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Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2006)

April. 25,2006
|
7.2
|
PG-13
| Adventure Fantasy Animation Action

Two years have passed since the final battle with Sephiroth. Though Midgar, city of mako, city of prosperity, has been reduced to ruins, its people slowly but steadily walk the road to reconstruction. However, a mysterious illness called Geostigma torments them. With no cure in sight, it brings death to the afflicted, one after another, robbing the people of their fledgling hope.

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Reviews

Eric Stevenson
2006/04/25

Well, after seeing too many awful movies based on video games to count, I finally struck gold with what many people consider to be the best of its kind. I admit to not being a fan of the "Final Fantasy" series, but know enough about popular culture to know about what many people consider to be the best in the whole series "Final Fantasy VII". The FF series themselves have little to do with each other, so it's easy for anyone to learn about them individually. But I'm getting off topic. This is a great movie for really anybody. It was weird to see a CGI film from Japan.While their games have made the transition to CGI, their animated films haven't. I guess that's just their business. This of course has great animation. I was expecting a lot of this to just be Sephiroth appearing and fighting Cloud, but was quite surprised to have other characters appear as the main villains and Sephiroth only appears near the end. The voices are great, especially Sephiroth's. It has a solid story with the opening narration even telling us everything that's already happened so that everyone can understand it. It was great to hear the source of that great music. ***1/2

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Blazehgehg
2006/04/26

If you didn't play Final Fantasy VII, you're not going to know what's going on in this movie.And if you did play Final Fantasy VII? Well, there's a less-than-zero chance you're also probably not going to know what's going on in this movie. Advent Children is two hours of manic fight sequences, innumerable flashbacks, and a plot that looks deep on the surface but is otherwise quite thin. A new team of bad guys has emerged to finish what Sephiroth started back in the original game, and most of the movie is spent doing battle in order to stop them from bringing about the end of the world.Why do they want to bring about the end of the world? Just because, apparently. Sephiroth's motives were many in Final Fantasy VII, but Advent Children's Kadaj and crew don't really have any motivations or even any actual back story. They literally materialize out of thin air and that's all you get. We're told they are "remnants," as if that actually means anything in the context of this movie or the game (it doesn't). They're villains for the sake of having something for our heroes to fight.And fight they do. Fight sequences are frequent and long, with the movie's back-to-back-to-back final battles taking up nearly a solid hour of the overall run time. Unfortunately, fights lack any impact -- characters fly around environments totally weightless, punching each other with enough force to send the recipient sailing across city blocks. Mostly, this damages property more than it causes any real physical harm. It's like watching a child play with action figures.But the real culprit that destroys this movie is how much it relies on the non-linear delivery of information. I am not exaggerating when I say almost every other scene in Advent Children is a flashback, either cutting to a scene from the Final Fantasy VII video game or to a scene that happened earlier in the story that we only see through a character's memory of it happening. There are so many that one flashback will interrupt another, and at one point, a character's cellphone seems to experience its own flashback. Not only is it hard to keep all of this straight in your head, at one point I wasn't actually sure if what I was seeing was actually happening in the present or if I was seeing another flashback (I eventually deduced it was the latter).It's a mess, basically. Non-linear storytelling at its worst, with flashy-but-vacuous fight scenes, and zero motivation for anything other than to invoke a navel-gazing sense of nostalgia. I put more than a hundred hours in to the game back in 1997, and Advent Children is a struggle for me to watch. It is 100% focused on being "cool" and "epic" leaving everything else to fall by the wayside.

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ifluffycatsandmamas
2006/04/27

When I heard of a sequel to an acclaimed video game called Final Fantasy 7, I wanted to check it out. I expected it to have a fantastic plot mixed with excellent character development like its prequel, but unfortunately, it came out to be a disappointment............The movie starts out well with an opening of the events happening 498 years after this movie with several red animals in a greenery- filled land. Then it goes back to the time of the movie. A young girl's narration while chants echo throughout is very well done. But it the plot gets confusing as we are introduced to a sick boy in bed with leaking black fluid coming out of his forehead. Downstairs, a young lady is handling the bar and gets a phone call. For people who have played the game, they will know this woman. But for people who haven't played it, they are confused.We are then introduced to a young man in the desert, he appears to be hiding a condition under his left sleeve. For some reason, there are three silver-haired teens with cyberpunk wear and motorbikes. Where they came from? It is mainly stated in a FFVII novella, rather than the movie itself. This only adds to more poor storytelling in the movie. Where do they get their flashy outfits, weapons, and motorbikes from? And who are they working for? It is vague at first to the non-players, but they are related to the main antagonist to the movie's prequel.The villains in this movie are poorly developed. The three mysterious teens are evil by terms of their sinister looks but they do not have much clear motivations other than finding their Mother. The only morally abhorrent actions they committed were torturing two agents for info, infiltrating the diseased President's base, attacking that same young man with the left sleeve, summoning a destructive monster that endangers the city, kidnapping their "siblings", etc.While it is justified that they are just "remnants" of the actual main villain of the movie, that does not excuses their poor character development besides one being hatred, allure, and strength.The other characters are not much better. The protagonist is basically an emo, broody man who constantly thinks he cannot help anyone, a young girl who is an ingenue, a sick diseased boy waiting for the man to come back, a young woman who is sweet one second but is suddenly a martial artist, a stereotypical angry black man, a smoking pilot with a spear, a talking cat puppet, a red furry animal, two comic relief agents, a crippled President, and finally the main antagonist is...well... just plain an evil, arrogant god-wannabe.Much of the movie is wasted on the visuals, special effects, cool outfits, animations, remixed soundtrack, and ESPECIALLY fight scenes that will make many FF7 fans squee with joy.This sequel was a half-done work that could have added in more character development and story in order to make this movie a masterpiece to please both movie critics and gaming fans alike. But unfortunately, it mainly pleases the latter.Video game movies are not for me, next.

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Marcko9790
2006/04/28

Let me start by saying that, yes, it seems like Square tries to milk the money out of all the FF7 fans by making a movie based on the very successful game. The story is set 2 years after the events of the game and some disease have struck many persons. Cloud (English voice by Steve Burton, excellent) and Tifa (English voice by Rachel Leigh Cook, also excellent)now runs a sort of delivery company, but as expected, they will have to get back into battle after some bad guys attack (English voices by Dave Wittenberg, Fred Tatasciore and Steve Staley, excellent). Sure, the lip-sync isn't the best but the voice acting in general is great and the animation is fantastic! The story doesn't always make sense at some points, but this movie is still amazing! I recommend this movie to anyone who loves either Final Fantasy, animated action movies or just wants a great movie in general. I give it my personal 10 out of 10!

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