Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums > Final Fantasy: The Quickening > Final Fantasy VII > Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children > Thoughts of the movie

[Bearofu]

I hope you guys can respect my opinion.

I was deeply disappointed at Advent Children. It felt... useless. It didn't offer anything. Just overblown fighting scenes.

Yes, I know it's Final Fantasy, but the thing they did with AC's fighting scenes felt just stupid. There was too many, they were too long, they were confusing and also damn boring. I wished there would be even a bit of realism in the fighting.

The new three characters were totally unnecessary and I felt like they were designed just for some fangirls who watch these movies for pretty boys. Their characters weren't even given a chance to develop, because they were like, fighting all the time.

I was also disappointed because the old characters were in the movie just for being there. They had no special purpose in the movie, they were just there for nostalgia.

The movie wasn't that amazing visually either. The Spirits Within, a movie from three years afar, is still MUCH more detailed and beautiful than Advent Children, not mentioning something like Onimusha 3's opening video. No, I'm not saying the movie looked ugly, simply there are better visuals out there.

Nomura may know what it takes to make a good videogame, but he has no idea on how to make a full-length movie. It seems he doesn't understand anything about making a movie. So, meh.

I wanted to like this, but the movie was just bad, horribly bad.

[Shadowdust]

[quote=Ishin Ookami]

And the mome rath Shadowdust outgrabe:

Sakaguchi was the guy who put out spirits within (which I've always liked). Which really shows just how different these two are.

I loved TSW as well. And not to throw the topic off, but I can't help but compare these two movies. I think the comparison is that TSW was very dialogue driven whereas, FFVII: AC was just your typical old action movie. I like dialogue. The more dialogue the better (thus my love for Xenogears ). Without good dialogue or at least a monologue, a story doesn't reach its full potential.

[Topcat]

On the whole i thought the film was good and entertaining, but i was left wanting more, it's already been mentioned before, but it was too short! I feel Square concentrated so much on the visuals that they forgot to add a fantastic storyline that FF7 is so famous for. I'm sure for non-fans it was good fun but it did not live up to the epic that is FF7, but to be honest that was allways gonna be hard, maybe even impossible.

[HowlingMonkey]

FF7:AC, then. As a fanservice, it's great. As a sequel to FF7, it's passable. As a movie? It's light popcorn fluff that is not good but not irredeemable either.

The problem is that the main thinking of the creators was "how many fights can we fit in?" and "how can we make this one top the last?". Yes, the fights do look cool but there were far too many of them for me to see this as a serious movie. AC sits at the same table as the likes of MI:3, Men in Black and so. In other words: "No, don't think about it! Just watch the pwetty action!" Unfortunately, action movies can and should be about more.

Being an action movie is no excuse for a poor plot, which is what AC has. It's clearly just there to move from fight scene to fight scene, is very repetitive of the game and carries very little emotional weight. And apart from Cloud, there's no characterisation at all.

Saying character development all happened in the game is no excuse. Movie sequels don't just reuse the characters from the first, they take them and build on their experiences with further development. Like I said, Cloud changes, but nobody else does. It's all a tad too static.

On the plus side, Reno and Rude are great whenever they're around. And they're around much more than in the game. They're easily my favourite thing in the movie, and give some great laughs. Rufus also steps up his role and comes out of it looking pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, with every positive comes a negative, and this screen time means most of the game's main characters barely come out to play. Now, I didn't know Cloud was the main focus but I did expect him to take the most screen-time cause he was the game's main character. However, I expected him to share some of that with the likes of Barret, Cid, Nanaki and co. These guys have plenty of fans as well, and leaving them out for so long was a poor move.

Lastly, the villains. Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz aren't just clones of Sephiroth's characters, they're dilutions. Less interesting, less exciting and 2-dimensional. I think it was a mistake to use weak versions of Sephiroth for most of the movie. Now, I know he had to be there, but he either should have been the villain right from the start or been brought back by a villain who was nothing like him.

In short, it wasn't an awful 90 minutes of my life and I enjoyed it a bit, but I wouldn't really regret it if I hadn't. 5/10

[Numb]

when i watched Advent Children at that time I did not finish ffvii but i knew the ending since my brother played it years ago. i found it actually good and my cousin (who never played any final fantasy games) loved it and bought the DVD, but the problem was that i didn't sleep for about two days before i watched the film so i felt that it was really slow and quiet i'm not sure if that was the films problem or was it just me, and i thought the skipping from scene to another was a bit strange i don't know why I really loved the fighting scenes but at times they get really cool but still quite and a bit slow..

thanks

[Shiny]

I thoght the movie was pretty entertaining overall. However, I wouldn't pay money to see it in the movie theather. My only peeve is that they didn't have enough screen time for alot of the characters (like Barret, Cait Sith and Cid).

[boys from the dwarf]

id give it at least 8/10. probly 9 out of 10. the storyline is good and although there are complaints about too many battles i disagree. the battles are amazing and without them the film would not be long enough. its exciting, interesting,impressive and hilarious.

[Darkwing Bahamut]

The end result is better than what it was originally meant to be. The graphics were impressive, the fights were awesome and the newly introduced characters (Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz) fitted the role of antagonists. I thought the main storyline of Advent Children was really shallow and simple, but the cool fight scenes gave me reason to like this film.