and the city. Not only do we know the characters’ locations, but also, we know their feelings through reaction shots.

Overall, Advent Children’s fight scenes show everything we need to know in an awesome way while Kingsglaive occasionally displays awesome moments in otherwise visually chaotic settings. Both films may appear to be incoherent action fests, but their similarities are only superficial. Beneath the surface, Advent Children uses visual language so masterfully that I find it shocking Square Enix went on to make Kingsglaive, a film so inept that it can barely get across that someone is stealing a crystal without multiple characters verbally pointing it out. Comparing Advent Children to Kingsglaive is like comparing Toy Story to Foodfight!, but if you still don’t believe me, go watch them. Watch them back to back. Then, come back and tell me what you think. Talk at you next time.

[“Shall we take our leave then? The sun will soon set. We need not be here to witness the terrors of the night.”] [“I will return to Niflheim.” “So soon?”]

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Kingsglaive vs Advent Children: Where Nonsense Originates

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Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children get compared a lot. They both contain extravagant action scenes, were created by Square Enix, and are based on games in the Final Fantasy franchise. Both also receive criticism for having convoluted and confusing plots. But how justified is this comparison? In a previous video, I talked about how Kingsglaive’s visuals contradict its audio and its general visual chaos. Is that all that makes its story incoherent? Does Advent Children have the same problem with visual communication? Let’s compare three aspects of their stories to find out.

Both films feature protagonists with inner conflicts that they must confront. Nyx in Kingsglaive deals with the deaths of his mother and sister and his status as an immigrant… supposedly. The film shows the source of Nyx’s torment through a poster board in his room, which has photos of his family and characters likely drawn by his sister. Nyx also watches a cartoon on TV that features the same characters. Nyx, however, looks at these things with indifference… or maybe rage. Is he tormented, or is he just eating something? Stop changing the camera angle every two seconds!

He seems to have a fear that his past will lead to his death. Maybe? What prompted him to think this thought? He’s just sitting on the steps, and then, some guy falls out of the sky and vomits. Nyx hears his sister’s voice throughout the film, but these memories only cause mild inconveniences.

Similarly, guards only occasionally taunt his immigration status. The rest of the time he just plows through them. [“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! Wait a minute! Stop!”] Despite the suggestion that he must overcome these problems, we don’t ever know why they’re problematic… except when he decides Princess Luna needs to know about his sister mid-chase scene.

In contrast, Cloud’s inner torment in Advent Children is clearly a problem that he must solve if he expects to survive the film. Cloud deals with the deaths of his friends Zack and Aerith and his affliction with an incurable disease called geostigma. He experiences intrusive visions from his past at inopportune times. He pushes his surviving friends away out of guilt. He feels pain and bleeds blue ink from geostigma. Cloud’s battle against his inner demons makes it difficult for him to fight the enemies resurrected from his past in reality. His inner problems integrate so well with his external struggles that battling his enemies and reuniting with his friends is synonymous with letting go of his past and finding his place in the present.

Kingsglaive and Advent Children also have bad guys that must obtain something important to fulfill their evil plans. In Kingsglaive, the empire Niflheim wants to steal the kingdom of Lucis’ Crystal, which it uses to defend its capital city Insomnia with a magical wall; obtain a magical ring from Lucis’ King Regis; kill and/or kidnap Lucis’ ally Princess Luna; and/or kill King Regis. If that previous semblance of a sentence didn’t clue you in, Kingsglaive doesn’t explain why Niflheim or Lucis care about any of these goals. Let’s look specifically at the Crystal, which at first glance appears to be the most powerful object in the movie. The Crystal is so important in fact that it’s the first thing that we see in the film.

Unfortunately, the scenes during which Niflheim steals it are so chaotic that they render its importance questionable at best. During a distraction peace treaty, Niflheim’s troops enter a smoky room outside the Crystal’s hold. [“The Crystal! They’re after the Crystal!”] The troops break into a room with a control board and a vault door leading to the Crystal. They blow up the control panel, which causes Insomnia’s wall to fall. [“The wall, it’s gone.”] Later, Niflheim’s chancellor and emperor watch one of their ships carry the Crystal away.

It sounds straightforward… until you mix it with King Regis’ battle against robots and a menacing suit of armor and Nyx’s fight with traitorous teammates and a giant octopus. Additionally, the Crystal doesn’t look like a crystal, and this movie doesn’t like to hold any of its shaky and poorly chosen shots for more than two seconds. There’s a reason why the characters narrate this entire heist. “They broke into a room with a… panel? Where’s the Crystal?” “What is this black thing covered in smoke?” [“The Crystal!”] “Oh, you mean this window divider is the Crystal?”

The aftermath doesn’t stress the importance of this event either. No one cares. Nyx and Luna point out that the wall has fallen before they return to killing traitors. The ambassador and the emperor of Niflheim talk about what happens next. “The Crystal…! Well, let’s go see if King Regis is still alive.” With the editing and cinematography, stealing the Crystal has as much weight as saving Luna from octopods and King Regis fighting for his life. In the end, do any of them matter? The Crystal’s gone. Regis dies. Luna throws herself out of an airship and yet is entrusted with a magic ring that no one can wear.

Advent Children’s antagonist Kadaj wishes to find the remnants of Jenova, an alien being that caused a catastrophe long ago. When Kadaj discovers the alien matter hidden in plain view, the film highlights its importance by making an event out of it. The possessor, Rufus, and Kadaj attract the attention of almost every major member of the cast when Rufus tosses Jenova’s remains off a building, and he and Kadaj jump after them in slow motion. Kadaj tries to grab the box out of the air while Rufus shoots at it.

This scene occurs between two fight scenes, but they all feel very different, which makes it stand out. This scene features a desperate few seconds dragged out into almost a minute. The previous scene shows Cloud rediscovering friendship power, and the next has a high-speed motorcycle battle. While we don’t know until the end of the movie what Kadaj will do with Jenova, the dramatic visuals in this scene foreshadow the importance of him obtaining it.

Finally, the protagonists in both films must follow the clues to reach their goals and solve problems. Nyx tends to just know things for no reason. [“Your hairpin. They’re tracking it. Give it to me.”] [“Pelna, get out of there! It’s a trap!”] At one point, Nyx discovers a pattern on an enemy monster and somehow makes the connection that it’s attracted to a hairpin that Luna wears despite neither of them bearing any resemblance to one another. Similarly, he somehow determines that a trap octopus monster is onboard an airship in response to his teammate observing enemy guards. These are relatively minor problems in comparison to Nyx’s unexplained faith that a suicidal woman, a ring that kills everyone who wears it, and an absent prince have more importance to the future that he wants to save than an entire city of people who might have lived in it.

In contrast, the characters in Advent Children know surprisingly little about anything. [“So what’s going to happen now?”] [“Where’s Mother?”] [“Kadaj, what is he?”] [“Who’s that?”] [“What’s this stuff about Mother?”] [“What do you mean?”] Cloud seems clueless as to how Kadaj will reincarnate Sephiroth right up until Kadaj shoves Jenova cells in his chest. He doesn’t know the cure for geostigma until he’s cured. He doesn’t even seem know what happens at the end of the movie. [“It’s like she said: ‘Wait here and Cloud will come back.'” …] The film provides visual clues for the audience to interpret what happened, but the characters don’t usually do this themselves, at least not audibly.

This final point sums up what Advent Children and Kingsglaive do that makes their stories confusing to follow. They depict two visual storytelling extremes. Advent Children shows all its clues but rarely interprets what they mean audibly while Kingsglaive states what difficult to decipher and non-existent visual clues mean even when that interpretation doesn’t make sense. I’ll let you decide if a blank stare is a preferable explanation to: [“Your hairpin. They’re tracking it. Give it to me.”]

So how do their fight scenes compare? That’s a subject for another video. Talk at you next time.

[“A man’s past is his pride.” “No, my pride is shaping the future.”]

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Speech Therapy: The Spider Robot Dilemma

Transcript:

Appleseed Alpha entertained me, and I don’t say that often about the subset of CGI movies that I review. It looks beautiful and contains great action, characters who interact with one another like people, characters with fun personalities, interesting designs, awesome music, and of course, unintentionally ridiculous moments. [“The death… They could’ve taken her anywhere! It’s pointless!”] By the end of the movie, when it obviously set up potential for a sequel, I found myself thinking, “You know… I wouldn’t mind that.”

This movie’s great… as long as you don’t think about anything that happens in it. So just for fun, let’s think about what happens in it.

The story follows former soldiers and couple Deunan and Briareos. After World War III’s end, the protagonists find themselves in the service of crime boss and overlord of New York Two Horns. The war left Briareos, a cyborg, weak and in need of frequent recharges, which Two Horns provides in exchange for Deunan’s and Briareos’ services. Despite their wish to leave the ruined city, Two Horns and Briareos’ weakness won’t allow it.

This changes when the protagonists meet Olson and Iris, who have a mission to destroy a powerful weapon left over from the war. Deunan and Briareos save Olson and Iris from automated war-time robots. As payment, Olson finds a defective chip in Briareos that causes his weakness and removes it. Apparently, Briareos’ mechanic implanted it in him on Two Horn’s orders. With his strength restored, Briareos and Deunan decide to accompany Olson and Iris on their mission.

The antagonist, a cyborg named Talos has different plans for the weapon though. Originally given a mission to dispose of left over weapons from the war, Talos decides it would be more effective to control a weapon capable of enforcing the peace and controlling the world, the same weapon that Iris must destroy. Talos kidnaps Iris and kills Olson in order to learn the location of the weapon and control it. Iris is a bioroid, an artificial human, created specifically to destroy the weapon. As such, she has the ability to activate the weapon through its iris scanner.

Talos forces Iris to bring the weapon to life, but not everything goes as planned. Shortly after powering on, the weapon begins an automated sequence to self-destruct in the middle of the New York. Deunan and Briareos catch up to them after discovering Olson’s body and information on where to find the weapon. Deunan and Iris kill Talos and come up with a plan to destroy the weapon with Briareos. Seconds from success though, Iris reveals that she must sacrifice herself in order to keep the weapon’s shields down and give Briareos a shot at destroying its power generator with a sniper rifle.

First of all, why does this weapon have an automated sequence to destroy New York? Iris explains that it’s a weapon programmed for retribution in the event that the country fell to its enemies. Who is this weapon punishing though? The country? “You lost! Loser! That’s what you get!” New Yorkers? Clearly, if we lose World War III, it’s New York’s fault. “Damn liberals ruined the country!”

Okay, maybe this weapon is punishing America’s enemies by destroying its crown city… New York. Yeah, how’s that feel Los Angeles? Who cares about you, Washington, DC? “You’ll never take our country’s greatest source of pizza alive!” It’s an ingenious idea, placing a booby-trapped weapon on your own soil. When the enemy discovers it in their new country after the war ends, they’ll unwittingly destroy New York. “Fools! Now we have the last laugh!” I’m sure everyone who lives there currently would willingly die for this trickery.

Second, what causes the weapon’s automated self-destruct sequence to begin in the movie? When Talos discovers that he doesn’t have control of the weapon, we hear the computer stating [“Hull breach verified. Self-defense system protocol initiated.” “No!”]. So when this weapon’s hull is breached, it automatically begins an uninterruptable process to destroy New York. [“What?”] I guess if this weapon’s primary function is retribution, it’d better make sure that it carries it out. You had one job, weapon!

Exactly how much damage classifies a hull breach? Before this automated sequence begins, Deunan shoots at a cargo door, so apparently, not very much. A bird could probably fly into a window and begin the automated self-destruct sequence. The weapon was never completed though, which could have caused the computer to identify missing pieces of the hull as a hull breach. This suggests, however, that the people building this robot would destroy New York if they so much as turned it on. The designers must have just really hated New York.

Third, why does Iris have to die? Iris explains to Deunan that she must stay on the weapon to keep its shields down presumably by holding a button or something. So an operator can’t disable the weapon’s self-destruct sequence, but they can disable its shields. It’s a safety feature. In the event that you accidentally sentence New York to destruction, you can disable the weapon’s shields by holding down a button and hope that other people can destroy it in time.

Fourth, why does it have to be a spider robot? This weapon’s primary function appears to be to blow up New York. Why not just bury a bomb in the middle of New York and blow it up when the country loses the war? Why build a giant war machine for the sole purpose of walking a few miles to New York? You could probably put bombs beneath every major city in America for a fraction of the cost of building a massive spider robot that only blows up one. Sure, the robot in the film was incomplete, and if it weren’t, maybe Talos could rampage around the country with it for a while. But the end point is still, for no apparent reason, New York.

Finally… why is Deunan so upset about this? When Deunan and Briareos discover Olson’s dead body, Deunan briefly throws a fit. [“We finish what he started.” “I don’t think I can.” “What?” “It’s too much… The death… They could’ve taken her anywhere! It’s pointless!”] Um… Is death new? Deunan is a former soldier. She murders a number of people in the movie and watches Briareos do the same. She doesn’t have nearly this reaction when Iris dies. She’s angry and hurt, but she doesn’t lay down her weapon and call everything pointless. She didn’t give any indication of giving up when she and Briareos were trapped in the city or fighting enemies in the weapon bunker or chasing after the spider robot. Briareos doesn’t care this much, and he’s been through as much as she has. This level of despair seems out of character for a kind but otherwise tough and stubborn soldier.

So overall, Appleseed Alpha is a fun movie about a girl who has to kill herself to stop a giant spider fortress built only to blow up from destroying an already ruined city. Also, Deunan is a woman. She has feelings. I wonder what the sequel will be like.

Talk at you next time.

[“You’re too late. She’s already dead.” “No, but you are.”]

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Speech Therapy: Great Graphics doesn’t mean Great Visuals

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Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is a photorealistic, technological marvel… that critics have also described as a chaotic series of beautiful images. Despite its technological achievements, Kingsglaive fails to do what film theorists say all movies should aspire to do: to tell its story through visuals.

Visual language, as used by visual art mediums like photography, painting, and drawing, communicates ideas through pictures. Because they’re composed of a series of images, movies are also a visual medium. Films use elements like shot composition, lighting, costuming, video editing, and positioning of props and actors to tell a visual story and convey ideas and tones. While films can also use verbal, written, and musical communication to convey meaning, film theorists claim that as a visual medium, movies should tell their stories visually.

We don’t need to go far to see Kingsglaive’s terrible use visual language. Let’s take a look at the first fight scene, which serves as a good preview for the rest of the movie, to see why great graphics don’t necessarily make great visuals.

The first fight scene in Kingsglaive features an epic battle that doesn’t have an ending or a clear victor, which is kind of important considering that the characters spend the next fifteen minutes of the movie lamenting the terrible loss. In this battle, Assassin’s Creed fights Starship Troopers… I mean the kingdom of Lucis defends a wall from the empire Niflheim’s army.

As the first battle in the movie, it introduces elements that we’ll see for the rest of the film like sword teleportation, magical shields, monsters, daemons, Lucis’ Kingsglaive, and Niflheim’s army. It also just shows random stuff that never comes up again. Invisibility! Surprise! A group of mages summon a fire tornado that not only never comes up again but also prominently kills their own troops. Niflheim deposits a daemon into the field that also prominently kills their own troops. Who’s fighting who again? Oh yeah.

The daemon puts out the fire tornado by standing on it or something, and the Kingsglaive’s captain orders a retreat because they can’t defeat a mighty daemon. The daemon then fires missiles over the wall and causes an overhanging rock to collapse and destroy the bridge joining the two armies. A couple monsters make it to the Kingsglaive’s side though. The protagonist Nyx decides to save his friend Libertus, who got caught under a falling rock, even though everyone tells him not to. Feel free to kill your allies, but don’t save them. I’m totally on this kingdom’s team. Screw people.

Then, a really dumb series of shots happens that fails to show a bug monster tossing the rock off Libertus and Nyx saving him. No, no. Let’s stop here and appreciate how dumb these shots are.

  • The bug monster runs past Nyx, and Nyx throws his sword. In the next shot, that’s not Nyx. That’s Libertus. Don’t let the juxtaposition trick you.
  • The bug monster launches the rock and Libertus into the air, but the only way to actually see that is by watching it frame-by-frame.
  • The next shot gives us less than half a second to register that Nyx has finally arrived at the scene in a mess of sparks at the same time Libertus lands on the ground. No, Libertus isn’t the one who teleported and still isn’t Nyx.
  • A new shot just shows Nyx rolling underneath the bug and cutting its legs off because that last shot wasn’t pointless enough. 
  • Then, in the next shot, that’s Libertus. Apparently, Nyx teleported to nowhere because he’s covered in sparks again.
  • He throws his sword out from underneath the bug, which mandates another cut.
  • Finally, he electrocutes the bug, but we need to see this from another angle.

You know, this might have looked cool if it weren’t separated into seven shots. Maybe, we’d be able to see what was happening… No, that’s stupid.

The monsters fall into the abyss as the bridge continues to collapse, and Nyx and Libertus teleport to safety. Just when they think the battle’s over though, the daemon appears out of a dark cloud of smoke and then…! The scene ends… What the f—

Movies have a beginning, middle, and end, but each scene should also have a beginning, middle, and end. This applies to action scenes as well, which are by definition scenes. This isn’t an ending. If Niflheim can’t control their own monster and the Kingsglaive claim they can’t defeat it, then how do all the main characters in this scene live to the next one unscathed and unconcerned? Apparently, the daemon wasn’t a problem, but alas, they continue bitching about it.

The following scene pretends to end the previous one with a series of black fades as if to suggest that something tragic occurred. It is tragic. The movie shows it’s tragic because a lot of people died, mostly because both sides summoned catastrophes beyond their control. The movie claims it’s tragic in the following scenes where the king of Lucis determines that this battle was such a horrendous loss that he has no choice but to surrender to Niflheim. None of the main characters lament in this scene though. They talk about how Nyx committed an act of insubordination by saving Libertus. Simultaneously, something tragic occurred, and all anyone cares about is that one more person should have died.

Movie, is it tragic or isn’t it? Tell me how I should feel and why!

Part of the reason for this confusion stems from the audio contradicting the visuals. The visuals show two armies fighting one another, uncontrollable power, and numerous deaths on both sides. The battle ends because the bridge joining the armies falls. A soldier chooses to save his friend from some straggling monsters and succeeds, but then a daemon emerges from the smoke. The following scene shows the tragic aftermath of a difficult battle. Nyx comforts Libertus, and the captain comforts Nyx.

The audio tells a different story that the visuals fail to show. [“All units move to secure the wall. If they break through, we’re done.”] [“The East wall’s going down.”] [“We can’t take down that daemon. I’m ordering a full retreat.”] [“Nyx, we have orders.” “Help!” “Nyx!”] [“You disobeyed a direct order to retreat.”] [“Yes, your majesty, despite their victory all but assured…” “A sudden and inexplicable retreat.”] “Niflheim could have retreated because the bridge collapsed, and it lost a lot of its troops. ” “No, it’s a complete mystery! We have no idea why any of this is happening!” A terrible loss for Lucis looks like this. They must have high standards. Seriously, does the audio and video belong to the same movie?

This first scene encapsulates the entire film: visual chaos and contradicting explanatory audio without an ending. During a fight with a giant octopus, a tentacle smacks Nyx’s friend Luche out of existence. In a series of 16 cuts over 18 seconds, Nyx breaks a bug-robot monster with his bare hands, it smokes, another monster attacks it, and they both just stop moving. It takes three camera angles just to show Luche turning around. After Libertus joins a rebellion to protest Lucis’ actions, a radio broadcast names him a perpetrator of an unidentified crime. The only thing the rebellion does in the entire movie is get shot in the streets. [“This is what 100 years of peace looks like.”] A runway?

The movie ends with heroic music despite the protagonist’s death, the leveling of a city, and the deaths of probably hundreds of thousands of people. Yay! We saved the future I guess…! And a couple assholes who don’t seem to care about all the people who died in the process. Why is this woman important to the future again?

Kingsglaive contains detailed, beautiful, and photorealistic graphics, but they often don’t match the story the movie tries to tell audibly and occasionally lapse into complete incoherence. That’s truly the definition of meaningless eye candy. Talk at you next time.

[“We must part ways here.” “What?” “I can hardly travel in secrecy alongside so great a hero.”]

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Elysium from South Korea to North America

I’ve been working on an article on one of my favorite case studies Elysium (2003), and finally got it polished enough to post it.

The CGI feature-length movie Elysium (2003) was created in South Korea and, like many foreign films, adapted and redubbed for an English-speaking audience. Strangely, however, the adapted film contains thirteen minutes of footage that don’t exist in the supposed original. Further, the South Korean film contains evidence of tampering and a sloppy editing job. This paper details the differences between the two versions of Elysium and attempts to explain what happened on the film’s journey from South Korea to North America.

You can read the full paper here: Elysium from South Korea to North America

Anime Abominations with return in a week or so. I promise. 😛

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Speech Therapy: The Philosophy of Antz

Transcript:

According to the box, Antz tells the story of one ant’s struggle to win the right to express himself and his individuality in a society of overwhelming conformity. By going against the grain, the protagonist Z ultimately saves the rest of his colony and leads a revolution.

A free-thinking individual can find happiness and save the world would seem to be Antz message. Z is different than everyone else. He dances differently than everyone else. He has the gall to impersonate a soldier even though it’s strictly forbidden. He survives a war while everyone else who conforms to the rules of society dies horribly. He kidnaps the princess and the worst thing that happens to him is he finds Insectopia while near everyone who goes after him for the good of the colony dies horribly. General Mandible who acts for the good of the hive mind dies horribly while Z who fights for the good of the individuals in that colony marries the princess and finds happiness.

But there was one thing about this theme that didn’t make sense. In one scene, Z and his companion Princess Bala meet two bees named Chip and Muffy. Out of the kindness of her heart, Muffy offers to find the ants something to eat… Then, she dies horribly, leaving her husband Chip to a life of depression and alcoholism. Why? Chip is against his wife’s act of charity and suggests that such an offering is unusual for a bee to do for an ant. She isn’t prescribing to the thoughts of some collective. Everyone else in the movie who dies horribly dies because they were mindlessly following orders or because they were fighting for a conformist society. Why does this strange and terrible scene exist at all?

This event reveals a deeper theme that runs through Antz: the virtue of selfishness.

Z is an incredibly selfish person even if he didn’t live a society that discouraged self-expression. The first thing we hear in the movie is Z, talking about himself. Sure, he’s in a therapy session, but other characters acknowledge his selfishness, suggesting that he’s like this all the time.

[“It’s not about you. It’s about us.”]
[“All you think about is yourself.” “Of course. Who else is going to think about me?”]
[“Think about all the things I’ve done for you.” “…I can’t think of any.”]

For most of the movie, Z is so self-absorbed that he’s even disdainful of everyone and everything else around him, even his so called friends.

[“What a bunch of losers. Mindless zombies capitulating to an oppressive system.”]

He acts on his own personal whims, feelings, and desires with little regard for the people around him. Near the beginning of the movie, Z wants to see Princess Bala, who he met at a bar and fell in love with when she secretly snuck away from the palace. He comes up with a plan to impersonate his friend Weaver even though this is extremely dangerous for Weaver. Z does get to see Princess Bala, but as soon as he’s found out, he uses Bala as a living shield and holds her hostage for his own safety. Z’s despicable behavior peaks after he escapes the anthill with Bala. When he finds out that she has no romantic feelings for him, he abandons her to the wilderness, showing absolutely no concern for her.

Bala is also a selfish person, being a spoiled princess. She’s clearly bored and even disgusted with her duties especially her engagement to General Mandible.

[“Look at the order… the precision.”]
[“Remind me why I’m marrying this guy.”]
[“What if I don’t like my place?”]
[“Labor? I’ll tell you about labor. Can you imagine giving birth every ten seconds for the rest of your life?”]

She even waves off an army of soldiers on a suicide mission with a yawn. Her selfishness also shows most once she’s outside the oppressive society of the anthill. She talks about herself as much as Z talks about himself and seems unaware of her own selfishness as she points out Z’s.

Their behavior changes after Z is trapped inside a water droplet. Bala rescues him presumably for the same reasons that she followed him as far as she did from the anthill. She needs him to survive in the scary world outside. When Z is freed, he thanks Bala and then returns to ignoring her… but then, he appeals to her selfishness to convince her to come with him to Insectopia and stop complaining.

[“Bala, look. Do you really want to be Mrs. Raving Lunatic? I promise if Insectopia doesn’t exist, I’ll take you back to the colony.”]

This appeal to selfishness occurs at several other points in the movie and each time results in the betterment of everyone involved. In order to convince Weaver to switch places with him, Z appeals to Weaver’s desire to meet sexy worker girls, which he does. When Bala and Z discover General Mandible’s plans to drown the rest of the colony, they decide to stop him instead of returning to Insectopia for personal reasons. Bala wants to stop Mandible’s plans to save her mother.

Z’s decision is based on his experience in the termite war that he unintentionally got involved in earlier in the movie. This event, particularly his experience with a soldier named Barbatus, who protected him and listened to him, deeply affected Z. He was devastated that Barbatus died having never made his own decisions. Z knows that the workers digging the tunnel towards the lake are mindlessly doing so on orders. He isn’t about to let a colony of ants die the same way that Barbatus did.

These two characters who began the movie as hateful and contemptuous have now developed complex and caring relationships with the people around them. They are both as selfish at the end of the movie as they are at the beginning. The movie ends with Z talking about himself. It was the free expression and acceptance of their selfishness that allowed them to develop into more humane people. Selfishness was suppressed or ignored by everyone, including Z and Bala, for most of the movie.

[“I’m tired… I’m hungry… Let’s go back to the colony.” “Blah, blah, blah. Take yourself back.”]
[“All you think about is yourself.”]
[“A hero? But I didn’t do anything.” “Good. I don’t like heroes.”]
[“I was born two seconds after you and ever since I’ve listened to you. What are you bitching about?”]

Under such conditions, neither of them could develop. When Bala rescued Z from the water droplet, both of them realized that they selfishly needed one another and began their transformation.

Under this lens, Antz depicts the theme of selfishness vs. selflessness. Z survives the war against the termites because he refused to fight a battle that earned him nothing. Barbatus died because he selflessly fought to protect Z and the colony. Everyone in the termite war died for the colony for nothing in return. The soldiers who followed Z died for the colony. General Mandible dies for attempting to create the perfect colony from soldiers, individuals who are so selfless that they would die for other people.

This is why Muffy died and why her husband Chip was likely doomed to a life of depression induced alcoholism. Muffy acted selflessly by offering food to ants who had nothing to offer her in return. Later, Chip helps Z by giving him a ride back to the anthill in memory of his cuddly-widdles. While Chip doesn’t die, this act of kindness occurred while he was in a state of drunken misery.

This may sound heartless… and at the same time familiar. Objectivism a philosophy described by Ayn Rand states that a man’s highest moral aim is the pursuit of his own happiness. A man should strive for a life of purpose and joy and should not sacrifice his desires for the sake of others. This is not to say that people can selfishly gain happiness by exploiting others. It is, in fact, in everyone’s own self-interest to treat others as individuals, trading value for value. Even married couples can’t expect each other to sacrifice their own happiness for their spouse’s sake. Yes, while it isn’t as obtuse as Atlas Shrugged, Antz portrays many of the qualities of this philosophy even down to its nuances.

Antz is much more than what was written on the box. Today, Antz is better remembered as that rip-off of A Bug’s Life that really should have been rated PG-13, but under its surface, it presents a fascinating, well-written, and entertaining political and philosophical commentary.

Talk at you next time!

[“Oh, Muffy, not another crusade…” “Chippy, we have a social obligation to the less fortunate.”]

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Speech Therapy: How General Hein Destroyed Square Pictures

Transcript:

Brad Bird once said that while he was directing The Incredibles, everyone told him that it wouldn’t succeed because it focused on human characters. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the first fully computer-generated, feature-length film to attempt photorealistic 3D animation, had just lost $94 million and was blamed for the closing of its production studio Square Pictures. People didn’t seem interested in seeing the not-quite-human-looking characters CG could produce. Of course, Bird ignored these concerns, knowing that the species of the characters had nothing to do with the quality of their story or the success of a film. Final Fantasy was no exception.

Spirits Within tells the story of Aki Ross, a scientist in the post-apocalyptic near future. Phantoms, an alien species of energy beings invisible to the naked eye, have invaded Earth, killing every living thing they touch. Dr. Ross and her mentor Dr. Sid hope to stop them by creating an energy wave with just the right form and frequency to cancel out the aliens. They also hope to cure Aki, who has been infected with a particle of alien matter, a condition that is usually fatal. For the moment, a chest plate designed by Dr. Sid is keeping her alive by containing the alien infestation safely inside her.

Dr. Sid is a famous scientist known for discovering that humans and other living things contain within them the same energy that phantoms are made of. He’s also found a way to harness this energy for weapons, shields, and technologies used to combat the phantoms. His discoveries aren’t without controversy though. He refers to the energies in living things and phantoms as spirits, and while he has no evidence to support it, he believes the Earth has a spirit, too.

General Hein, the leader of the United States Military Force and the antagonist of Spirits Within, seeks to prevent Aki and Sid’s research. He believes that humanity’s best hope of destroying the phantoms is to fire a newly developed weapon known as the Zeus Cannon at their nest, the Leonid meteor the aliens arrived on. Despite Dr. Sid’s evidence that firing the cannon at the meteor’s crater will be ineffective against the phantoms, Hein won’t be convinced otherwise. He suspects that Aki has carried the alien within her for so long that it’s now influencing her actions. She should be in jail, not pursuing research that could be just what the enemy wants.

On the surface, nothing seems wrong with Spirits Within’s story, which may be why filmmakers, fans, and critics have offered so many alternative explanations for the film’s failure. Some say it was wrongly marketed to Final Fantasy and action movie fans. Others say it was over budget. The story, with its mix of spirituality and science, was contrived and confusing for Western audiences. The poorly written dialog was delivered through stereotypical characters voiced by lackluster actors. It was an original, science-fiction movie for a mature audience in a market traditionally associated with children’s entertainment. The film emphasized the technology used to create it, which distracted from the story and rendered it “as exciting as a shampoo commercial” featuring the protagonist’s hair.

Like the theory presented to Brad Bird, these reasons didn’t explain to me why The Spirits Within failed to capture anyone’s attention beyond its stunning visuals. Some of these “problems” were the reasons that I found the film so intriguing. Other films that contained many of these same flaws were financially successful, Avatar being a prime example. Within days of watching Spirits Within, I would forget what it was about, but it wasn’t because the story it set out to tell was dull or dumb. The film’s foremost problem is its major source of conflict: General Douglas Hein.

Conflicts are the obstacles that the characters face in the pursuit of their goals. A conflict could be as big as the protagonist having to defy her government to save the world or as simple as the hero’s side kick having a grating personality. Conflict is used to get the audience engaged in the story, but more importantly, it helps develop the world and its characters. Often the world’s physical rules and political laws are defined to stand in the protagonist’s way. Conflict also shows how the characters react to stress and how they interact with other people.

There are three problems with the conflicts General Hein creates. First, they’re hardly ever used to develop the world or the characters. For example, in his attempt to convince the United Nations Security Council to fire the Zeus Cannon, he asks, “Can we afford to wait for some crazy invention… that offers no solid evidence that it will destroy the aliens?” Much of the movie takes place in a shielded city where no one seems to be in immediate danger. The answer would seem to be, “Yes, we can wait for a technology that will probably work better than shooting a giant laser at a hole in the ground.” Getting rid of the phantoms would be great, but why the rush? Is there an energy or resource crisis? Are there less privileged cities that aren’t shielded where people die frequently? Are there flaws in the shielding? Are there parts of the world that aren’t wasteland yet? General Hein never elaborates, and no one agrees with him, missing the opportunity to add some depth to the world.

As another example, General Hein sends Captain Gray Edwards and his three-member squad to follow Aki and arrest her if she shows any suspicious behavior. Judging by the experiences of Edwards and his crew, I’d think that at least some of them would follow these orders. Hein doesn’t know that Gray is in love with Aki, but Gray must be a loyal soldier if he’s been entrusted with such an important mission to General Hein’s cause. Besides their knowledge of Gray’s feelings, none of his squad members have a reason to sympathize with Aki. She nearly got all of them killed in the first ten minutes of the movie, and all of them think Aki and Sid’s spirit theory is crazy. Rather than developing complex and interesting relationships with Aki and Hein, Edwards and his squad support Aki’s cause without question and show absolutely no loyalty to General Hein. They must think Hein is crazier than Sid and Aki and rightfully so.

This leads to the second problem in the conflicts General Hein produces: they are ridiculous. Hein wants the phantoms destroyed and has nothing to lose by allowing Aki and Dr. Sid to try, but he jails Aki and her companions and plots against them for no reason. He finds evidence that Aki is under the phantom’s influence, but instead of presenting it to the Council, he carries out a different plan to force them to fire the Zeus Cannon, one where he accidently destroys the city. He ends up destroying the cannon and killing himself in a spectacular display of stupidity. This may as well be a movie about the silly shenanigans of a delusional man and how his actions affect innocent bystanders.

The Council’s decision to allow Aki and Sid to pursue their research is rational, so why is this same council letting such an irrational man retain the position of a military general? It’s suggested that Hein’s hatred for the phantoms, ignited by the death of his wife and child, has blinded him, but that’s not an excuse to let him be a general. No one else thinks so either. Edwards and his squad obviously don’t take him seriously, the Council trusts Dr. Sid’s crazy theory about the Earth having a spirit more than General Hein’s evidence that the Zeus Cannon will kill phantoms, and even the major closest to him questions what he’s doing.

Finally, by entertaining Hein’s existence, the conflicts and questions that actually exist without a mentally unstable character creating them aren’t explored. For example, in one scene of the movie, Aki appears to attract the phantoms. General Hein sees it as evidence that Aki is working for the aliens, but otherwise, no one questions if they should be around Aki, let alone wonders why it happened. The audience is left guessing… or, worse, assuming that it’s only purpose was to motivate General Hein.

Dozens more questions exist that aren’t answered because the movie is too busy explaining General Hein’s convoluted actions. Why would such reasonable Council members want to jail Sid or Aki for believing that the Earth has a spirit or for using the term “spirit”? Why would a scientist that has invented everything that has allowed humans to survive think that he would be jailed in the first place? Why does Edwards and his squad want to associate with people who believe in spirits? Why not fire the Zeus Cannon and allow Aki and Dr. Sid to continue their research?

Aki’s journey to cure herself in order to cure the world had potential to be compelling until a clichéd antagonist was introduced as the main source of conflict. We spend so much time in Hein’s delusional mind that we don’t learn about the world that everyone actually lives in, and none of the conflicts General Hein produces motivates any of the other characters to develop more complex personalities. Final Fantasy didn’t fail because it had humans with 60,000 strands of hair. It didn’t fail because it told an original science fiction story or even because it had poorly written dialog. What Final Fantasy was missing was a relevant conflict that created a story with relatable characters and an understandable world.

Brad Bird and the creators of The Incredibles recognized that not all Spirits Within’s choices were the cause of its demise. The Incredibles would be a success and so would Beowulf, Avatar, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. These films, among others, showed that feature length CG films could preach about protecting the planet, have photorealistic art styles, target mature audiences, feature human characters, and still be financially successful. The elements that made Spirits Within different and interesting didn’t destroy Square Pictures. General Hein did.

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Speech Therapy: Magic is Everything

Transcript:

I recently heard that magic is madness. According to one of the supporters of this literary theory, Freedomain Radio host Stefan Molyneux, the manifestation of magic whether it be in fiction or in reality exists only in the mind. Because “magic” in reality is described by mentally unstable people, “Magic in stories is always and forever a metaphor for madness.” Magic in fiction is the delusion of some character and “visible” to us because we are told the story from her perspective, but we, like other non-magical characters that may appear in the story, can distinguish it for what it is, insanity. The character is deluding herself into thinking that magic is occurring when in reality, she is screaming verbal abuse, babbling to herself, or performing some other destructive or crazy behavior as a result of trauma or boredom.

Stefan’s review of Frozen is what introduced me to this theory. Interpreted using the “magic is madness” theory, Frozen tells the story of Elsa, who out of boredom developed the insane belief that she could do ice magic. One day, in a fit of madness, Elsa hurts her sister Anna. Her parents hide her away and tell her to hide her insanity. Then, she kills them. Years later, Elsa finally gives in to her madness, screaming about ice magic and running into the mountains with her entire kingdom as witness. Because she is the queen and the town is hopelessly in love with her, they also believe in her ice magic powers and so must retrieve her before life can go on.

This theory is thought provoking and points out problems and ideas that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, but the profoundness of it is overstated and even distracting. Yes, you can interpret any work of fiction that contains magic as being about insanity, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is going to or should interpret the story in that way and doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all.

There are two ways to find meaning in a story. First, we can draw upon the story’s elements and themes and our own personal experience and knowledge to piece together a theory of what the story means. Our brains are very good at finding patterns in random data and images. Matrixing is the phenomenon where we see human faces where there shouldn’t be any, in complex patterns such as wood grain or carpeting. A collection of government documents, movies, and news articles has no meaning as a whole until someone concocts a conspiracy theory with them.

The process of finding meaning in a work of fiction can be similar to finding meaning in random patterns, data, and personal experiences. When we realize this, it isn’t surprising that Stefan should find that Frozen is about exactly the things he frequently talks about on his show: female privilege, PTSD, and child abuse. Frozen takes place in a non-sense world featuring a snowman who dreams of summer, a princess who pines after a man she just met, and a city that easily accepts that their queen has horrible ice magic. “Magic is madness” is only one of thousands of ways to interpret this chaos. A person who has experienced depression or anxiety is more likely to interpret Frozen as being about Elsa’s metaphorical battle with these problems and the affects they have on those around her.

Just because a work of fiction means something in particular to someone doesn’t mean that it will mean the same thing to everyone else automatically. If I am unaware of the “magic is madness” theory or that female privilege exists, then why would I consciously or unconsciously interpret Frozen as being about these things? Okay… The first time I saw Frozen was long before I was aware of the “magic is madness” theory, but I can’t prove I wasn’t unconsciously thinking about how insane Elsa was for believing that she had magical powers, how the stereotypical Jewish trolls signified the Jews who invented psychoanalysis, or what a self-centered bitch Anna was. …What a bitch.

The second way that meaning can be found in a story is to interpret it using a theory such as magic is madness. In doing this, however, the theorist risks ignoring whatever the author intended the story to mean and the artistic choices that were consequently made while advancing his own theory or agenda. A feminist can take popular video games and argue that they are sexist. A conspiracy theorist can take popular films and argue that they are propaganda. Anyone can take a film that has magic in it and interpret it as madness.

“Now that I know Orson Scott Card is anti-gay, I’m going to interpret all of his books as if they were anti-gay propaganda!”

If you try hard enough, any work of fiction can be about anything. Stefan argues that Frozen teaches young girls that they don’t have to work hard to be skilled in something. Elsa was born magical. Anna left her castle with little knowledge of the outdoors and survived. Both of them were born into royalty.

There are no guarantees that a child, or even an adult, watching Frozen would pick up on any of this though. From a completely different perspective, Frozen is about the importance of being open about who you are and of talking to those close to you about your problems. Elsa’s magic symbolizes absolutely anything anyone would want to hide about themselves out of fear of rejection or of hurting someone. This could include being gay or transgendered; feeling depressed, anxious, angry, or suicidal for any number of reasons; or admitting a lie or wrong doing.

The filmmaker’s choices may have been to emphasize this message. For example, it isn’t important that we know whether Elsa or Anna know how to rule a kingdom because the focus of the story is Elsa opening up to her sister. From a writer’s perspective, Anna being able to perfectly throw a pickaxe, or neither of the sisters showing any interest in politics, could be seen as lazy writing, not a meaningful plot point.

The argument that all fiction that contains magic is about insanity is distracting at least in terms of Stefan’s goals. I think that the “magic is madness” theory is a valuable way to interpret fiction, but it doesn’t describe what Frozen is about to me. The most impressive interpretation I’ve heard using this theory was of Harry Potter because it was so well supported by both evidence in the books and in J. K. Rowling’s life. Stefan’s interpretation of Frozen pleads for stronger, more thoughtful writing more than anything. Because his interpretation was so distant from the surface story the film told, I wasn’t as convinced that the movie was about insanity.

Stefan’s effort to argue that all fiction in this category can be interpreted in this way distracts from what I think he’s really trying to say. If indeed we are subconsciously being affected by these works of fiction, the authors who are creating these thoughtlessly written and clichéd stories are enforcing the illogical idea that irrational thoughts and actions will somehow make the world a better place.

[“What rules over us is bad ideas. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Bad, irrational, illogical, subjective objectivity…. The idea that we must learn kung fu to fight killer robots is a great way of distracting people with delusions of violence rather than getting them to think critically and oppose the bad ideas…. If you can get people to think that it’s a physical fight, then they go in unarmed to the real fight which is intellectual.”]

“Magic is madness” has its place among other theories and tools used for interpreting works of fiction. It can be valuable for finding hidden messages in a work of fiction and identifying illogical and lazy ideas both in the work and in life. What a work of fiction ultimately means, however, is unique to each individual as it is subjective and often determined by personal experiences.

Pokemon can be a story about a boy with an absent father who was kicked out of his house when he was ten and consequently went insane. Or it can be a story about the comatose hallucinations of a boy who went adventuring into the cruel world of Pokemon training, fell off a bike, and hit his head. Or it can be a simple story about a boy growing up… and selling merchandise. It and other works of fantastical fiction are all of these things and more.

Talk at you next time.

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Speech Therapy: Sword Boomerang? How Do?

Transcript:

The first time I saw Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, there was one sequence in particular that I couldn’t get out of my head.

The more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure it had actually happened.

“Cloud couldn’t have thrown his sword. Yuffie must have thrown her boomerang!”

“Maybe he just rode his motorcycle by and mowed them all down.”

“Well, he can fold a couple of his swords. Maybe it was bent into the shape of a boomerang when he threw it.”

“Maybe he rode his motocycle so fast that he caught up to the swords!”

I had to watch this sequence five times before I could finally accept that it did happen. Then, I saw this. Cloud had thrown not one but two giant swords… like boomerangs… at the same time.

The result is a scene so ridiculous that I literally could not comprehend it. But wait. The original Advent Children was also full of physics defying action. I’m usually not a stickler for physics, so what’s the difference between this sequence and, say, Loz throwing his motorcycle with his feet?

Why could I accept that and not boomerang swords? So here’s my theory.

All the scenes leading up to Loz’s motorcycle toss prepare us for it. From the very first fight scene, we’re introduced to the high-speed, motorcycle chase sequences that we’ll see for the rest of the film.

We also see on several occasions the damage that Loz’s attacking arm can do, his super-human abilities, and the forces that he can withstand.

Finally, we have plenty of chances to see that gravity doesn’t work quite as we expect it to.

Combine these elements together, and you have a believable motorcycle toss.

Advent Children doesn’t remove all the physical limits that we’re used to though. For example, the film gives us no reason to believe that thrown swords will do anything but lodge themselves into whatever they’re thrown at. Further, we never see a character willingly throw their sword. The separation between fighter and sword during a fight is always shown as being a bad thing.

So, Cloud throwing his swords like boomerangs breaks the film’s loose but nonetheless existent physics and the world’s established rules of battle, creating a scene that comes off as random and completely ridiculous.

What I liked about the original Advent Children was that unlike most other full CGI action films, it never broke its established rules as soon as the opportunity arose. Granted, Advent Children created a world so action packed and boundless that near anything was believable, but it still had lines that it could not and didn’t cross. I wouldn’t believe that Cloud can throw his swords like boomerangs, that a child can defeat a monster with a fire hydrant, that a dead girl no one knows would call everyone in Midgar, or any of this for reasons that I’ve already explained.

Perhaps if this were a film about sword throwing children, who frequently receive phone calls from dead people they don’t know and destroy poorly designed super highways with an infinite number of helicopters, maybe I would believe it. Because Advent Children Complete only uses these elements randomly though… no.

Like I said, Complete isn’t the only CGI action film that has this problem of breaking its own rules for the sake of awesome action. It’s quite common actually… for reasons… but that’s a subject for another video. Talk at you next time!

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Speech Therapy: Blood! Vengeance! Characters! (Round 2)

Transcript:

Last episode! Do Tekken: Blood Vengeance and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children create fight scenes that also entertain non-fans of the games they’re based on? Specifically, do they create characters within the course of the film that non-fans can sympathize with or understand?

Now! Let’s take a look at the final fight scene in both movies. Both fight scenes are sort of like a final boss fight where the boss is a character that fans are familiar with but has only been mentioned briefly in the course of the movie. From the boss’s first appearance to his defeat, Advent Children Complete’s final fight lasts roughly 10 minutes, Advent Children’s lasts 6 minutes, and Tekken’s lasts about 25 minutes.

Do the movies succeed in setting up the characters and story so that non-fans are also engaged in the battle and entertained for the duration of these fights?

Tekken fairs very poorly… but for reasons completely unrelated to the introduction of a new character. As soon as this boss fight starts, the two girls we’ve spent the entire movie with cease to have any importance. This fight is between boss Heihachi Mishima, Kazuya Mishima leader of G Corporation, Jin Kazama leader of Mishima Zaibatsu, and Shin Kamiya.

The character that we know best is Shin Kamiya. As sort of the driving force of the movie, he’s carrier of the M gene, a genetic mutation that makes him immortal. Jin and Kazuya have been after him to gain immortality, which is how the three came together for this final fight. Unfortunately, whenever Jin and Kazuya meet, Jin’s grandfather and Kazuya’s father, Heihachi appears as well. This is all part of Shin’s plan though. He wants to kill Heihachi, the man behind the experiments performed on him to produce the M gene.

Shin’s not really someone we can sympathize with though. He’s developed no meaningful relationships with the main characters and shown himself only to be a pathetic, suicidal asshole. We need not worry too much about it though because, despite his immortality, he dies almost immediately, assumedly by being impaled on a few stray hairs.

This leaves us with two characters who combined have had less than five minutes of screen time. Jin is perhaps the most likely one we can sympathize with. He died as badly as he lived, but Shin’s death ignites Jin’s rage towards Kazuya and Heihachi. The Mishima family has killed an innocent in their family quarrel, and this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Jin wants to kill his father and grandfather to end the bloodshed. Heihachi and Kazuya simply want to kill the other two for no reason. Jin is also a friend of Shin and Xiaoyu, the protagonist. What sympathy we can have for Jin is forgotten though when he carelessly tosses Xiaoyu aside, and we’re reminded that he doesn’t care if he destroys the entire world in his quest to destroy his family.

Meanwhile, the main characters are on the sidelines trying desperately to assert their purpose in an ultimately meaningless fight. They seem to be trying to emphasize the horrors of violence, but because this battle is taking place in a castle in the middle of nowhere between near invincible characters that we don’t know or like, there’s nothing horrific about it. In fact, we’re hoping that all three of them kill each other as quickly as possible so that they stop breeding. Xioayu’s robot friend Alisa becomes a casualty, but her apparent death does nothing to stop the violence or improve Jin’s character. Xioayu is the only one in the audience or the movie who is stupid enough to believe or care that Alisa is dead. Jin put her in standby mode so that she wouldn’t get in the way of him murdering his family.

Advent Children does a better job at creating an entertaining fight scene that we care about without needing all the backstory that fans have. This time, we have the benefit of being with Cloud, a character that we’ve gotten to know pretty well in the course of the movie. By this point, Cloud has realized what an ass he’s been to his friends, and he’s tried to make up for that. He’s defeated horrible monsters that have destroyed the city, slaughtered innocent civilians, and attacked his friends. He’s also fought Kadaj, who is responsible for kidnapping and enslaving children, destroying the city, killing people, and possibly infecting innocents with a horrible illness. Overall, Cloud is someone we can root for.

The moments leading up to the fight do a great job at getting rid of any doubts we have about how bad it would be if Sephiroth were resurrected. As soon as Cloud realizes that Kadaj knows how to recreate Sephiroth, his cocky attitude changes to panic. We recognize Sephiroth from the film’s introduction when he appears, and Cloud shows us how we should feel about this. Panic is something we’ve never seen from Cloud before, and he’s fought a giant monster, hordes of beasts, and three guys who are nearly as strong as he is.

We’ve seen: “Ah crap. I dropped my sword.”

“That guy! I should stop hallucinating!”

“Damn kids!”

And “What the hell?”

But never “Oh shit!”

Sephiroth’s danger both to the world and to Cloud is further enforced when we see what he can do. We’ve spent the movie with characters that can defy gravity and destroy structures with a single punch or sword swing, but Sephiroth still manages to place himself on an entirely different level. Compared to Sephiroth, Cloud and the others are really only high jumping. They need to launch themselves off something, like the ground or the power of friendship, and eventually, they fall. Sephiroth can outright fly. He can also destroy structures without touching them and manipulate the weather without Materia.

[Gifts from mother?]

Yeah, whatever.

These elements introduce the possibility that Cloud might fail. He may even be killed. We’ve grown to like Cloud and the destruction of the world and its inhabitants is never a good thing, so even if we’ve never played Final Fantasy VII and could care less that Cloud is fighting Sephiroth in a glorious CGI movie, we still have enough reasons to engage in the fight and root for the hero.

At the end of the day, Tekken: Blood Vengeance and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children are fan service films, and there’s bound to be some things that outsiders won’t understand or appreciate. That’s what makes fan service films great! Unlike most movies out there, fan service films target a very specific audience, which can produce unique, awesome films. Some fan service films like Blood Vengeance target their fans only. I’m sure Tekken fans are much more appreciative of the glorious battle between Heihachi, Jin, and Kazuya than I am… at least I hope they are. Other fan films like Advent Children are accessible enough to attract new fans to a great game and give a nod and wink to old fans. Either way, these films give someone out there something that they’ve always wanted to see.

Talk at you next time!