Final Fantasy: Advent Children

OVERTURE

Years and years ago a little software company in Japan decided to stop trying to re-define shooter type games with a touch of D&D style fantasy. The boarded the good ship "Console RPG" and decided to make a game for the NES. That company was Squaresoft Entertainment. That game was Final Fantasy. It became a phenomenon. It was a game that would tell a story. It's he final story of a world on the brink of destruction. With simple gameplay as well as many possibilities for improving your characters, the Final Fantasy game soon became the Final Fantasy franchise. They continued churning out new Final Fantasy games, most not reaching the shores of the United States, and each game tried new systems and stories and worlds to keep us all amazed at how every game was better than the last.

Then came the Playstation. With the prospect of being able to MAKE an epic game in the style the creators always intended, they began work on the largest Final Fantasy yet. Final Fantasy VII.

In this game we all fell in love with the cusp of 3d rendering graphics. The endless leveling. The sidequests. Everything that mattered in this game seemed so perfect, we were able to ignore the crappy dialogue, the senseless leveling up, and the fact the villains were either a) clueless or b) hell bent on world destruction for no good reason.

Time did pass, other Final Fantasy games were released, Squaresoft merged with it's competition, and the Playstation 2 came out, which leads to the beginning of where it all goes wrong. It was for the Playstation 2 they made this...

This game was very pretty to look at. It showed that the Square folks could do a LOT better than Final Fantasy, The Spirits Within when it came to CG movies. It meant that they would also have a place in helping shill out the next Matrix movie with "Last Flight of the Osiris". Now, while movie quality CG from Square was a first, the next first came a little later...

It was there the illusion was broken. The Fantasy was no longer final. This was a huge success for the newly formed Square Enix. With the addition of a familiar setting and a gaggle of outfits to dress your girls in... well it sold like mad. And it proved one thing, gamers didn't care what you did with a property as long as it looked pretty and was full of eye candy of one sort or another. Integrity didn't matter, length of game didn't matter, plot... still didn't matter. You could just slap "Final Fantasy" on something and it would be bought my BILLIONS worldwide.

And still there were throngs of people yearning for more stories of Tifa, of Barrett, of Cloud, of Sephiroth (At least, stories that didn't involve eventual yaoi or yuri sex written and drawn by perverse sexual Japanese in a pursuit of perfect wank fodder). So they began to plot. And amidst all this plotting came the speculations.

"Square is making a new Final Fantasy VII game!"

"Square is going to re-release Final Fantasy VII with updated graphics for the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube!"

"Square is going to make a Final Fantasy VII action game!"

"Square is going to make Final Fantasy VII Poptarts!"

"Square is going to donkey punch me while making me a beta tester for their latest Final Fantasy VII online game!"

And then came the proof. There WAS something coming down the pipe that looked very Final Fantasy VII. You saw Cloud, you saw Sephiroth, and you saw Tifa. You'd see these little teasers all over the place. High rendered CGI art of these people looking sour and pissed at their lot in life, as if they went on Myspace and shopped at Hot Topic all in the same hour.

Then came the press release. They were making a Final Fantasy VII movie. All in CG, and it will be shipped worldwide and released at the same time, as to prevent piracy. Personally, I thought it was a great idea. It could be a fun flick and the release date would mean I wouldn't have to scour the earth finding a copy that would work on a region one DVD player. All the good little fanboys ran to their local video game store to preorder a copy in the hope that once it was released, they would finally have more Final Fantasy VII to do fan art for.

During the interim, it was time for more speculation.

"In this one, Tifa Dies!"

"Cloud is going to find the source of REALULTIMATEPOWER!!!"

"They're all dressing in black to mourn all the people who died in the last game."

"The movies going to be X-rated in the states, because Yuffie and Tifa are going to get it on!"

"Sephiroth will have a sex change."

And so came the fabled date... And thus the release was pushed back. Then again. Then again. There was a great wailing and gnashing of flame wars. Message boards were trembling under the weight of the "OMG! THE DATE IS PUSHED BACK AGAINS!!!!ONE!!!!1!" messages.

And I sat and waited quietly. I knew it would happen, it always happened. What DID happen that surprised me was the fact they didn't ship the DVD out in all countries at the same date. It went to Japan and Hong Kong on the same day. With that, I resolved not to bother with it anymore. The great plan to have little to no piracy was a pipe dream. Already the torrent files were shedding load for all the download chatter. CD-R devices whirred and overheated to get Advent Children to the masses. Square intended to stop piracy, but as it turns out the plunder was already found and the crew was whoring it up while smashed.

So I gave in months later. I purchased an actual Hong Kong edition that had subtitles. I watched it...; It was OK but the subtitles went out of synch ¾ of the way through. Not that that mattered much. So again, I stopped caring and went about my business.

Finally, it's released in the states. I too pick up a copy in preparation for this very rant. And now we shall all see how redundancy can be big business.

CRESCENDO

First off, let me tell you I'm watching this one in Japanese. I'm not slugging through what has been reported as a very bad dub job even if David Lucas (Spike from "Cowboy Bebop") is Vincent. I can only suffer for so long.

We open to where we left off in Final Fantasy VII...; 500 years into the future with Red XIII and two of his cubs run up and howl at the ruins of a city. Wait; let me go through this first. How does Red XIII reproduce? Does he bud asexually? Does he lay eggs? He was supposed to be the last of his species. I'll leave it up to the perverted fan fiction writers to deal with this one.

But then we leap back 498 years to our current movie (Two years after the original game, keep up or you'll lose the magic!). It seems Shinra is up to something. They fly down into a foggy crater where we get a glimpse of Reno of the Turks flying a sweet helicopter. And in the fog a great fight rages on, but we can't see a damn thing. Stupid fog! We could have started out with a little action, but noooo. We have to be ominous for the sake of art.

Next we quickly summarize what happened in Final Fantasy VII. This is dry, boring, and only serves for us to see Sephiroth walk into a fire, again. But here's my summary. A group of terrorists...; er...; Freedom Fighters known as "Avalanche" fight against the power company. Since said power company is killing the planet and screwing the public, this is seen by many as a good thing. Now, the power company also starts a super soldier genome project by putting strange meteorite woman DNA in a bunch of people. One soldier, Sephiroth, wasn't too happy about this. So he used the power of the space meteor to summon a comet. Our heroes could do nothing about it in the long run, so the planet's life force pulled a Deus Ex Machina on it while the heroes kill Sephiroth.

But the world moved on. We learn a viral epidemic, Geostigma, is ravaging the world. Symptoms are an itchy grey pussed rash, and flashes of images of Sephiroth when your head makes a whining Eeeeeeeeee noise. We meet up with Tifa, who's slight breast reduction has gone well. She's running a shipping company and bar with Cloud, apparently. But I don't see any mail trucks, or packages. Just some orphans. Maybe they ship orphans overnight to your door! The convenience!

Meanwhile, Cloud is off in nowheresvill moping about how he's got the geostigma, Aerith is dead, and why Weezer lost their emo edge. He's also being followed by three Sephiroth wannabes. It quickly degrades into a nifty motorcycle fight scene. One nitpick here...; Cloud can take a shotgun blast to the face and it only blows off his sunglasses? Looks like someone's wearing his Ray Bans today!

Well, Cloud has a destination in mind. It's a meeting with Rufus Shinra and what's left of the Turks. It seems Rufus was able to survive a huge reactor explosion but he's now confined to a wheelchair and a sheet. Why the sheet? Who knows, I think it's his security blanket of fear. This whole James Bond villain thing just doesn't work for him anyway, and he makes Cloud an offer he definitely refuses.

We cut back to Tifa and Marianne. Who's Marianne? Barett's daughter (Who is probably adopted, I mean, c'mon! The girl has no dominant genes here!). Anyway, they're snooping around Aerith's old church. They learn that Cloud crashes there and mopes more for his dead love. GET OVER IT!!! You've got Tifa now! She's way better than that pink goody-goody! And she only liked Zack to boot, not you!

Anywho... Tifa's jumped by the shorthaired Sephi-wannbe. While she beats him down in a stellar fashion, he gets back up to the prompting of his cell phone. Then in one punch he drops Tifa like a sack of potatoes, takes Marianne, and a box of material Cloud had stashed away. He then jets off to wherever our Sephi-cult is meeting for a good old-fashioned revival.

Now, Tifa does not die. There were disturbing images all over the net telling me otherwise for some time. I too can have fanboyish moments, and while she is an animation, I find her more lifelike than Morgan Webb (I SO WENT THERE!!! She seems so much like the girl who wants nothing more than claw your eyes out and assure you'll never get laid.)

It turns out Cloud has another bout of the geostigma head pains and blacks out. They awaken back home under the watchful care of Reno and Rude. This is a perfect time for Tifa and Cloud to hash it out about how useless Cloud is/isn't while cutting to Cloud heading to the Sephi-revival. The Sephi Cult must be stopped! They're about to baptize the children in dark water! If cloud doesn't hurry, they'll all become Flandereses!!! But the Sephi-wannabe's preach on, and then fight with Cloud. Or at least try to fight with cloud. They use the brainwashed kids as a helpful barrier; I think I even see one or two flung away by the squeal of Cloud's sweet rims! But just as Cloud's about to get his ticket punched, Vincent (Another of the lady's yaoi slash fodder) swoops in with darkness and shotguns to save the day. They take back Marianne who wisely didn't drink the cult's Kool-aid, and then we cut to something cooler.

Back in town the Sephi-cult takes over town square. They use the kids as a fence while they decide it's a good time to pull down the statue in the middle of town. Why? They think Jenova's head is in there. Then as more spectators gather and rabble, the Sephi-wannabes summon up some huge beasts to tear them asunder. But then Reno and Rude step up to...

Oh no, wait... let's abruptly cut to something else again (This happens a lot). The head Sephi-wannabe and Rufus are talking. Yadda yadda, then Bahamut is summoned. There's more fighting, posturing, and Reno doing a little slapstick to make things seem more fun. But hey! Now the gang's all here... And they've been shopping at Hot Topic!

So each character get's to go all badass on Bahamut for a little while, but it's unkillable until they all work together to fling Cloud really high for a really big sword slice. Oh, and more divine Aerith intervention. Couldn't hurt, right?

Then we cut to "The Matrix". Only Reno and Rude are in this version fighting the Sephi-wannabe-lackeys. I really have no reason to remember these guy's names. They're each pretty forgettable. But back to the matrix like action, Rufus isn't that bad off, and leaps from his wheelchair, sheet, and building to keep Jenova's head and get off a few more matrix style shots. Man, action heroes can really bounce back after a few explosions, huh? I wonder if the villain from "Die Hard" is OK too?

But now the Sephi-wannabe's have the head and charge off to god knows where. Once again as Cloud charges off we get blessed sweet action. It's the only reason to watch this DVD after all.

We get to the end of the line, Aerith's church again. The Sephi-wannabe is crying that his Jenova head has been all mangled in the trip here and it's not talking to him. When Cloud shows up with no sympathy at all, the Sephi-wannabe attacks. Time for the epic last battle! They fight for a bit in the church, then the water gets all holyfied and Cloud's geostigma is healed. How convenient.

I want to take a pause from the action to tell Square this. We get it. You can make water look really real and pretty. We get it. It's a very hard thing to do with CG animation. Sheesh, between this and Final Fantasy X you'd think somebody really liked to beat off in the ocean.

But back to the epic fight, they take it outside where the head finally wakes up and turns the Sephi-wannabe into Sephiroth. I hope it's everything you ever wanted fanboy, because this gratuitous fight scene has awesome visuals... but yet another quality I've seen before. Oh, wait... its Dragon Ball Z with swords and without "Powering up" for eight episodes. Oh, and Aerith has to pop up again.

And finally, Cloud does win, the world is saved, the Sephi-wannabe dissolves happily, the geostigma is cured, and the fantasy is finalized. Until the sequel/prequel games come out.

FINALE

Well, I'll give it this much. It was pretty. Yes, a visual feast done rather well. Other than that, there was really no reason for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children to be made. I guess this might be what Square-Enix will turn into, nothing but badly plotted CG animations. Isn't it bad enough we're already flooding the market with them? Oh well.

Of course the fun doesn't stop here. There's still the FFVIII first person shooter that's coming out. Oh great, because we know how great anything Square does that isn't a console RPG. Ehergeiz anyone? How about Einhander? No takers? Fair enough. Let's just get one more glimpse of an ass being kicked. It's all this movie had to offer.