Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Impressions

Tim Butler writes "1UP.com has posted impressions of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children from the premiere screening at the Venice Film Festival. The article also reveals that the film won't be ready until next spring -- but may clock in at more than an hour and a half in running time (is a big screen release a possibility now?)."

Comments

Holding out hope.

[slusich]

I'm just hoping they did a better job on this one then on the last FF movie. The last one looked gorgeous, but the plot was almost non-existent. It was as if they had spent every ounce of effort producing the visuals, and someone had forgotten to bother with a script. I loved FF:VII as a game, and I'm holding out hope that the movie will live up to the name this time. Of course, I'm also hoping for a direct to DVD release since I refuse to go to a theatre any more.

Re:Holding out hope.

[AndyChrist]

Was FFVII the first one you played?

Almost invariably I find this to be the case with those who call it their favorite.

Re:Holding out hope.

[jaredcat]

Actually as sucky as the last FF movie was, it's plot had every element of a FF game story...

. A small team of unlikely characters fighting impossible odds.
. A government with factions out to kill that team.
. The earth nearly destroyed or in its final days.
. People with magical/spiritual powers.
. Some kind of religeous overtones.
. Scary monsters everywhere!
. A top bad guy evil character, out to get our team!

I think what made it suck was that those good game elements that play out over 40 hours of interactive gameplay as you are descovering the world don't neccesarily make a good 2-hour non-interactive movie where there is a lot of exposition and all of these elements are crammed together.

The difference in the plots between FF: TSW and FF VII: Advent Children is that the FFVII Universe is already established (as the most popular FF of all time), and pretty much anyone wanting to see FFVII has already a good idea of the backstory. That allows for better storytelling.

Re:Holding out hope.

[jandrese]

I'm not sure I'd really tout FF Tactics for it's storyline either. It's got a great battle system and a fiendish (if somewhat predictable) AI, but the storyline was a convoluted mess that at best didn't detract too much from the gameplay.

Re:Holding out hope.

[Obiwan Kenobi]

I think the reason for this assumption is that FF7 truly showed what RPGs could do with next-gen hardware. Before FF7 there were no 3D worlds, no 3D monsters, no true spatial and particle effects.

The storyline was so intriguing thanks to the amazing visuals that it simply took the gameplay to a new level.

They also killed a major character, a love-interest no less, right in the middle of the story. This, to my recollection, had never happened in such as quick, brutal and shocking manner before.

It may sound silly, this is a video game yadda yadda, but the immersiveness of this game is unparalleled in any other Final Fantasy to date. They seem to be so hot on Amazing CGI Scenes and SUPER HUGE MONDO MONSTER SPELLS that take (I kid you not) 2 minutes a pop to pull off, that they leave the gameplay and the richness behind.

That's not to say they haven't come close, but that's also to say that the magic in FF7 has yet to be repeated.

The next final fantasy will be a continuation of the FF7 story. That has never happened before (the revisit of an older universe to tell a continuating tale). This alone tells the power it had not only on gamers, but on SquareEnix as well.

Re:Holding out hope.

[Zangief]

The first FF I played was FFVII. However, after liking a lot said game, I went back, and played the older ones. I have played FFI (never finished that one...is way too primitive), FFIV (hyped by nostalgic fans; good if you like basic rpgs), FFV (good game, a shame that west skipped this one) and FFVI (f*cking great game).

FFVI is my fav. The history is great, the fact that you could select (at some point of the history) which group of characters follow, and a lot of other small details that help making the story a little less linear, make it a winner.

Yeah, FFVII was good, but:
-Had a lot of long cutscenes.
-Summons were way too powerful (and boring. Here is a hint: play the game without ever using summons, and the game quality will go up a little)
-Way too easy (even without summons).
-Very linear game.
-Worst. Ending. Ever.
-Horrible load times for battles.
-The battles were tiring. (When I was reaching the end of the second disc, I started playing without volume, because the battle theme was driving me mad).

The bottom line: great story, and 3D characters against good (at the time) 2D backgrounds don't

FF8 fixed the summoning problem (replacing it with the renzokuken problem, which was worst. :), and a great ending. However, you couldn't care less about the villain (Ultimecia? who the heck was her...pseudo-spoiler: some people say she was Rinoa), and the magic system was broken. I liked FF7 best.

Creepy Faces

[Feneric]

I'm in agreement with this article that computer-generated human faces still look creepy. I can't quite place what it is, but computer generated skin (even when done well as it was with Gollum from the LOTR movies) doesn't look right.

Maybe it's that the faces look somehow too regular; maybe it's that they look somehow luminescent.

It's even evident in the little thumnail image at the top of the article.

Wow those renders of Venice are photorealistic!

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are right about synthetic humans looking creepier and creepier as they get more accurate. Look at the 4th picture down. Quite nightmarish. Even creepier than that last final fantasy movie.

Aeris!

[JohnPerkins]

If you buy 3 large popcorns, 1 small no-ice Dr Pepper, 1 box of Jr Mints, then enter the hidden theater 5 spaces down and 2 spaces to the left of the ticket booth, you can see the version with Aeris resurrected!

Re:Look at the screenshots!

[mn3m05yn3]

http://www.1up.com/do/slideshow?cId=3133458

aren't THOSE the screenshots? looks like you were referencing pictures of the festival itself...

Oh no!

[red floyd]

Another FF movie? Won't somebody please think of the (advent) Children????

Re:me want pictures

[semifamous]

How about a preview instead?

Head over to http://anime-kraze.org/ and go to their releases page...

http://anime-kraze.org/index.php?page=releases

Then scroll down to find this link this link here which points to a .torrent file of a fansubbed version of a preview of the movie...

Re:how can you have a screening

[JabberWokky]

I've seen screenings of many many movies in unfinished states. In some cases (like the Italian Job screeners), they were heavily edited afterwards and had a totally different soundtrack (they had to get the rights to the songs that eventually went into the movie - in the version I saw, the director put whatever he wanted in). In the case of Beauty and the Beast, several scenes cut to black and white sketches, "motion storyboard" to give the idea of the scenes. All the voices and foley were there, but the animation wasn't done.

I, Robot, for instance, wasn't finished until a scant couple weeks before it appeared in wide release. All the effects were still being finished up until then, and the animators were pulling late nights. That's pretty typical.

--
Evan

Re:Uh.... no?

[cgenman]

I should point out, that Nintendo pulled the plug at the last minute on releasing the original Final Fantasy 2 on the NES here in the states, after hyping it up in Nintendo Power the month before (and a juicy contest that nobody won). What was released here as Final Fantasy 2 was actually Final Fantasy 4, in no small way because Nintendo didn't believe the series would amount to anything in the US.

And then, of course, the Final Fantasy for the SNES made the platform in Japan, at a time when the Mega Drive (Genesis) was swimming in great RPG's... but Nintendo's fiasco with the Sony-made Nintendo Playstation (SNES CD) upon which Square developed a fully realized "greatest game ever..." the Secret of Mana, then had to chop it to little bits to make it fit on a cartridge when the SNES CD was not released, soured the relationship on Square's side. Then Square deciding to make the next Final Fantasy game on, you guessed it, the Sony Playstation was taken as a personal slap in the face by Nintendo's president Hiroshi Yamauchi, which not only burned the bridge between them but salted the ground for many years.

Of course, the SNES CD couldn't be released as it was originally invisioned... In a momentary and tremendous lapse of judgement, the Nintendo lawyers signed to Sony the profits for any CD games sold, while they kept the profits on any Cartridge games sold. Nintendo asked for a redrawing of the iron-clad contract, Sony refused, and while Nintendo was contractually obligated to approve of Sony's release, they found a sneaky loophole and drew up a contract with (I believe) Philips to make a CDI compatible SNES CD, which they would throw their marketing muscle behind. Philips, of course, was an earlier partner which Nintendo had scorned in favor of Sony. Anyway, it was a big ugly mess.

I won't even get into how Square and Nintendo finally made up.

In other words, while Nintendo was not responsible for creating the Final Fantasy series, they do have a sorded past with the series.

Re:I'm confused?

[ALeavitt]

This is called FF7 because it is a direct sequel to FF7. This is much the same as FFX-2, which recently came out, and was a sequel to Final Fantasy X. As every Final Fantasy has a different universe and storyline, marketing a release as FF7: Advent Children or FFX-2 denotes that these are direct sequels to games with most of the same characters, taking place in the same universe, and picking up where the storyline of the original games left off. Calling the movie simply "Final Fantasy: Advent Children" would be similar to calling it "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." People would expect certain Final Fantasy aspects, but they would not expect a sequel to an already existing Final Fantasy. The VII serves to clarify, not confuse.

Re:Kill Square

[RogueyWon]

This might seem an obvious question, but...

Since when was it a good idea to let the fans write the plot? What should it matter how the fans thought FFVII should have ended? Movies or games produced by focus group rarely have any redeeming features. One of the things I respect about Square is their willingness to make unpopular decisions with regards to the Final Fantasy franchise. Pretty much every game is iconoclastic and messes around with the establishe formula, using sending the fanboys who wanted a clone of the previous game into hysterical fits. The battle system changes pretty much every game, often in completely unexpected ways (witness the sphere-grid in FFX) while the game-world usually has at least one unique factor that makes you go "what the fuck". I'd say that the only time Square *didn't* do this with a recent game (FFIX), they delivered the most disappointing product.

To sum up, I don't want the content of my Final Fantasy games/movies dictated by the turgid outpourings of the fanfic authors. Advent Children may turn out to be just a blatant cash-in, but past experience leads me to suspect it will be something a bit riskier.

Good thing they changed the plot

[Glowing Fish]

It would have been awesome to just reshoot the orginal Final Fantasy VII, but along with the fact it would be hard cutting the 40 hr long story down to 2 hours, most movie goers wouldn't believe Final Fantasy VII's wild, science fiction plot. Final Fantasy VII would have us believe that:

• Someone can become president just because their father is. If someone becomes ruler because of their father, that makes them a king, not a president.
  
• That a government could be nothing more than a front for corrupt energy company executives, and for a clique of people whose fanatical devotion to a "promised land" blinds them to all reason.
  
• That a country with a large space program would suddenly abandon it, simply to produce more and more deadly weapons.
  
• That a government, when confronted with terrorist attacks, would use it as a way to further clamp down on anyone who was trying to challenge their politcal and economic power.
  
• That a nation's economy could be totally wiped out, leaving industrial areas blighted, while close by, people spent all their money playing in high tech floating gambling palaces.
  
• That energy executives, when their productive capacity is destroyed, would merrily celebrate having to raise rates.
  
  • 
    These are just some of the points that make the plot of Final Fantasy VII, no matter how intriguing, too unrealistic for people to take seriously.