[RnB180]

Wow, this is quite possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen.
Im not too familiar with the final fantasy story however.

I have no idea what the story was about in the film, it didnt make sense to me at all. Delivery was horrendous. Its like the story writers got together, made a cluster of ideas, and slapped them together totally void of fluidity, meaning and depth.

The film is also a camera directors nightmare. It was an absolute train wreck of camera angle implementation througout the first hour. Every scene has the camera moving. It never stays still, the camera is always floating off on quiet scenes, dialogue scenes and every scene. Its rare for the camera not to float in the film, its non stop moving and panning to the point of annoyance beyond belief. These people have no idea how to direct camera work, its constantly floating everywhere and even when the scenes require stillness and concentration from the view, there goes the camera floating upper left, as scene change and all of the sudden the camera is floating lower right. Its ridiculous.

the last 40 minutes in the city battle scene was done pretty well, but again, they managed to use the physics of unknown origin and make a 100 foot 20 ton monster move about and look as if it was a 10" plastic 1lb toy. The physics were totally ridiculously off balanced.

the movie also suffers from underwater syndrome, in which every charater in the film along with hair and cloth move about as if it were underwater and extremely unconvincing. The film also over excessively uses the slow motion effect 1000000 too many times. and action sequences often involve a lot of close ups of hands and machinery as opposed to the overall action, so you have no clue whats going on. You dont even know what is being shown during the closeups as image changing switched so fast you just see junk before you head can interpret what your eyes are seeing.

I sat through the film and watched this garbage on a 7+ feet widescreen and one can imaging having the viewers peripheral vision and direct vision subject to the "floating" camera to the point of nausea.

one of the worst films ever to grace film history. Its as if it was put together by 15 year olds thinking.. "Hey this is cool, lets add this" and so one and pieced together into a train wreck rather than a masterpiece it shouldve been.

As much potential as this fillm wouldve been for surround sound implementation, Im sorry, but the film is largely front loaded, and does not use surround sound to any potential, its a pretty weak and boring sound track.

2/10, not sure if its even a rental

 

[Squeek]

Yeah, I saw it last week. I can pretty much echo all of your statements. Some of the fights are cool, but suffer from being a bit too fast.

I, like you, have not been a long time FF follower. Though I watched it with my cousin who has always been a huge fan. He seemed to have no issues following the story, and enjoyed it much more than me. I think having played FF7 is requisite to even have a clue what the hell is going on.

Unless you really like FF and have played FF7 you should pass.

 

[Zorander]

I played the FF7 game before and so I was already familiar with the prerequisite storyline. The Advent Children continued on a good ending and, well, did not continue it so well story-wise. It was too much action and hardly any of the quality storyline from the original game. It is indeed a good addition to fans of the game but I don't believe any new comers will be very satisfied with the show on the whole. It is a mainly eye-candy show, with little serious story development.

BUT, if you think Advent Children is terrible, you ain't even seen the "Dirge of Cerberus" yet...

 

[fr4c]

yeah, not the best FF movie out there. I saw it once, and it was enough. there were good actions sequences, but crappy storyline and filming consists of most of the movie.

 

[ojnihs]

Also agreed that it wasn't the best storyline, but I thought the CG was great and the fight scenes were quite awesome. I'm just glad they used the characters from FF7.

 

[ej82m]

If you didn't play the game, don't even bother. I loved it.

Edit: I never watched the english version of it, but I assume its not too different than the japanese version.

 

[Kirosia]

I agree with the others. FF7 was like the first rpg I played and loved it, but the movie left me "bleh". Even after I read up on all those little nuances that you'd only know if you read the whatever or were japanese, I still thought it was mediocre at best. Good action, crappy "ending" storyline, and as a standalone it's horrid.

 

[YamiTenshi]

I never played the game but still thought it was an awesome movie. I agree that the storyline was nearly nonexistent and I had no idea who the characters were. But I took it for what it was: a movie based on a video game. I didn't expect to get anything really deep out of it or to be left with profound thought, I just wanted some eye candy, cool action, and good music.

 

[redshifter]

redshifter's theory of anime:
make the story and visuals as complicated and ridiculously deep as possible, so people collecting on video can watch it over and over again and get something new.

it works sometimes, like with miyazaki. mostly it results in long, boring philosophical discussions of reality that philip dick covered better 30 years ago.

 

[kdaq]

Aww. I had high hopes for this. I expect I might have trouble following it then, since I never played FF VII. Now if only they would make a movie based on FF-VI =)

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

I finally was able to obtain a copy today, it was very difficult to find one. Every store in the area was sold out, I ran into a guy I've talked to before at Best Buy who led me to the last couple of copies of their second shipment. Haven't watched it yet though Too bad many people here say it sux, everyone I had talked to said it was great and much better than the other FF movie.

I picked up Karas on Tuesday and found it to be pretty good. There seemed to be too much dependance on special effects, but I find that to be true with the vast majority of new action films. Otherwise it was pretty good. Note that it was originally a 6 episode series, which manga has edited into two 80 minute features, so it stops pretty abruptly at teh end. I checked and the press release says the second part will be released "later in 2006"

. I found it just challenging enough to watch, at first there are plenty of people and actions that aren't introduced or accounted for, but you can put all the pieces together by the end (like who's against who?, why is this person showing up here?, etc.).

 

[Senn20]

I should get my copy of FF VII back from my buddy...

 

[socrates63]

basically, what everyone else said above. I wished the story was a bit more coherent. But I'm a FF7 junkie so it was fine by me. I actually bought an import copy a few months ago.

There was a butt load of this movie at Costco the other day.

 

[RnB180]

I watched the film in original Japanese,
Im used to reading subtitles and prefer to watch foreign films in its original soundtrack. Out of like 400 dvds I own, 300 are in another language

I should watch it again with the english dub. Maybe itll bring more insight the second time around.

I must be the only one bothered by the constant moving camera? Im really sensitive to visual representation. If you take notice a lot of the scenes when the characters are quietly speaking the camera is ever so moving slowly. This pissed me off and bugged the crap out of me to no end. I was ready to burn the dvd after 40 minutes because thats how bad I felt the camera work was in the film. Im glad I stayed till the city battle, which was the only thing that made the veiwing experience remotely entertaining.

You need the camera to be static once in a while! I felt like I was going to having motion sickness.
If you watch any good film, panning a camera is used when needed. I dont need to see a camera pan the entire time left, right, up, down, diagnal, during a 15 minute dialogue converstation. The director was clueless. Camera motion is used to heighten the scenes impact, the movie was using it to say "ooh look, the terrain is 3-d", the novelty wore off after a minute, considering the entire film was pre rendered who are they expecting to wow?

It works for 2 minute cut scenes in a video game, not a 1 hour and 40 minutes straight.

anyone whos going to watch it, pay attention to how many scenes are actually stationary if you can find them.

 

[redshifter]

every camera movement and setup has to have reason. otherwise the director is just pulling his pud. and no, "because it is cool" is not a valid reason.