Friday, April 10, 2020

Final Fantasy Friday Retrospective: A Gundam Anime Corner Special Miniseries Part 2


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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