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Movie Review: “Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children” (2005)

By Dave
June 5, 2008 in Movies, Reviews

Director: Tetsuya Nomura and Takeshi Nozue (co-director)
Writer: Kazushige Nojima (event scenario writer)
Genre: Animation/Action/Adventure/Drama/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Story

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children picks up on the story between good and evil where the Final Fantasy VII game left off.  Cloud is back and Sephroth and the evil powers are still a threat to the world.  Now the children are being used to do the evil work and Cloud has to save the day.  Actually, Cloud and his friends have to save the world again.

Everything Else

Doing a fully CG film like this is always impressive, but after Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within it seems like an odd choice to try and continue a story which we thought was over when we beat the video game of the same name.  The truth is though, that the visual aspect of this film is stunning.  There is a lot more going on here than with most of the computer animated films these days.  The action and shear imagination of the film take over what could otherwise have been a pointless movie.


The story in Advent Children is what is truly lacking.  It may not be because the story is all that bad, but rather that the story was supposed to already be complete and now we are trying to make another story out of it.  It would have been better probably to just remake the original story into a movie rather than trying to add on to it.  As a stand alone piece though, Advent Children is left with little background which is what the video game had provided for the movie.  This seems to actually push away both groups of people who the movie is likely trying to appeal to.  The movie wants to appeal to fans of the Final Fantasy VII video game and also people who have not played the game, but the film betrays both by being a continuation of a game that you thought you had won or by being a movie about a story you know nothing about without playing the game.

The Real Deal

I liked Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, but it would have been better had it not been the continuation of the story from the game.  FF: The Spirits Within seemed much more original and also was made 4 years before this film.  In the end it is terrible this film feels more like a bonus feature on a DVD than the actual film it is trying to be.  It still has a great visual presentation and it almost pulls you back into what you had once loved in the video game, but it is really just a tease for those who played the game.  For people unfamiliar with the game it does not seem like this movie would be worth seeing at all.  It shows that the Final Fantasy video game creators should stick with the games rather than try to make movies.  Although, there is the fact that this is arguably one of the best movies based off a video game.

Dave’s Score: 7/10

Written by Dave of Dave’s Movie Reviews

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Viewing 5 Comments

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    So is this the final Final Fantasy movie?

    I remember playing this game a lot growing up (actually, I'm still growing, just out, not up). I didn't watch The Spirits Within just because I still don't get the idea of turning of video game into a movie other than the studio believing they have a built in market all ready to go.
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    Yeah, I was pretty disappointed in this Advent Children movie. it was just a lackluster attempt to package a movie off of a great game in their series thinking it will just work. Putting Final Fantasy stories into movie is near impossible. Those games involved hours and hours of gameplay and storytelling... Hours that could have gone into studying or something else at the time :)
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    Studying sucks :)

    I actually watched a bit of The Spirit Within, I think it's been on HDNet Movies or UHD or something recently, but never finished it.
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    I completely disagree, the fact is there are several elements of the story that didn't make sense, characters like Denzel who had no part in the game, seem to have been key figures in the movie, but over all the story made alot of sense if you actually paid attention to the game, I guess most people just played it due to the hype around it and really didn't pay attention to story. The movie makes sense if you pay attention to th game, Jenova was never really killed, the alien head exisiting made offspring possible, the ceels are injected it doesn't just happen, that is how Sephiroth was created to begin with. You just need to pay attention to back story to get an in depth understanding of Advent Children. I thought it was a good movie. While the subject is up on Spirits Within, this movie had a far better story, I don't see how you could compare the two.
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    Lenny, you're kinds proving the author's point... You keep mentioning that the story makes sense if you pay attention to what happened in the game. Well, that turns off people who aren't familiar with the game. And for those of us that are familiar with the game... Sure, the story makes 'sense' but it just wasn't executed well. It's like the end of the Lord of the Rings books. They just finish this HUGE conflict with the ring and Mordor... Then they go back to the shire, there's a conflict but it's no big deal and wraps up quickly. Yes it made 'sense' but was totally uninteresting.

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