Part 2-Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete
It’s been two years since Cloud Strife and his friends
stopped Sephiroth from destroying the planet.
Midgar struggles to recover and now a deadly disease known as Geostigma
tears through the population, affecting many but mostly the children. A trio of brothers searching for their
“Mother” show up to cause trouble and their arrival heralds the return of an
enemy that was barely defeated two years ago.
Faced with his own demons and inner conflicts, Cloud must take up the
sword once again. Does he fight for a
memory? For the Children? Or is he fighting to save himself?
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was a mega level event
when it came out in 2005. After the
massive disappointment of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, this was the movie
Final Fantasy fans had reasons to get excited about. It was a return to one of the biggest entries
in the franchise, one would argue the one that put it on the map in general,
and a chance to reunite with characters forever associated with the title. The trailers looked gorgeous, everyone looked
better than ever and the action looked beyond compare. And the movie…was just ok. It was a definite improvement over The
Spirits Within but it was still a very flawed film: amazing visuals and action
but a lackluster story, irritating characters and a feeling of
incompleteness. Four years later in
2009, we got Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, the sort of
“Directors Cut” of the movie. Now
originally, I was going to review Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals for
todays chapter of the Final Fantasy Friday Retrospective. But seeing as how I had this title on my
shelf and most of you are probably playing Final Fantasy VII Remake right
now…well the change in plan was a no brainer.
So, was this version improved as well as new? Does it make Advent Children a better movie?
Advent Children Complete adds about 26 minutes of extra
footage to the original film. About half
of that new material is extended action sequences. Shouldn’t really be shocked there since those
were one of the major selling points of the film. The action is still pretty damn impressive,
so much so I can see why Final Fantasy XIII and XV wanted to try and give
players more freedom to pull off the moves that Cloud and company are
showcasing throughout. Many of the
fights that were my favs before are still my favs here: Tifa vs. Loz, the
highway chase, Cloud slaying Bahamut.
Theres extra visual touch ups to the entire movie as well, adding a bit
more blood, dirt and intensity to the whole project. Clouds final duel with Sephiroth is
particularly way more violent than the original version and the silver haired
bad ass even pulls out his “One Winged Angel” form during the fight rather than
dramatically at the end. So presentation
wise, everything looks better than ever…especially Tifa, God I loved her Advent
Children look and still wish she had a movie of her own.
But the action still takes up a huge chunk of both the
movie and new material added in. The
rest goes to expanding (more or less) relationships and plot points. Denzel hardly had any screentime to justify
why he was so important in Advent Children.
Here, we see his backstory and spend more time with him amongst the
other Geostigma Children, deepening his connection to Cloud in particular. There’s also added emphasis on Rufus Shinra
and the Turks. The big problem with the
new scenes is that 1. You wish they’d cut out an action scene or three to focus
on them more and 2. The Denzel and Turks expansions pretty much beg to be
movies of their own. I did find myself understanding
confusing elements like the Geostigma outbreak better than I first did watching
Advent Children and we even got to have Cloud open up a bit more about his
isolation in what’s probably the best new scene of the movie. We even get to see more of Geostigma’s deadly
effects at an advanced stage beyond aches and pains and it aint pretty. Still, it feels like there’s something
missing. The story is a bit more thought
out here but it still feels like a secondary priority to getting from one
action sequence to the next. It doesn’t
help that Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo are still crummy antagonists: Sephiroth posers
and stand ins who pretend to be cool until the big guy shows up again and
steals the show from all of them.
As with any kind of Directors Cut, there have been other
obvious and understandable changes.
Nobuo Uematsu, composer of most of the Final Fantasy franchise, returns
to deliver some updated tunes for the updated movie. I have to say, I’m a big fan of his
soundtrack for the original version of Advent Children, very epic, chilling and
action packed and I loved the rock and roll influence he added to classic Final
Fantasy VII Theme’s like “One Winged Angel”.
There are some extra, familiar VII music themes and cues inserted in
this new version but, I don’t know, I liked the old one better I think. Still, die hard fans of VII will be happy to
hear their favorite themes pop up again here.
New dialogue has also been recorded, obviously. I still don’t think it saves the horrible
English Dub we had before. In fact, I
started watching Advent Children Complete in English and switched to Japanese
barely 5 minutes in because the English Dub cast is clearly not giving Final
Fantasy VII or it’s characters the love it deserves. They sound so bored, detached and generally
disinterested. This movie deserved a
better dub and they should have just redone it for Complete.
Is Advent Children Complete better than it’s previous
version? Overall yeah but its still far
from a perfect flick. Some mysteries
have been cleared up but others still remain.
The villains are still unimpressive and the action continues to be a
double edged sword, amazing to watch but becoming too long and too many when
character scenes were sorely needed.
Complete adds more of those latter elements and greatly helps a couple
of key players in this regard. And the
movie does benefit from a nice visual touch up.
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete might be the best Final
Fantasy movie out there. But when your
competition is a movie that’s more cliché American scifi and another that’s
just one long, boring extended DLC cutscene, that bar is kind of low. If you look past the second though story,
it’s a fun and dazzling action flick.
But Square still has a long way to go before it reaches that “perfect”
Final Fantasy film they really want to make.
7.5/10
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