Welcome, one and all, to the "Video Game Movie Marathon" here on Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a movie from 2005. A movie that I REALLY don't want to watch, but circumstances being what they are, I'm kinda stuck with it. So yeah, as I stated, it came out in 2005. That movie is..."Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children". Oh lord...this hurts.
So, way back when I first started doing this marathon, one of the movies that I was gonna be reviewing this month was something that I wasn't looking forward to, and this is THAT movie. I've been dreading going into this movie, and there's a reason for that. You see, way back when I reviewed "Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals", I stated that I wasn't a huge Final Fantasy fan. I had only played a handful of the games, and I had only beaten one of them. One of those games I mentioned that I played was Final Fantasy VII. I never beat it, because I was missing some requirements in order to beat that game. And I didn't bother to go back and replay it, because I had long since traded it in. The game became incredibly boring, and I have no desire to ever go back to it. A bit of useless trivia, though. I mentioned back when I reviewed "Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals" that I was missing a certain ability that would help defeat Sephiroth. Well, the night after I uploaded that review onto my blogspot account, Sephiroth was announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. So, there's your useless trivia of the day.
But going back to this movie, the only things I know about it is that it's set in the world of Final Fantasy VII. And, I believe, this takes place several years after the events of that game. That, and I know this entire movie is rendered in CG. So, beyond that, I know nothing else about the content of this movie. What I DO know about it is how this film has been received, and thus will tie into another reason as to why I'm not looking forward to watching it. Apparently, this movie is incredibly polarizing among fans of the Final Fantasy series. Some people say it's pretty good, others says it's OK but it's nothing amazing, and other fans, especially fans of Final Fantasy VII, will admit that this movie is a piece of shit. So, this thing already has a spotty reputation going into it. And I don't think I'm the right person to cover this, because I'm not a fan of this particular game of the franchise. And you're probably asking yourself "Well, if you're not a fan of Final Fantasy VII, or a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise, then WHY are on Earth are you even covering this thing?" And the answer's real simple. I couldn't find anything else to put into this marathon. I couldn't find the specific film that I wanted to cover from Uwe Boll, and I REFUSE to watch the retarded-looking live-action Sonic movie, so I ended up picking this one. And yes, I do know that there are other Final Fantasy movies, but I don't want to watch ANY of those. Because I pray to whatever deity that's out there that this will be the last Final Fantasy movie I ever watch for this series.
Now, I know I'm going into this thing with a massive anti-Final Fantasy VII bias, but I still want to find something here that's decent. And who knows? Maybe, just MAYBE, I might end up really liking this thing. I have strong doubts about that, but I want to have some hope. Because if I don't have any hopes going into this thing, then I'm gonna hate it before I even push play. So, I may as well quit stalling, because I've stalled quite enough as is, and if see there's anything redeemable here. And the only way I'm gonna find out if there's anything redeemable about this movie, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. I don't really want to, but damn it, I'm gonna have to. So, without further ado...it's time to kick back...relax...and check out........."Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children".
4 minutes later
All right, I know this is still very early in the movie, but I feel like I need to make mention of this. You guys can't hear this for obvious reasons, but whoever they got to do this opening narration sounds really fucking bad. It's probably because they got some child actor to do this, and this child's narration is making me want to fall asleep. I REALLY hope this thing gets better, because already, we're starting off in a rather bad way.
19 minutes later
So, guys, I'm gonna ask this. Is ANYTHING interesting going to happen in this fucking movie? We're already in a fight scene between Tifa and this guy here, and it's boring as shit. I understand that I'm not a fan of VII, but you would at least think that the fight scenes would be cool and interesting. But it's not. At least, so far anyway. I'm kinda hoping, maybe, the fight scenes will get better as the film goes along. I'm certainly the movie itself actually improves on from here. But somehow, I kinda doubt it.
16 minutes later
Guys, I'm just gonna say this right now. The acting has gotten worse, which I didn't think was even possible, and the dialogue is complete shit. But do you know what's worse? This movie has just introduced Vincent Valentine. And that would've been fine...except he's voiced by Steve Blum. So...to summarize, you have horrible voice acting, and to top itself off, you bring in the godfather of bad voice acting in Steve Blum. Words cannot describe, right now, how much I hate this fucking movie, guys.
18 minutes later
So now they just brought in the entire cast from Final Fantasy VII in this movie. And you know what? I don't care. This movie is still boring as shit, and I am slowly losing the will to live with each passing moment. Can I please just stop watching this...?
20 minutes later
Oh boy, guys, we're now up to the 'big' final showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth. And I'm sure this won't be the same bullshit that we've seen many times from them before and after this. God, why is this movie not finished yet?!
5 minutes later
All right, so now Sephiroth has been defeated, I guess. So...can this movie end? No...? Why is there still another 20 minutes of movie left?! What the fuck else is left that hasn't been resolved yet? These 20 minutes better be worth it, otherwise, I'm gonna be really pissed.
The Review
Oh...thank you, God. This worthless, stagnant, dogshit is done. No...shut up! I am not sitting through 10 minutes worth of credits. Fuck you, movie! Well, guys, that was "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children"...you guys have no idea how happy I am to see a movie end. Jesus Christ, was that ever boring. And now I actually have to talk about this fucking thing.
I may as well just start by saying this. This movie was not catered towards me. I know that's a big shocker, considering that I am not a fan of Final Fantasy VII, but it's true. This kind of movie was intended for fans of Final Fantasy VII. Not totally sure about the entirety of the Final Fantasy fanbase, but I'm not gonna get into that. My point being that fans of Final Fantasy VII are, more than likely, gonna enjoy this. They'll definitely find something more out of this thing than I did. However...I am not here to judge this movie as it being a loyal sequel to Final Fantasy VII. If you're expecting me to bring up plot points and continuity issues from Final Fantasy VII, you're not gonna see that here. I'm here to judge this thing as a movie and whether or not it's entertaining. I have made that point abundantly clear back when I started doing this "Video Game Movie Marathon", and I'm gonna stick by that statement no matter what anyone says. I don't care if the movie is based off a video game or a comic book. If your writing is shit, and if you fail to deliver on the entertainment factor, then loyalty to the source material doesn't fucking matter. And in the case of this movie, that statement certainly rings true. Because there is nothing here that will grab your attention, especially if you're not into Final Fantasy. Because this movie is all style and no substance. And I know I'm kinda getting ahead of myself because it sounds like I'm getting into recommendations already, so I should probably back it up a bit and try to get into the movie itself first.
I'm gonna start with writing. And I'm gonna be honest with you when I say this, this movie borders on being plotless. Hell, I could be lazy and say that this movie is another plotless action movie. Which is something I didn't think would be possible with Final Fantasy, but lull and behold, this movie certainly accomplished that. The only thing we have to a plot is that we have this biker gang lead by our villain Kadaj. And throughout this entire movie, they are looking for something called Mother. What Mother is, they don't really explain. I'm guessing it's suppose to be something related to JENOVA, but I really couldn't make heads or tails on that. But I can tell you that they were after some green liquid that was being held in a container by some guy in a wheelchair. And once Kadaj gets a hold of it, he's somehow, someway, able to turn into Sephiroth. I think Vincent, at one point, mentioned that they were some physical remnants of Sephiroth, and that they were trying to get revenge on the world by forming themselves as Sephiroth after they get the green liquid that they were trying to find. Guys, NONE of this shit makes any sense. And since this pretty much is a plotless action movie, there's nothing else that resembles a story. What's shocking about that is that this movie is suppose to be a sequel to Final Fantasy VII. And regardless of how I felt about that game's story, at least it had something resembling a plot that you could possibly engage yourself in. This movie, however, has nothing for you to engage with. This movie relies heavily on action that you're not gonna care about the fucking story in this movie, because it loves to rely on it's boring action scenes. And yes, they are boring. Which is a HORRIBLE thing for an action movie, because you should never have boring action scenes for an action movie. And the reason why they are so boring is that there SO MUCH of it in this movie! To a point where it gives barely any time for the story to flesh itself out. And top of all that, it brings the pacing of this movie down to a screeching halt. The worst example of this is when Kadaj and his gang release this monster in the city, and the main cast of Final Fantasy VII start to fight it. That entire sequence took WAY too fucking long to get through, because it eats up so much time from the movie. And it doesn't get any better from there, as most of the latter 40 minutes of the film has nothing but more action. And it's boring as shit. Hell, guys, the action scenes in this movie make the action scenes in "The Ninja Mission" look like Lupin the fucking 3rd! Process that for just a moment! How dull do your action scenes have to be when a video game movie such as this makes action scenes from a shitty Swedish action film look like gold? That sounds fucking impossible, but this movie actually accomplished that! The pacing in this movie is fucking garbage.
As for our characters, well...I'm gonna summarize it like this. If you have never played Final Fantasy VII, and if you're hoping to get a better understanding of who these characters are, then you're shit out of luck. Because this movie does nothing to make you care about these characters. The only thing that this movie does to try and bridge the gap that this thing is a sequel to Final Fantasy VII is that, in the prologue, they show an abridged version of the climax of Final Fantasy VII. They don't tell you anything about the characters, aside from Sephiroth. And this movie doesn't try to make you care about who our main protagonists were from Final Fantasy VII, because they just show up to fight this monster in this city. And once it's destroyed, they don't do shit for the rest of the movie. And what's funny about this is that fans of Final Fantasy VII will probably even think that they're inclusion in this movie is just so forced and non-existent that even THEY are going to forget that they even appeared in this movie. And as I stated earlier, non-fans are not gonna care about these characters. Basically, if you didn't know that Cloud and Tifa are childhood friends, or that Barret has an adopted daughter named Marlene, then you're not gonna give a fuck about any of these characters. It also doesn't help that their dialogue, not just from them but almost the entire movie, is complete shit. This is some of the most stilted dialogue I have ever heard from a movie in a LONG time. Nobody in this movie talks like a normal person, nobody in this movie has any natural dialogue, nobody sounds like they're in a normal conversation with each other, because it all sounds so horribly stilted and completely robotic that it has no natural feeling to it. And that can be all attributed to the acting. But before I can get into that, I want to state that the writing in this movie is complete shit. And even for a plotless action movie, it fails on delivering anything that could be considered partially interesting.
But now, I want to get into the acting. Oh dear heavenly fuck the acting...I have a LOT to talk about with this subject. But I want to get the minor stuff out of the way first. Steve Blum still phones in the same lifeless, bullshit acting he's been doing for a very long time in his voice acting career. So, it's nothing new here. Plus, he doesn't have a whole lot of dialogue in this movie, so I'm willing to give some of his shitty acting a pass in this thing. Also, I didn't know that the character known as Cait Sith had a Scottish accent. But then again, considering that he's never had a voice up to that point, I guess you learn something new everyday. I don't recall that character's dialogue in Final Fantasy VII having any hint of a Scottish accent, but again, at least it's something unique. Not good, mind you, but it's still somewhat unique. But for everyone else...oh dear god, where do I even begin? Well, Cloud's voice actor sounds like he took a heavy dose of sleeping pills before he decided to record his lines. Which is rather sad, considering that we're suppose to follow him as the main character, and he sounds like he REALLY wants to fall asleep. We have acting that ranges from being wooden to sounding like it's incredibly lifeless. We even have a couple of actors in this movie, and I'm not kidding when I say this, trying to imitate the acting style of William Shatner. Now, for those who don't know, William Shatner is one of the most hammiest actors in the world of film. So much so that it's been parodied through movies and television to a point where it becomes incredibly memorable. This movie tries to imitate that acting style, and it fails miserably, because the dialogue is just so shitty, that the acting actually hurts the performance more so than helps it. But then again, I could also just say that no actor is ever going to outdo the hamminess that is William Shatner's acting.
While I'm on the subject of acting, there's two particular actors that I need to bring up. One of them is whoever they got to voice Marlene. I would love to tell you who voiced Marlene, but I can't. I can't, because even Wikipedia doesn't list who voiced her. Which is a rather telling sign, because that tells me that they didn't want to give this actress any recognition due to her horrendous performance in this movie. Now I did state earlier that the person narrating the prologue was a child actress. But I don't know if that's truly accurate or not, because I don't have the information on who voiced Marlene. But if it is, then this child actress is one of the WORST child actors I've ever heard. It really sounds like she's reading off a script while sounding incredibly tone deaf at the same time. I understand that may not be saying much, given that child actors are not very good to begin with, but I've heard both good AND bad child acting in the past, and even they turn in better showings than the actress voicing Marlene. I hope this actress has taken extensive acting lessons after this, or if she's stayed far, FAR away from a fucking recording booth because she does not know how to act. Speaking of which, the worst actress in this movie goes to the actress voicing Tifa Lockhart. I don't know what the hell went on during her recording sessions for this movie, but she does not know what the hell she's doing in this movie. Because almost every single line of dialogue she gives out sounds incredibly robotic. She does not know when to express an emotion at the right time. And on the rare when she IS doing that, it sounds so fucking unnatural that it kills whatever impact the movie was trying to show. She is easily the worst actress in this entire movie. So much so that I almost wanted to switch this movie over to the Japanese dub. But I didn't, because I wasn't in the mood to switch over dubs, and I wanted to see if the acting in this dub got any better. Well...it sure as shit didn't. This movie has one of the WORST English dubs in the history of any dub, be it for live-action or anime. This dub is complete garbage. And if you seriously have to watch this movie, I highly recommend you watch it with the Japanese audio. At the very least, the acting will be less painful than what was present for this English dub.
As for the animation, well, it's perfectly fine, for the most part. The CG in this is, essentially, something you would view out of a PlayStation 2 cutscene. In fact, what you're watching for the hour and 41 minute runtime of this movie is one giant PlayStation 2 cutscene. Everything here is animated very well. Granted, some of the visuals look rather dated. However, you also have to understand that this movie came out right before the seventh generation of video game consoles were released, such as the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. And back then, we didn't have a lot of the modern realistic cutscenes that you see in a lot of games released today. So, for a movie to look like this back in 2005 is actually pretty cool. Like, I can dump on the fucking writing and atrocious acting, but I can't really say much of anything bad involving the CG in this movie. Again, some of it looks rather dated by today's standards. But it still looks really good for 2005 standards, so the CG in this movie works really well.
Sound-mix here is mixed fine. The music here is a lot of rock music that is OK at best. There are some songs in here that are remixes from Final Fantasy VII, such as the fight scene I mentioned earlier involving Tifa and that one guy, where the remix is from a standard battle scene in Final Fantasy VII. Granted, it's nowhere near as good as that song was, but it's still passable. Of course, the only song that is memorable to anyone who knows about Advent Children is Sephiroth's theme. In fact, the DVD menu pretty much plays Sephiroth's theme. Which tells me anyway that the movie didn't really have any actual memorable songs other than that one lone piece, so they figured they would play that to get the viewers attention. But that's just me nitpicking about stupid bullshit. But anyway, the soundtrack and the score here is fine.
Ultimately, guys, can I recommend "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children"? Um...only if you liked Final Fantasy VII. Non-fans are not gonna understand ANYTHING about this. And for those who didn't like Final Fantasy VII are not gonna want to watch this either. I only sat through it because I couldn't find anything else to cover for this marathon, and I wanted to see if it would make for a decent episode. I would say it totally does, but that would just be me tooting my own horn. But I still wanted to find something redeemable about this movie. Even though I didn't like Final Fantasy VII, or even finished the game to begin with, I still wanted to find something decent out of this movie. I wanted to find something that would be classified as redeemable. However, what I got was the exact opposite. The writing is almost non-existent that it hurts, the characters all suck, the voice acting (at least for the dub) is absolute garbage, and as a plotless action movie, it also sucks. That being said, can I recommend this for fans of plotless action movies? Um...God, I don't really know about that. I guess, maybe, if you have a morbid curiosity...then sure. Knock yourself out if you're dumb enough to watch this thing. As for myself, I am just so happy that I never get to watch this piece of shit ever again. In fact, I'm gonna go on record and state that I am officially putting the ban hammer on every single Final Fantasy movie from here on out. I am done covering any more films from that series. And the sooner I'm able to trade this stupid movie in the better. God, this movie was torturous to get through. Um...I'm gonna go watch a better action movie. I think I'm just gonna pop in a 007 movie. I don't care which one at this point, I just want to watch a better action movie that's actually gonna be interesting and entertaining. Which is far more than what I could say about this movie.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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