Advent Children Complete Archives

June 13, 2020June 13, 2020

Advent Children: What’s Beneath the Fan Service (Part 3)

Part 3

Originally published on the Extra Life Community website
Edited by Jack Gardner

Fans and critics of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children alike have commonly perceived it as lacking a compelling story, complex characters, and purposeful fight scenes. When I decided I wanted to understand why I still loved the film in 2013, I didn’t expect the answer I found. The previous articles in this series debunked these major criticisms of the film by examining what story Advent Children tells and how it tells that story through action. This leaves the question, why did it take twelve years to notice that this film portrays the opposite of what everyone says about it? If these criticisms don’t have merit, or are at most overexaggerated, how did they originate? The dominantly negative reviews about Advent Children appear to spawn from its subtle and unconventional storytelling combined with misconceptions that it doesn’t have a meaningful story to begin with.

Advent Children frequently uses visual language, thematic imagery, and minimalist storytelling to convey its story and ideas. Movies communicate their stories visually through shot composition, lighting, costuming, video editing, and positioning of props and actors. These elements are called the film’s mise-en-scène. While films can also use verbal, written, and musical language to convey meaning, film theorists claim that as a visual medium, movies should tell their stories visually. Characters should speak less and do more. As a subscriber to this theory, Advent Children doesn’t always tell the audience what’s happening and what it means through dialog; it shows them through its mise-en-scène.

Sometimes Advent Children’s scenes seem more representative of the film’s themes and ideas than of what is actually happening. For example, the final scene in the movie where we see Cloud surrounded by orphans, townspeople, and friends, both dead and alive, after crashing through the roof of a church is ridiculous even in the world of Advent Children. This scene, however, represents Cloud’s reunion with his friends, his family, and the world. He has found happiness and is ready to accept life over his memories and thoughts of death. In an earlier scene, Cloud also finds himself in an equally ridiculous scenario. Menacing orphans surround him while Kadaj taunts him. It doesn’t make sense that orphans pose a threat to a superhuman like Cloud, but they represent his separation from the world and heighten the tone of helplessness in the scene. By isolating himself, Cloud’s made enemies out of the people he cares about in addition to having to fight his actual enemies and demons.

In general, Advent Children takes a minimalist approach to storytelling. It doesn’t repeat spoken information often. The film explains Jenova, Sephiroth, and materia only once, for example. It encourages viewing the film multiple times as opposed to spoon-feeding an obvious tale that viewers can see once and completely understand. While the film shows us all the information we need to understand the story, it doesn’t always put it together. The characters don’t have extensive conversations to analyze the pieces and find meaning in the outcomes.

These storytelling methods as used by Advent Children and other artworks rely to some degree on the viewer’s analytic skills and personal experiences, which has strengths and weaknesses. Advent Children gives the audience the respect and space to put its clues together themselves and incorporate their own experiences with Final Fantasy VII and real life into the film. This allows viewers to create their own powerful connections to the work either because it reminds them of personal experiences or because finding meaning in it takes effort and feels rewarding. Minimal storytelling, however, also opens the possibility that viewers will interpret the work in unintended ways. For example, audiences can interpret Advent Children’s narrative as meaningless nonsense. Viewers also may not be able to find intended meanings in the work because they don’t have the required experiences. Someone who’s never played Final Fantasy VII, for example, won’t see the similarity between Kadaj’s relationship with Cloud and Cloud’s relationship with Sephiroth. Someone unfamiliar with mental illness might not see it in Advent Children or might interpret Cloud’s character as clichéd. This doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t find meaning in the work through other experiences and clues from the film. Telling a story in this way can also make it impenetrable for casual viewers. Advent Children has plenty of action and fan service at its surface, but it takes work to see that it’s not just mindless entertainment.

Advent Children also has some specific problems that make recognizing that it has meaning difficult. Its purely thematic imagery, for example, creates plot holes that can’t be filled so easily. The director’s cut Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete attempts to explain why the children and townspeople gather at the church at the end of the movie with an event even more ridiculous than the scene itself. Aerith, a dead woman, calls everyone on their cellphones, even the orphans, and tells them to go to the church… Similarly, Cloud’s apparent isolation in the final fight scene continues one of the film’s visual themes but doesn’t make sense in the story’s world, considering that his friends would never leave him to fight a worldwide threat on his own. Sometimes Advent Children withholds too much information as well. To a point, the director’s cut better explains Denzel and how he befriended Cloud, a character that struggles to display and accept affection.

Viewers can easily miss this visual and minimalist storytelling, especially if they have preconceptions that the work doesn’t contain meaning. Unfortunately, Advent Children has an association with three types of movies known for poor storytelling: fan service films, photorealistic CGI, and video game movies. Reviewers say that Advent Children is obviously a “fan service film.” This term has two meanings, depending on the reviewer using it. First, these films tell a story that only fans will understand and appreciate. Second, fan service films have a bad story that exists only to show fans what they want to see, most often battles between characters from the base material. This labeling suggests that people who haven’t played Final Fantasy VII before shouldn’t even attempt to find meaning in Advent Children. At the same time, fans of the game claim that Advent Children can’t contain a good story because it sequels an already complete one. It doesn’t have any more story to tell. They also claim that it exists only to sell Final Fantasy VII merchandise such as the Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus video games, which came out at about the same time. Therefore, it’s meaningless fan service and merchandising.

Critics don’t provide enough evidence that Advent Children is any of these things though, and it’s really not obvious. Some people, like myself, watch the film with little to no experience with Final Fantasy VII or even Final Fantasy and find it enjoyable and understandable. A majority of this review examines a story that has little to do with the game and exists entirely within the film. Fans have as much difficulty decoding the superficial geostigma-Jenova-Sephiroth story as non-fans do, and anyone can understand the parallel story about a guy struggling with his past. In fact, many Final Fantasy VII fans complain that the movie doesn’t contain enough fan service. The film spends more time on Denzel and Kadaj, characters that don’t exist in the game, than it does on the game’s playable characters. Additionally, the short battle with Sephiroth ends rather suddenly for a film that supposedly exists solely to create an excuse for the fight to happen. The film also doesn’t add anything new to the Final Fantasy VII universe. It opens with the message, “To those who loved this world, and knew friendly company therein: this Reunion is for you,” but it simultaneously provides evidence that it’s not for fans only.

Advent Children seems more like a film that uses Final Fantasy VII as a medium to tell a story than a fan service film. It has elements that only fans can understand, but that doesn’t mean that everything else is incomprehensible. We don’t need Barret, Yuffie, and Cid’s backstory to understand that they’re Cloud’s friends and helped save the world two years ago, for example. The backstories clearly exist because these characters have distinguishing personalities. The movie simply chooses not to present the stories of its side characters and peripheral details like a lot of other movies choose to do.

“Fan service” can also mean gratuitous sex and violence. Advent Children features a cast of male characters that fit the pretty, sexy man stereotype found in many Japanese anime and relentless, sword-swinging action. When an anime doesn’t have anything interesting to say, it can resort to large-breasted women and effeminate men with partially open jackets and large swords to find an audience. Movies with these elements, however, can still have great stories and ideas to share. Hollywood has many pretty faces, but we don’t condemn all its movies as bad simply because the actors aren’t hideous. Fight Club isn’t critically acclaimed because it features Brad Pitt and two hours of men punching each other in the face. It tells an excellent story with an interesting commentary about life. Advent Children’s creators made the characters aesthetically pleasing (Who wants to look at butt ugly artwork?) but not radically different from their basic designs in the game. The film has a story and messages applicable to real life told through the action, pretty men, and Final Fantasy VII elements at its surface.

Reviewers have also classified Advent Children as photorealistic despite no one in the film looking like a real person. In the wake of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and The Polar Express, critics labeled Advent Children as yet another attempt at photorealism with a poor story. Unsurprisingly, critics complained that it didn’t look realistic enough. Characters don’t follow the real-world laws of physics, they don’t bleed, and the movie never tricks the audience into thinking that it’s live-action. No evidence suggests that Advent Children is or ever was meant to be photorealistic. The anime-influenced characters look too perfect and alien to be real. Like cutscenes in Final Fantasy games, Advent Children only presents the illusion of realism. The creators even state in The Making Of featurette that they didn’t want to make a photorealistic film. As co-director Takeshi Nozue says, “If it looked too real, then we might as well shoot it live.” Ignoring the laws of physics and not showing blood are stylistic and thematic choices that don’t affect the quality of the story. If we don’t expect Pixar films or video games to trick us into thinking that we’re watching real people, then we shouldn’t hold Advent Children to this standard either.

Finally, critics make claims about Advent Children simply because of its association with a video game. Video game movies generally don’t have great stories, but they can break this stereotype. Reviewers describe Advent Children as one long cutscene, which suggests that it doesn’t contain enough information on its own to tell a story. Everything about its story, its themes, and its characters except a few details in this analysis comes from the movie. Other reviewers have called Advent Children a series of cutscenes. This description just applies a video game term, cutscenes, to the elements that make up all movies, scenes. This metaphor doesn’t contain any information about whether the movie is good or bad. Some argue that the film can’t engage the audience because it’s not a video game. Depending on the gamer, cutscenes in games are either a reward or an annoyance, and Advent Children shows an hour and a half of beautiful visuals without requiring the player/viewer to do anything. It’s true, movies don’t reward strategic button pressing. The reward lies in finding meaning in their visuals and audio.

Advent Children defies all these descriptions and criticisms because it’s unlike anything ever created. Beowulf defines technology porn, a photorealistic spectacle brimming with graphic sex, gore, and violence. A series of cutscenes accurately describes .hack//G.U. Trilogy, a film obviously missing crucial explanation and character development that would usually occur during gameplay. Similarly, a long cutscene describes Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, a film that doesn’t even explain what problem its characters must solve because it’s in the game. Tekken: Blood Vengeance, a film that contains a ridiculous plot that ties together apparently pointless fight scenes between characters from the game, is one type of fan service film. .hack//Beyond the World, a film that loses itself in .hack lore without explaining why it matters to the protagonist, demonstrates another. Elysium (2003) shows what terrible but brief dialog combined with a terrible story looks like. Want to know what Advent Children would sound like had it explained everything in excruciating detail? Watch Ark (2005). Kaena: The Prophecy makes a sincere but novice attempt at using a video game world to tell a story, what Advent Children near perfects.

While Advent Children takes inspiration from Japanese anime and live-action films, it uses CGI to its full potential to tell a story in its own way. It doesn’t use cell shading to mimic hand-drawn 2D animation like Appleseed, nor does it try to mimic live-action like The Polar Express. It avoids the uncanny valley without severely deforming its heroes like A Christmas Carol does. It retains the illusion of realism and humanity even when the characters defy the laws of physics. It entertains without resorting to excessive sex or violence like Starship Troopers: Invasion or Sausage Party do. It’s an art film and drama disguised as an action movie. It tells a thoughtful and universal story through elements from a video game. It uses CGI’s strengths to create choreography, characters, environments, and camera work that would be extremely difficult to recreate in any other medium, but it doesn’t discard basic filmmaking and narrative techniques. It creates a visual spectacle but never forgets that first and foremost it must tell a story. In a fledgling art form that struggles to tell any kind of meaningful story outside of children’s entertainment, Advent Children is one of the most important CGI movies ever made.

Even with its uniqueness, Advent Children can still be judged and analyzed as a movie. It contains a story with characters, conflicts, and themes. It has spectacular battles as an action movie should, but it also conveys a meaningful narrative through its mise-en-scène both inside and outside the action scenes. While it has flaws, they don’t immediately discredit the film as a pointless visual spectacle.

Advent Children has never been treated as a work of art or even as a movie though. It’s viewed through the lens of fan service, visual spectacle, and video game bonus material. It’s judged as a bad movie because it doesn’t contain enough fan service, isn’t realistic enough, and is based on a video game. None of these complaints address whether Advent Children tells a thoughtful story that connects with viewers, uses filmmaking techniques effectively to convey meaning, or doesn’t do either. And that’s a shame. From what I’ve seen, Advent Children makes the best use of known filmmaking, storytelling, and animation techniques to tell a fantastic, mature, and human story through CGI out of all films in its class.

That’s why people love this movie. That’s why it never fails to make me smile. Now I no longer ask, “Why do I like Advent Children?” Now I ask, “Why shouldn’t I like it?” I hope you’ll ask these questions, too. The film could mean something different to you as a Final Fantasy VII fan or as a person than it does to me. If you don’t like Advent Children, I hope you, too, will ask yourself why. Is it genuinely a terrible movie, or does it just disappoint some Final Fantasy VII fans and moviegoers? And, of course, if you’ve never seen it, watch it. Playing the game first is optional. Advent Children isn’t perfect, but it’s worthy of criticism and analysis. It has so much to say, and filmmakers have so much to learn from it.

What does Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children mean to you?

June 6, 2020June 13, 2020

Advent Children: What’s Beneath the Fan Service (Part 2)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Originally published on the Extra Life Community website
Edited by Jack Gardner

Since its release in 2005, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children has attracted negative reviews about its story, characters, fight scenes, dialog, and fan service. For fans of the film like me, defending it seemed an unthinkable, if not impossible, task. This made it all the more surprising when I dared to look closer at these criticisms and found baseless claims and exaggerations instead. The previous article in this series refuted arguments that Advent Children doesn’t contain a strong story or compelling characters by outlining the story it tells, examining the protagonist Cloud and his relationships, and exploring some of the film’s many themes. Critics may be quick to point out that even if the film contains a story, deeply flawed storytelling obscures it. They say Advent Children contains an excessive amount of meaningless action scenes strung together with weak and brief dialog. In reality, its action scenes are as important to understanding the story and world as the characters’ efficient and purposeful conversations.

Many critics of Advent Children claim that the film’s excessive fight scenes contain only action-packed fan service. These visually stunning scenes allegedly have nothing at stake, no indication that characters can die, no physical limitations, no change in energy from fight to fight, and no purpose in the story. To the contrary, the fight scenes build the world, advance the story, and develop the characters in parallel with the battle. The visuals not only look wonderful but also contain a wealth of information.

Advent Children doesn’t use the physics that we know, but it still has rules that it defines and follows. What the characters can do and their limitations are established in the fight scenes. In the first battle of the movie, the antagonist Kadaj sends his brothers Loz and Yazoo to fight Cloud. The combatants introduce motorcycle battles, summoned monsters, and physics-defying action. Cloud gets his goggles shot off his face at point blank, but the scratch it leaves behind hints for the rest of the film that he isn’t invincible. The following fight between Loz and Cloud’s friend Tifa demonstrates the characters’ high jumping abilities and superhuman strength. While Tifa can take wooden benches to the face, electrocution is her weakness as is being punched with enough force to destroy a concrete pillar. Next, Cloud has a mystical weapon battle with Kadaj’s gang where we see the magical and destructive capabilities of materia. Cloud blocks bullets and magic with a sword, but he tires rather quickly. These first three scenes also establish that the bad guys pose a threat because Cloud and Tifa lose them all.

The tide changes during the fight with the monster Bahamut, which introduces friendship as an element of combat. Cloud’s friends demonstrate their differing skills and how they compensate for one another’s weaknesses. Cait Sith is quite useless, riding on Red XIII’s back the entire fight, but he provides moral support and comic relief. Barret saves Cloud’s foster son Denzel, but he can’t high jump and periodically needs to be saved himself. Red XIII saves Cid from plowing face-first into a pillar. Cid saves Yuffie from an energy blast. Cloud saves Barret from falling debris. And all of them together with divine assistance from Aerith help Cloud defeat Bahamut, the first win of the movie.

Cloud, Loz, and Yazoo’s motorcycle chase and the following sword fight between Cloud and Kadaj cement these rules in place by using every element that we’ve learned about from all previous battles: high jumping, motorcycle battles, materia, divine assistance, friendship power, etc. In the final battle, Cloud’s true enemy Sephiroth reveals that he has abilities that we’ve never seen before. He can fly and apparently manipulate the weather without materia. Cloud, however, is still bound by the rules. He tires easily, feels afraid and uncertain, and requires his friends’ assistance to survive.

The film doesn’t define how characters die, but it does use other means to endanger them. Because the characters don’t often give the bad guys the chance to injure them, danger mainly comes from their reactions and emotions. Falling debris scare Barrett and Cloud. Cloud fears separation from his sword in battles, and geostigma pains him. His friends flee and exclaim from various threats during the battle with Bahamut. These human reactions, the humanity of Cloud’s personality and struggles at the center of the film, the fantastic action scenes, and the lack of information combine to leave us in suspense. How human are these characters? Withholding violent acts actually makes Sephiroth stabbing Cloud and Yazoo shooting him at the end of the film more shocking. Even when Cloud survives, the movie heavily implies that it was only because Aerith helped him.

Advent Children’s action scenes are scenes, integral to advancing the plot and developing the characters. Loz, Kadaj, and Yazoo introduce themselves in the first fight scene by toying with Cloud, which shows their childish personalities. By the end, Cloud still doesn’t know what they want, but he knows that they pose a threat. Tifa’s battle with Loz begins with neither of them taking each other seriously, but by the end, Loz easily outmatches Tifa and kidnaps Barret’s daughter Marlene. The next battle features Cloud trying to save the city’s orphans, but it ends in miserable failure, confirming to him his uselessness. After regaining his confidence in the fight with Bahamut, Cloud attempts to show in his sword fight with Kadaj that he doesn’t need his friends while Kadaj attempts to prove that he doesn’t need Sephiroth.

Each battle also heightens the stakes. In the first action scene of the film, Cloud must fight only to save himself. Tifa then fights Loz to save herself and Marlene. After that, Cloud fights Kadaj’s gang to save the city’s orphans. Cloud and his friends fight Bahamut to protect the entire city. Then, Cloud chases Kadaj to prevent him from using Jenova’s remains to resurrect Sephiroth, which could lead to the world’s destruction. Finally, Cloud fights Sephiroth, a god-like being, to save the world.

The cinematic choices during fights make the choreography a spectacle, which is an important aspect of any action movie, but they also define the characters’ locations in space, show what they’re doing, and convey their feelings and thoughts. Compare the shots in Advent Children to a bad action movie full of shaky camera angles, two-second-long shots, and close-ups (e.g. Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV) where it’s difficult to tell what’s happening or why. Advent Children does use disorienting camera work, such as in Cloud’s battle with Sephiroth, but only to convey confusion and fear. Otherwise, it shows almost everything, including some imaginative choreography that compliments the characters and story.

Combatants don’t shout cheesy catchphrases to announce what they feel or what they want to accomplish. They communicate this information almost entirely through visuals. The following are just a few examples. During Cloud’s attempt to rescue the orphans from Kadaj’s gang, Cloud shifts his attention from Loz and Yazoo to Kadaj, his true target. The camera zooms in on Kadaj’s face, and Cloud attacks. In the motorcycle chase later in the movie, Kadaj flees from Cloud with Jenova’s remains in hand. He takes the upper road when the superhighway splits. Loz rides up alongside Cloud and attacks, preventing him from taking the same path. In the final fight scene, Sephiroth darkens the sky with a flick of his wrist; Cloud grimaces fearfully and grips his sword tighter. The characters seem to have conversations without saying anything at all. Only so much can be conveyed through facial expressions and body language, but they say more than: “I’m going to kill you!” “No, I’m going to kill you!”

Advent Children explains what it can’t show with clever and to-the-point dialog that reviewers complain is terribly written. Sure, it has weaknesses, but overall, the dialog is some combination of real, efficient, informative, and thought-provoking. The characters don’t sobbingly spew their backstory in a futile attempt to make us care, explain concepts that everyone in the scene already knows, inject catchphrases into everything they do, or announce what they will do instead of, you know, just doing it. Characters don’t have much chance to sound insincere because they rarely speak. And when they do converse, they do so purposefully. Make fun of “dilly-dally, shilly-shally” all you want; it’s part of a real conversation about a real-life problem said much more efficiently.

The majority of the dialog in the film exists to explain Final Fantasy VII concepts, but it performs double duty by developing the characters at the same time. In a scene near the beginning of the movie, for example, Cloud and Rufus talk about the Shinra Power Company, geostigma, Jenova, and Sephiroth. The tone of the conversation simultaneously shows Cloud’s love-hate relationship with Shinra. Cloud treats Rufus coldly, constantly cutting him off and questioning him. He jabs at Rude and Reno, who seem like loveable goofs, and hesitates when Rufus suggests that Shinra wants to atone for its past sins.

Some dialog simply provokes the audience to think about the film beyond its superficial action-oriented, Final Fantasy VII-enhanced plot. For example, Cloud’s friend Vincent asks, “Cloud, are you sure this is about fighting?” Sephiroth says, immediately before he disappears, “I will never be a memory.” And Cloud ends the film with, “I know. I’m not alone. Not anymore.” A film adorned in fan service almost requires lines like this if it wants to make the audience aware that it has anything important to say.

The dialog stumbles most when it explains concepts and does nothing much else, but even then, it’s efficient. At one point, Kadaj obviously explains materia as if nobody in the scene knows already, but the film had to explain it at some point and doesn’t spend much time on it. Compare it to the director’s cut, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, where this scene turns into two minutes of equally cringe-worthy dialog featuring Kadaj and Loz explaining everything they’re about to do and re-explain.

The overview of Final Fantasy VII at the beginning of the film receives criticism for existing, not explaining enough, and containing awkward dialog. Overviews are necessary refreshers for newbies and veterans alike and difficult to write well in general, not a fault of Advent Children in particular. Like the rest of the film’s spoken information, it provides the bare minimum needed to understand the plot.

Advent Children’s fight scenes look spectacular because they contain so much information about the story, characters, and world. The script intentionally keeps the dialog short to highlight where the story really shines in the film’s visuals and the characters’ actions. This explains how Advent Children tells its story, but it doesn’t explain why it took over a decade for anyone to recognize it. Why has no one ever discussed Advent Children’s use of visual language if it’s as excellent as I claim? Is this film so opaque? The final part of this series will examine the misconceptions surrounding Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children that stifled the conversation about its story and storytelling techniques before it even began.

May 30, 2020June 13, 2020

Advent Children: What’s Beneath the Fan Service (Part 1)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Originally published on the Extra Life Community website
Edited by Jack Gardner

I always took it for granted that I couldn’t defend my illogical love for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I didn’t even complete a Final Fantasy game until after I saw Advent Children. I was an aspiring writer with a guilty pleasure; I enjoyed a movie that had a nonsense plot and weak characters. Half the Internet labeled me a fangirl, pining after meaningless action scenes, technology porn, effeminate men in black leather, and an emo protagonist. The other half of the Internet, however, loved the movie as much as I did, but no one could defend why, besides citing its obviously spectacular visuals, action, and music.

Then, in 2013, I asked myself, “Why do I like Advent Children?” It had been my favorite movie for eight years. I’d just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in media arts. Five years of studying filmmaking and films praised as the greatest ever made had failed to dislodge a video game-based, action movie from its prestigious place in my mind. In the wake of Avatar, Pixar movies, films receiving rave reviews, Advent Children remained. The nostalgia glasses, if they even existed, refused to fall off. After all this, I wondered why I should continue to accept that Advent Children didn’t mean anything.

I began a journey of self-discovery to find the most action-packed, realistic, adult, and oddball movies CGI had to offer. Even before Advent Children, computer animation had fascinated me. As a kid, I watched A Bug’s Life until I could recite every line. I loved pre-rendered video game cutscenes, particularly from the Oddworld series. Surely, if I liked Advent Children only for the graphics, I should like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. If I liked its action and PG-13 rating, then I should like Beowulf. If I liked its originality, then I should like a CGI movie with an original story like Vexille. From the mainstream 9, The Polar Express, and Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV to the lesser-known Elysium, Tekken: Blood Vengeance, and Kaena: The Prophecy to the cell-shaded Japanese imports Appleseed and Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker, I’ve watched them all, as many as I could find. While I found each of them beautiful in their own way, none of them affected me as profoundly as Advent Children had. I began tearing them apart to figure out how they worked or didn’t work. Each film taught me a little more about Advent Children until I finally understood it.

Contrary to what almost every reviewer says, Advent Children contains a complete and masterfully told story; its greatest weakness and greatest strength lies in subtlety. As an action movie, Advent Children builds its world, develops its characters, and tells its story with action. Believe it or not, its stunning cinematography and fight scenes contain a wealth of information in addition to looking flashy. The film’s visuals and short but to-the-point dialog contain everything we need to know to understand the story and characters. As expected, this visual and minimalist storytelling requires the viewer’s attention. Fortunately, its beautiful artwork encourages multiple viewings to absorb the details.

Unfortunately, misconceptions of Advent Children often result in critics prematurely discarding it and unfairly describing it. Non-fans of Final Fantasy VII discard it as incomprehensible on the assumption that the story exists in the game or not at all when it is really in the frame. Fans discard it without examining its merits because it sequels a story that didn’t need one or has too much or not enough fan service.

A film based in the Final Fantasy VII universe must exist solely for fans.

An action movie that defies physics must not have any rules.

This film is a visual spectacle; therefore, it must not contain thoughtful content.

Advent Children is just an unrealistic cartoon that shouldn’t be treated seriously.

In truth, Advent Children defies the stereotypes of every label applied to it: fan service film, video game movie, photorealistic CGI, cartoon CGI, action movie, original science-fiction story, etc. The film is all of these things and none of them. It achieves something completely unique that has never been done so well by any other CGI movie. It tells a dark, thoughtful, and human story with computer graphics. Advent Children is a work of art disguised and discarded as fan service.

At a glance, Advent Children appears to have spectacular action, emo characters, and no sensible plot, but closer examination reveals the film’s universal story and devastatingly human characters. Reviewers say that Advent Children’s convoluted, nonsense plot exists only to tie together its action scenes and that only Final Fantasy VII fans can understand it. While the story that defines Advent Children’s setting is somewhat complex and heavy with Final Fantasy VII concepts, the protagonist’s story isn’t, and the movie provides enough details that anyone can follow along.

Two years ago, a super-soldier named Sephiroth attempted to destroy the planet as revenge for the experiments that made him. The Shinra Power Company created him among a special group of warriors known as SOLDIER to defend itself against rebels who disagreed with their transformation of the planet’s life force, known as the Lifestream, into energy. To give them strength, Shinra infected its warriors with the cells of Jenova, an alien being that caused a catastrophe long ago.

A group of rebels, the film’s protagonist Cloud among them, and the Lifestream itself managed to stop Sephiroth, but two years later, not all is well. A terminal illness called geostigma sweeps through the population, and three mysterious figures, Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz, appear. Their leader Kadaj reveals that those with geostigma inherited Jenova’s power and will to destroy the planet just as Sephiroth did. Kadaj claims that they need cells from Jenova’s remains to fulfill this prophecy, and he believes that Shinra holds them in their possession. Since the destruction of Shira’s power plant, only its president Rufus and a handful of employees, Reno, Rude, Elena, and Tseung, remain. When Rufus refuses to cooperate, the search for Jenova, which Kadaj and his brothers call Mother, turns to a monument erected by Shinra. Using materia, spheres forged in the Lifestream that allow users to perform magic, Kadaj summons a monster called Bahamut to destroy the monument. After they search the rubble to no avail, Rufus reveals that he holds the remains in his personal possession. He finds the periodic cycle of attempts to destroy the planet amusing because they all inevitably fail. To taunt Kadaj, he tosses the remains away. Kadaj manages to save some of the cells and uses them to become Sephiroth reincarnate.

This may sound like something only the most dedicated of Final Fantasy VII fans would care about, but like the convoluted plots of most Final Fantasy games, this alien story serves as the setting for a much more human tale. Despite fighting alongside those who saved the world two years ago, the protagonist Cloud can’t forget the people who died along the way, especially his mentor Zack and his friend Aerith. He made a promise to Zack that he would live out both their lives, and he wants to make up for his failure to protect Aerith. But now it seems he will not be able to do either. After contracting geostigma, Cloud retreats from his friends and makeshift family, believing that he will die as a worthless person. He can’t even save his foster son Denzel, who has also contracted the disease.

Yazoo and Loz interrupt Cloud’s plans for a quiet death when they attack him out of nowhere. Shinra also offers him an opportunity to help them deal with the three violent teenagers. Initially, Cloud refuses, remembering the company’s questionable business practices, but he’s eventually forced into the conflict when the trio kidnaps Denzel and his friend’s daughter Marlene. Cloud’s attempt to free them ends in failure, but Marlene manages to escape. After receiving a lecture from Marlene and his friends Tifa and Vincent, Cloud formally decides to make an effort to live and seek forgiveness. In response to his newfound determination, Aerith, who has become a god-like being in the afterlife, reveals to him the cure for geostigma, water infused with the Lifestream. The fight to stop Kadaj’s malevolent plot goes well until Cloud finds himself again alone and facing the worst of his past: Sephiroth. Thoughts of those he wishes to protect, however, empower him to finish the fight and save the world. In the end, surrounded by the people he’s saved, Cloud accepts the opportunity to heal his foster son’s geostigma himself.

Yes, Advent Children is about a guy struggling to process his past and find his place in the present, but herein lies the major source of discontent about the film’s characters. Many people complain about the film’s focus on Cloud, his angst-ridden teenager personality, and the lack of development or presence of other characters from the game or otherwise. These complaints have some merit, but as is, Cloud’s surprisingly human character colors the entire film, its characters, its themes, and its battles. Cloud is a fascinating choice of protagonist particularly for a CGI action movie, a medium proliferated with seemingly invincible protagonists that can’t even be hindered by their own supposed weaknesses. Cloud is beyond physically strong as expected but otherwise incredibly flawed. He’s mentally scarred, physically ill, easily exhausted, and emotionally distraught. These problems constantly plague him in his fight to save himself and the world. Images from his past haunt him, pain and exhaustion collapses him, and fear alienates him. He saved the world two years ago only to be struck down by an incurable disease. He can jump super high and wield swords as tall and wide as himself, but a gunshot and a stab wound threaten to kill him at the end of the movie. Forget about fighting the bad guys; he struggles to find the strength to fight. Cloud possesses inhuman abilities but retains human weaknesses.

Cloud evokes real-life mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD. He saved the world and no one blames him for the people who died, but he still sees himself as a failure. Despite his physical strength, he doubts his fighting abilities. Like people with depression, Cloud rejects or fails to internalize his successes and good qualities. He lives in a world that doesn’t need soldiers anymore, but he operates a delivery service with a motorcycle that has built-in sword racks as if the fight two years ago never ended. Intrusive flashbacks of enemies he once fought and people he lost plague him. These symptoms seem like PTSD. Aerith watches over him as a god-like presence and persistent reassurance that everything will be okay. He’s surrounded by friends who adore him and want to help him. But Cloud remains afraid that someone else will die and uncertain in his abilities like someone with anxiety or OCD, who can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. He chooses loneliness and death at the start of the movie because he’s tired of hurting and doesn’t believe that anyone should care about him. Tifa and Marlene’s frustration with him mirrors the frustration and helplessness felt by loved ones of the mentally ill. Despite the fantastical world that Cloud lives in, he faces some of the most devastating and common of human problems.

Cloud doesn’t just experience sadness and anxiety though. Like most people with or without mental illness, he experiences a range of emotions like embarrassment, happiness, frustration, cockiness, impatience, disgust, relief, and determination. Cloud feels and talks about sadness and anxiety most often, but emotes much more when he deals with enemies, particularly in the heat of battle. This makes sense. Enemies pose a physical threat that Cloud knows how to handle. To varying degrees of success, he can fight physical problems to escape his seemingly unsolvable inner torment. Sometimes fighting only makes him more scared, but when it works, he can feel something other than sadness and fear. Cloud snarls angrily when Loz taunts him. He smiles cockily when his friends let him deal with Kadaj alone. He squints in disgust when Reno mentions resurrecting Shinra. He grimaces with determination as he and Kadaj slide down a rocky hill, but when he slides to a stop and Kadaj pulls ahead, his face returns to a moody frown. The reaction shots in the film round out Cloud as a person.

By melding its somewhat convoluted geostigma-Jenova-Sephiroth plot with Cloud’s story, the film invites interpretation. For me, much of it is about mental illness, which I’ve dealt with most of my life. Kadaj and Cloud explore methods of coping with mental illness. In the beginning of the movie, Cloud chooses to hide his pain and isolate himself from others. Meanwhile, Kadaj, a child damaged and angry from love he never received, chooses to inflict his pain on others and seek companionship. Under the guise that he will heal them, Kadaj seeks out orphans infected with Jenova cells, the closest that he can get to his Mother. He instead indoctrinates them with his own hatred for the world. As the movie progresses, Cloud decides to face his pain in the hopes of healing and reunite with his friends. Kadaj allows his pain to control him and seeks isolation. While Cloud allows Aerith and his friends to heal and strengthen him, Kadaj rejects healing and embraces his pain, seeking solitude with Jenova’s dead remains. Eventually, he allows his hatred to consume him and becomes Sephiroth, a murderer as opposed to a mere torturer. Ultimately, Cloud chooses to live, and Kadaj chooses to die.

For most of the movie, Cloud appears to always be alone while Kadaj bares the appearance that he always has company, but this doesn’t reflect their true states. In every scene, the audience sees Cloud listening to his friends over the phone, receiving divine assistance from Aerith, or accepting help and support from his allies. He feels alone, but he’s never really alone. It takes him most of the film to realize this himself. Meanwhile, Kadaj surrounds himself with children who obey his will, hostages who ultimately betray him, and dead alien remains. Despite all his talk about family, Kadaj wants to be his Mother’s only child and is essentially always alone with only himself for friendly company. Even when he’s with Loz and Yazoo, the three of them comprise the remnants of one person: Sephiroth. Only at the end of the film do we see Kadaj as alone as he is in reality.

Other themes that run through the movie include life, the cycle of life and death, and reunion. For how many action scenes the film contains, it shows surprisingly little blood, gore, and death. All the side and main characters live except for Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo. Even Sephiroth lives. The film doesn’t glamorize the deaths and injuries onscreen from a monster attack on the city or geostigma. It acknowledges that people die and get hurt, but focuses on showing that more people live as if to say, “Yes, bad things happen, but it’s not the end of the world.” Cloud’s survival at the end of the movie doesn’t mean he solved all his problems. Sephiroth survives, symbolizing that the cycle of life and death, happiness and sadness will continue. For now, Cloud averted the crisis. Perhaps someday, another problem will drag him down, but it will get better again as long as life continues.

Despite all the battles he fights, violence doesn’t heal Cloud; reuniting with people does. Violence damaged him, and it almost kills him at the end of the movie. The kind acts Cloud performs throughout the film lead him to a reunion with his family, his friends, the people of the world, and finally happiness. Cloud discovers Tifa after she loses a fight to Loz. Holding her reminds him of the family he left behind. When he takes Marlene home after she escapes Kadaj’s gang, he returns to his friends to fight alongside them. Cloud sits with Kadaj as he dies, and they both share a sense of relief with the city’s inhabitants when healing rain sent from Aerith falls from the sky. Finally, after Cloud heals Denzel, he glimpses Aerith, walking among the living once again. Seeing her restores his faith and happiness.

Even someone as flawed and damaged as Cloud can survive, find strength, and feel happiness. Perhaps he’ll never be able to do this without his friends, but that’s okay. These messages may sound cheesy, but they can be important to say for those who suffer from mental illness and other adversities where seeing the good things in life is so difficult. I could go on and on about Denzel, family, the salvation of children, and the film’s occasionally bizarre imagery. Final Fantasy VII fans such as Glenn Morrow, Il Neige, and Jirard Khalil have analyzed the film to find meaning through their experiences with the game as well, but I’d better stop here because in an hour and a half, this movie speaks volumes.

Despite what reviewers say, Advent Children clearly has a story with conflicts, characters, and themes that relate to real-world human experiences. While critics may suspect or even recognize that the film has these elements though, they continue that how the film tells this story is the problem. Its excessive fight scenes and short, badly-written dialog hints that novice filmmakers padded a short film with an hour of senseless but cool-looking fight scenes. Are the battles really pointless distractions though? Part two of this three-part series will reveal the genius behind Advent Children’s action-packed madness.

November 16, 2017

Advent Children Script Discrepancies

Recently, I got a chance to look at the script book included with the limited edition release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It had some interesting differences and notes that I thought I’d share here.

Tseng hurries over to Elena. (He has lost the use of one leg.)

This is a description from the first scene with Reno in the helicopter over the Crater. In the film, we don’t actually see Tseng or Elena nor do we know what state they are in.

The large sword Cloud used in FFVII is plunged into the ground. It serves as a grave marker for Zack. Flowers have been placed around it.

Three motorbikes appear. One of them hits the sword, knocking it over. The flowers are crushed under its wheels.

In the final film, flowers don’t appear here. They appear post-credits in Advent Children Complete.

The flower bed begins to shine a bright white, healing the fallen Cloud and Tifa.

I wonder if the scene with Cloud and Tifa in the flowers in the church still signifies healing in the final version of the film. It just looks like a bizarre way to show Cloud reuniting with Tifa to me. O.o

Cloud swiftly rolls out of the way, grabs his sword and gets up. He tackles Kadaj and takes him down. The whole area turns chaotic, which gives Marlene a chance to slip away. Yazoo and Loz charge toward Cloud.

Cloud dodges their attacks and leaps toward Kadaj, but Denzel steps between them. Cloud hesitates, and Kadaj grins as he fires. Cloud is sent hurtling away. His cell phone flies off in another direction. Kadaj draws toward Cloud, hoping to finish him off. Then, a not-quite-human form appears and attacks Kadaj, who shrinks back. Vincent (human form) grabs Cloud roughly, and continues to attack Kadaj and the others as he slips away with Cloud in his arms.

I guess the final version of the film decided it needed to be vague about what Kadaj does to Cloud but in a completely different way. Also, in the film, Denzel stands in Cloud’s way at a different moment in the battle, and Vincent never takes his human form.

Cloud’s cell phone sinks to the bottom of the spring. It’s surrounded by a frothy substance (Aerith’s willpower at work: it looks like the water isn’t making actual contact with the phone).

Huh. I just assumed the bubbles signified air escaping the phone as water seeped into it.

A noisy crowd fills the plaza around the monument. Yazoo and Loz are trying to destroy it. The children brainwashed by Kadaj surround the memorial as if to protect Yazoo and Loz. The other citizens call out their children by name and chastise the defilers, but they are powerless to do anything. Yazoo summons dog-like monsters and sets them on the citizens, plunging the plaza into further chaos.

This might be evidence that the more farfetched things the film asks us to believe, such as orphans threatening Cloud or defending a monument from a mob of adults, emerged in the script rather than through the director’s or cinematographer’s choices.

Kadaj brushes his hand against the materia equipped (embedded) in his arm, summoning Bahamut. Bahamut appears, throwing the monument plaza further into chaos. (The following dialog appears to be CUT?)

The scene ends here in this version of the script with this strange note that apparently no proofreader thought to remove. I wish I knew what dialog appeared after this!

The scene changes, and we’re down on the ground by the 13F building where Rude is beaten down. The three enemy motorbikes casually enter the frame. Badly beat up, Rude still manages to slowly get up.

The motorbikes appear later in the film and somewhat out of nowhere.

Cloud removes two swords from his motorbike and heads toward Bahamut. Tifa follows.

Cloud and Tifa taking off toward Bahamut on Cloud’s motorbike, the final result, is a little more badass. 🙂

(It’s not clear if Rufus is alive or dead.)

I’m not sure why the writer thought it was important that we don’t know the result of Rufus jumping off the building. It seems irrelevant. Advent Children Complete seemed to think so, too… in that it takes the time to show Rufus walking into the frame like nothing happened.

Behind Cloud there is a huge explosion/firework display. Cloud and Kadaj are sent flying from the blast. Their swords exchange blows before they even reach the ground. The tip of Kadaj’s blade catches Cloud’s sleeve, tearing it off and laying bare the black, ichorous scarring on Cloud’s arm. Cloud’s attack damages the capsule that Kadaj is carrying.

In the film, Rufus is the one who breaks open Jenova’s capsule. Kadaj revealing Cloud’s geostigma, which is caused by Jenova cells, and Cloud revealing Jenova is an interesting exchange of attacks in this alternate telling.

As though it had a will of its own, the water reaches the walls and begins to climb. As the water reaches the rafters, it comes pouring down like rain, soaking Cloud as well. Cloud’s left arm glows with a pale light as the geostigma begins to heal. While Cloud watches this happen to his arm, Kadaj destroys the wall near the rafters and escapes. Cloud ignores this and gazes at Aerith’s flower bed. He sees Aerith’s figure through the misty spray.

In the film, Kadaj is affected by the healing rain, and Aerith’s image doesn’t appear until the end of the film.

Cloud corners Kadaj, who flashes a cold smile. When Cloud tries to attack Kadaj again, Kadaj holds up Jenova’s head in front of him.

Cloud senses what’s going to happen and gives a start. He moves to strike again but it’s already too late. Kadajs has thrust the head of Jenova against his chest. (See storyboard for details.) Kadaj and Jenova’s head fuse into one.

Given how visual this film is, the parenthetical in this quote suggests that the storyboard was just as important as the script.

When Sephiroth raises one hand up high, the skies take on a sinister appearance, as though heralding a great catastrophe.

Sephiroth sneers. He brings down his raised hand, which triggers the dark catastrophe the sky promised.
A black Lifestream oozes forth.
*The visuals should be menacing.

I include this mostly because “*The visuals should be menacing.” XD

Denzel and Marlene are hugging each other, frightened. Denzel clenches the stigma on his forehead, which is responding to the black Lifestream oozing from the earth. Marlene watches this with concern.

Then, Marlene senses something and starts:

MARLENE
Is it her?

Denzel gives Marlene a puzzled look.

No, he doesn’t. 😛

In the midst of battle, Cloud glances earthward and sees Midgar. White Lifestream weaves betwixt the black Lifestream, and the former is cleansed by the latter. Cloud smiles.

I like that the film kept the visuals menacing and Cloud at a disadvantage until the very end. It definitely makes the scene more suspenseful than this would have.

Water droplets fall upon the pilot’s seat. Tifa sees them and looks up.

Water is gathering near the ceiling. A drop falls. Tifa smiles.

In the final film, where the water comes from and how Tifa notices it isn’t really mentioned.

As Cloud rides off on his motorbike into the world, the landscape grows more vivid as the screen’s chroma slowly increases. (Composite with real-life shots.)

Eventually the bike passes through a patch of flowers.

Vestiges of Aerith (nothing with any presence in reality) silently watch Cloud as he rides away. Aerith looks a little lonely, but then she smiles.

This appears to be a description of the montage shown during the credits. It’s interesting that it’s in the script. In the original Advent Children, Aerith appears briefly in the middle of all the shots showing Cloud riding his motorcycle down a highway. Interestingly, in Advent Children Complete, these shots of Aerith do not exist. (Also, overlaid on top of the montage is another montage showing shots from the film, which is kind of dumb. Even they seemed to think so, considering that the opacity of this sub-montage makes it nearly transparent. I’m glad you set the original vision aside for this, Square Enix. -_-)

December 22, 2014

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete Review

Advent Children Complete has taught me that I either have extremely bad taste in movies… or Complete was so excessive that even I thought it was ridiculous. I’d have to watch it again to be sure. XD

Cuz, alright, I’ll believe that guys with superpowers can swing giant swords and jump really high and shit, but I can’t believe that a motorcycle can be catapulted THROUGH a helicopter immediately followed by a superhighway collapsing, destroying Midgar even more; the helicopter crashing in completely unrelated and ridiculous circumstances, nearly crushing everyone for the fiftieth time; and another helicopter magically appearing. (If that sentence made no sense, good. That’s my exact experience of this scene in the movie.) Sure, punching the highway while going 70 mph and then throwing your motorcycle with your feet is excessive, but at least then the excessiveness was kept between three characters with well-established flying/high jumping powers and super strength. The action wasn’t thrown between those three characters, a ridiculous comic relief battle in a helicopter, and mass destruction for no memorable reason.

I did appreciate the movie’s attempt to better explain and take more time with the original’s plot and characters. Who the fuck is Denzel and how was he dragged into Kadaj’s evil plans? How did ALL THE ORPHANS (and the whole city apparently) know to go to the church at the end of the movie? Why did we need to spend two minutes watching Cloud’s phone sink to the bottom of a lake? All of these details and more are revealed in this movie!

I don’t agree with all the choices made, but some of them I quite liked. First, I liked seeing Denzel’s backstory. In the original cut, the viewer simply accepts that Denzel is a new character, a sickly orphan that Cloud and Tifa are taking care of. It was nice seeing that there was backing to him. Second, in the original cut, we often see short sequences representing ideas and past events that only the most hardcore FFVII fan or the most studious viewer could take meaning from. Complete extends some of these cuts rather nicely into more coherent images. For example, Cloud’s brief flashback of Zack originally contained a couple shots of Zack encouraging Cloud to work hard as a SOLDIER followed by a very short image of Zack in a panic and yelling “Cloud, run!” Complete extends this to show Zack as Cloud’s mentor, his ultimate sacrifice, and the promise Cloud made to him. While it might leave the viewer with more questions as to who Zack is, it’s certainly less cryptic than Cloud referencing some promise he made to someone followed by a flashback ending with “Cloud, run!”

Overall though, all of these expanded details not only add nothing to the plot but also take away from what the movie does have in story and in action. Problems begin at the beginning. Like the original, Complete starts with the last scene of the game, an event that takes place 498 years in the future. This is followed by a title screen that states “498 years earlier” and a brand new scene. This emotionless, dialog-heavy scene features Rufus and someone else talking about what they’re about to do in the next scene. If that weren’t bad enough, it’s followed by a title screen that says “Two weeks earlier.” The audience is now aware that they have gone back exactly 498 years and two weeks and have no investment in any of the characters and can no longer take the movie seriously.

This tedious expansion on what the characters are doing and what they are about to do continues throughout the movie. Dialog scenes are extended. The scene between Rufus and Cloud, for example, goes into laborious detail about how much they didn’t find Sephiroth and how much they did find Kadaj and his minions in the crater. I actually liked this dialog scene in the original movie. It does perhaps take a couple viewings to pick up all the details, but the dialog is quite delightful and exact. The scene was written to be quick and precise. Cloud doesn’t want to be there, but Rufus wants him to stay, and Reno gets in both of their ways. Cloud talks over Rufus. Rufus talks over Cloud. Reno cuts in between both of them. Extending the dialog in this scene kills the relationships between all three characters and the humor that results from this language use.

New dialog scenes are added. Ever wanted to know who that girl, who drug Denzel to a shady-looking truck owned by effeminate men in black leather, is? She will tell you her life story! Want to know how all the orphans knew to go to the church at the end? You will see a scene filled with ringing cellphones followed by a crowd of people journeying to the Holy Grail—I mean the church. Just how horrible is geostigma? Horrible. What do any of these scenes have to do with the movie’s miniscule plot? Nothing!

Just because you detail the life-story of a random character doesn’t mean you add any depth to the story. In video games, it’s fine to go exploring, take a break from the main plot, find side quests, and learn about less important characters. In a movie, it completely destroys continuity and slows it way the hell down. This is a particularly serious problem considering that Advent Children is primarily a fast-paced action movie.

The continuity problems that seemingly random detail expansion creates were particularly noticeable in the scene of ringing cellphones. This scene takes place immediately after we see the building Cloud is on explode. We cut to a horrified Tifa yelling “Cloud!” We see Denzel and Marlene, holding hands and wondering if Cloud is alright… Then, we hear a phone ring. Tension destroyed. This ridiculous sound is followed by a sequence of shots featuring Denzel and everyone else in town answering their phones to a mysterious caller (assumedly Aeris) and then going on an epic journey to the church. Sure, no one knows Cloud exploded. They can answer their phones and go on an epic journey if they want to (except Tifa, who’s probably flipping her shit). The audience ultimately decides if they’re going to let this ridiculous display destroy their experience or not. Even then, there’s still a problem. If this is really how Aeris communicates with people as a ghost, then it’s probably better to keep it out of the movie because it’s ridiculous! Leave it to the audience’s imagination! I can think of a better explanation already like, I don’t know, Aeris speaks telepathically to Cloud throughout the entire movie. Why can’t she do that with all the… orphans? Wait. Why does this new scene feature townspeople? We only actually see orphans surrounding Cloud inside the church. Do we need to know what the adults of Midgar are doing as well? Do orphans have cell phones? So many questions!

New and expanded scenes that focus on the horrors of geostigma also add nothing to this seemingly crucial element of the plot. The original movie showed that people with geostigma had gray wounds on parts of their bodies. It also hinted that occasionally these wounds caused people to hallucinate, blackout, ooze blue goo, or even die. Advent Children Complete features multiple characters that are discriminated against for having geostigma, ooze black goo, suffer horribly, and die. Perhaps these graphic depictions of geostigma were to make Cloud seem more vulnerable and affected by the disease. Cloud is on such a different level from the defenseless, nameless characters scrabbling on the ground though that he seems as invincible as ever. The disease is more associated with the desire to atone for past sins or bring back figures from the past like Jenova and Sephiroth than it is with actual horrible disease. That is, it’s more as a symbol that the planet, its people, and Cloud haven’t healed from the events of the past, not as a literal disease that kills billions horribly.

As I hinted at before, there is also more action but not the good kind. New shots and scenes are oddly cut between shots and scenes from the original movie and are excessive to the point where even giant Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children nerds like me are offended. For another example, one new scene features Denzel fighting a summoned monster with a pipe and a fire hydrant (yup). Why do we need to know that Denzel is also helping Cloud and the others fight? Perhaps so his stupidity can lead to Cloud having to save him and Tifa by throwing his sword like a boomerang? Holy shit! What!? These scenes also ruin what little coherence the original action scenes have. It’s already difficult in the original to understand what exactly is happening. The action scenes in Complete add parallel fight scenes to fight scenes, making them even harder to follow and often more ridiculous.

Random spots of dirt, mud, and blood were added to clothing, skin, and shoes. The final fight scene was changed so that Cloud was stabbed ten times by Sephiroth and then hallucinated a little. Tifa still doesn’t get any boobs. I could go on and on, but I believe I’ve nerded out enough. Perhaps my love and near memorization of the original movie has affected my ability to accept any modifications to it. Perhaps if I continue to watch Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete (and believe me I will!), it will grow on me and become my favorite CGI movie since the original… but probably not.

I knew Complete would probably be bloated with additions, but I expected to get at least some enjoyment out of the extended fight scenes and the prettiness of the new CGI. Perhaps it’s good that I didn’t enjoy it as I thought I would. Sure, longer dialog scenes give me more time to drool at the beautifully crafted animation, but the lifeless, bloated dialog and the series of ridiculous events really affected my experience. That says there may be something more to the original movie for me than pretty CGI and giant sword battles. The original movie had its moments of slowness, excessiveness, and mindlessness, but it didn’t try to be anything more than what it set out to be, an action movie for a very specific audience. Its dialog said what needed to be said and nothing more. Sometimes characters only spoke through looks or subtle movements. Its quick cuts showed the minimal amount of what needed to be shown, and it left everything else to its audience’s imagination. This minimalist storytelling may have been lost to its viewers because of its subtleties and because of its focus on getting to the next action scene, but it’s also what made the original story better than the complete one.

P.S. Cloud’s phone had to sink to the bottom of the lake, the same lake he dropped Aeris in, so that her ghost had a phone to call everyone and tell them to go to the church at the end of the movie. NOW THE WHOLE MOVIE MAKES SENSE! XD

December 21, 2014April 20, 2020

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!