Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children – A Review by StrangenessAbounds

This review is based upon a copy the author bought.

Amazon.com Description: FINAL FANTASY VII: Advent Children continues the game’s storyline in this CG-animated film, featuring non-stop action and exciting visual effects. Two years have passed since the ruins of Midgar stand as a testament to the sacrifices made in order to bring peace. However, the world will soon face a new menace. A mysterious illness is spreading fast. Old enemies are astir. And Cloud, who walked away from the life of a hero to live in solitude, must step forward yet again…

Backed by a full team of video game extraordinaires, the film was directed by Tetsuya Nomura and Takeshi Nozue, written by Kazushige Nojima and produced by Shinji Hashimoto and Yoshinori Kitase.

Buy It Now on Amazon: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

If there has been a game that’s been marketed so aggressively in every way imaginable for over a decade, there should be only one that comes to mind: Final Fantasy VII. Sony began banging the marketing drum just before FF VII’s release and hasn’t stopped since. The nostalgia of playing the game for the first time still lingers with millions of fans across the globe and there are few serious gamers who have not played FF VII. Some would argue that the game, FF VII, is over-hyped, but that is not the point of my review…for now. ;)

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children movie poster

The film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was one of the spin-off titles that were released after FF VII. Fans couldn’t get enough of the Dream Team from Midgar and Sony/SquareEnix gave them what they wanted. FF VII: Advent Children was a result of this continued fan service and was released into independent theatres in 2005 – to somewhat mixed but overall negative reviews.

I first watched FF VII: AC in 2006 with a friend of mine. She had played FF VII before she watched Advent Children – I had not. In fact, at this point, I had never heard of the Final Fantasy series before (sad, isn’t it?). I remember being quite dazzled by the smooth and utterly realistic animation, but being absolutely mystified when the end credits started rolling as to what just happened.

Fast forward to 2008, when my family had just begun a Netflix account: Advent Children was delivered to my home and I sat down to watch it with my dad one evening. By now, I had at least heard of the Final Fantasy series, but had not played any installment. This time, the music struck me as memorable and beautiful – in particular the scene in which Tifa fights with Loz, a “remnant” of the classic villain, Sephiroth. But I still had no idea what was going on. My poor dad (who has no frame of reference for any video game besides early installments of Mario and Tetris) kept saying, “What?” “Why are they doing that?”

So a few weeks ago, I sat down with Advent Children again. This time, I found a fan-subbed version on a video hosting website. I will say that I enjoyed the fan-subbed version of Advent Children much better than the subbed version that Sony of America created – certainly, it was miles better than the dubbed version of Advent Children. Somehow, I felt that the fans had done a more accurate job of subbing than Sony had.

Now that I am much more familiar with the Final Fantasy series and FF VII in particular (however, I still have not

One of the first pictures that appeared when Advent Children was announced

played the game, only watched walkthroughs on YouTube), I was able to sit down and come to the conclusion that Advent Children is absolutely nothing more than fan service, albeit beautifully animated and musically orchestrated fan service. It was as if this movie was made to demonstrate what FF VII could have looked like if it had been released now instead of in 1997.

The story begins with Tifa Lockheart (who may or may not be the following character’s love interest) receiving a call on Cloud Strife’s office phone from…I’ll admit to never quite getting who the person is – ShinRa’s former president? She sends the message along to Cloud, whom we see out in the desert doing…something. The story is lost in the middle of a fight scene with three of Sephiroth’s “remnants” – and I’ve never gotten why these “remnants” exist in the first place. The story picks up again when Tifa’s (adopted? foster? baby-sitting?) young charge, Denzel is shown to have an incurable disease called “geostigma” spreading on his forehead. Tifa takes her other young charge, Marlene, to the late Aerith Gainsborough’s church (who also may or may not have been Cloud Strife’s love interest, it’s never completely clear. And besides that: she’s dead, so no one’s macking on Aerith at this point) to get some materia – apparently a healing property. At this point, the story ius dropped again and Tifa gets locked into a fight with Loz, one of the three “remnants.”

We discover soon after this that Cloud has the “geostigma” disease on his arm, but for some reason, he’s exiled himself and seldom comes into contact with his family (I guess? They have what appears to be a family picture together). Why he’s exiled himself, I’m not sure. If he’s afraid of spreading the geostigma disease to his family, then wouldn’t that have already happened because Denzel is convalescing at the family home? And when the one of the “remnants” of Sephiroth finally comes into contact with the thing they are chasing down the most, why the rapid mood swings from elated, devastated and then smug? Why are Sephiroth’s “remnants” chasing Cloud down in the first place?

Said "ridiculously unnecessary" weapon. Do you notice how comparatively tiny the handle to that sword is? And do you see how comparatively thin Cloud's arm is, even after supposed years of swinging that sucker around? Yes, he's hot. ;)

The story is dropped continuously in favor of long, though fantastically created fight scenes with various monsters, gravity-defying stunts and parries, grunts, slow-motion moments and ridiculously enormous and unnecessary weapons that laugh and spit in the face of the laws of physics.

Just understand that everyone lives happily ever after, the “geostigma” is cured, and Cloud no longer exiles himself for reasons that he doesn’t explain very well.

But this entire movie laughs and spits in the face of the laws of physics. The only time it doesn’t is when characters are standing still. And I think I’ve figured out why I can’t get what’s going on – because the storyline, if it can be called that, is so forgettable. There aren’t plausible reasons behind character’s actions, the characters aren’t even remotely fleshed out into identifiable characters, and the dialogue is atrocious. Most of it is limited to pre-battle, during battle and post-battle dialogue. And maybe this is a cultural “lost in translation” type of deal as far as the dialogue is concerned, but I tend to think that this is not the case. There are plenty of Japanese-imported films that have wonderful, engaging and philosophically deep dialogue.

And maybe I’m just terribly thick and slow about this film, but seeing as how other critics are saying the same basic thing, I’m guessing I’m not as thick as I give myself credit for.

So Advent Children is little more than fan service, which is why I’m giving it two out of five stars. But rest assured: the graphics hold up very well five years later. The music is gorgeous to listen to and, of course, you can’t skip out on the best rendition of “One-Winged Angel” out there. It’s just frustrating to see the characters just fighting and not being fleshed out into three-dimensional characters when there’s more than enough potential there. In fact, this could be said for every Final Fantasy installment since FF VII. But that shall be another post for another day. ;)

StrangenessAbound’s Rating: out of 5. One star for excellent graphics, one star for memorable music.

Until next time...