Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)
The Cast
Steve Burton .... Cloud Strife
Rachael Leigh Cook .... Tifa Lockhart
Steve Staley .... Kadaj
Wally Wingert .... Rufus Shinra
Quinton Flynn .... Reno
Crispin Freeman .... Rude
Dave Wittenberg .... Yazoo
Chris Edgerly .... Cid Highwind
Christy Carlson Romano .... Yuffie Kisaragi
Mena Suvari .... Aerith Gainsborough
George Newbern .... Sephiroth
Tetsuya Nomura (possibly the man to blame for the opening THREE FUCKING HOURS of Kingdom Hearts II) directed this straight-to-DVD release that has proven to be hugely popular in Japan and other parts of the world. It was lent to me by a co-worker, despite her advising me that it's not for people that didn't play the video games. I think I played five minutes of Final Fantasy back on the ol' NES, got bored, and went back to killing Wyverns in Dragon Warrior. Since that time, I've watched a few people play some FF games on the PSX and so on, and all I seemed to get out of it was that it sure looked pretty, but there was no substance behind the style. Or there was so much substance that it came across as pretentious. I can't remember, I drank way more back then (and secretly wish I still did now).
Anyways, I argued to my co-worker that if it's actually a good movie, it should be able to be enjoyed by everyone without making them feel like they're missing out on huge holes in the story. The verdict on that lies somewhere in the middle. I know next to nothing about the world of Final Fantasy, other than the fact that I enjoyed Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and there's these creatures called Chocobos or something. Like giant ostriches I think. Well two movies and no Chocobos equals me questioning exactly what I do know about FF. I ran into some guy named Cloud in the first Kingdom Hearts and he had hair that I envied.
Where was I? Oh yeah, so knowing nothing about the world of FF just means you won't be as forgiving to the film as those fans of it are. Not that it's a terrible movie, it's just decidedly average. The movie on the whole looks absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous until the characters open their mouths and you realise that they STILL have yet to perfect CGI lip animation. Which means that it'll still be a few years 'til we can enjoy a convincing CGI porn... or that the Pixar studio will continue to have talking ... whatevers as their main characters. Which is alright, because seeing almost perfect animated humans kind of creeps me out a wee bit.
For those of you that were wondering what had happened to the lovely and talented Rachel Leigh Cook, well she's apparently plying her talents as a voice actress now. Which is a goddamn shame because I hate seeing my Hollywood crushes come falling down to my level. Well, actually she's still heads and tails above me, but only because I haven't been hired as vocal talent... yet. The American vocal talent team does a passable job, though you can never fully enjoy it seeing as how they have the lip CGI problem and that the dub track makes it look like an old Godzilla movie at times. Seriously, if they synched up the English vocals with the Japanimation on Howl's Moving Castle, why couldn't they give it a try for this movie? I'm referring to the royal they, by the way, since I have no idea who to specifically blame / congratulate.
I'm sure there are a million and one inside treats for fans of the FF series of video games, but they were mostly lost on me. Except for the score, which at points sounded EXACTLY like an RPG video game would, with the battle music and the victory music and so on. This wouldn't be a problem if the score wasn't forced upon my eardrums like so many video game cut-scenes do, because then it wouldn't have been noticed and it would be (tadaaaaaa) background music. I'm a bit envious of your average FF fanboy or fangirl because they can enjoy this movie on so many more levels than I can, but that also means they'll turn a blind eye to its shortcomings.
2.5 / 5