Advent Children

Selphie

I saw it yesterday, wasn't very impressed with it. What's the general consensus on it??

grimloch

Short answer: Absolute bollocks.

Selphie

Thought as much! lol!

nickcave

Wtf? What were ye both watching? Advent Children is just about the best addition to VII that anyone could have made. It also brings epic fight scenes a la Dragon Ball Z to the table which in my opinion worked great.

OK, the storyline wasn't omfg amazing, and it's utterly meaningless to someone who isn't already initiated, but at least for the best CG the world has ever seen it's fantastic. Plus Tifa is hott.

I must go watch it again now...

Creamy Goodness

have to agree with grimloch.

it looked nice but story was absolute ****e.

nickcave wrote:

Wtf? What were ye both watching? Advent Children is just about the best addition to VII that anyone could have made. It also brings epic fight scenes a la Dragon Ball Z to the table which in my opinion worked great.

dragonballZ lolz.

nickcave wrote:

OK, the storyline wasn't omfg amazing

the story had to be **** hot to live up to FFVII standards, quite frankly it didn't wasn't even close.[/quote]

nickcave wrote:

best CG the world has ever seen it's fantastic

granted it looks good but CG will get better and better and i prefer to seek my fixes on other elements of film.

Crucifix

Expensive fan-fic, worth a look, but pretty lame.

seanironmaiden

I thought it was A-ok

grimloch

For the record, the fight scenes were very sloppily done. They models looked like barbie dolls for most of the time. Considering it was made some 4 years after The Spirits Within, there was a very small jump in terms of CG quality, and that just smacks of laziness.

Retr0gamer

A load of my arse.

Kamaz

I was impressed of " Advent Children "! It's so terrific!

I understood nothing but it's awesome

aidan_walsh

grimloch wrote:

For the record, the fight scenes were very sloppily done. They models looked like barbie dolls for most of the time. Considering it was made some 4 years after The Spirits Within, there was a very small jump in terms of CG quality, and that just smacks of laziness.

Given the amount spent on TSW compared to the returns, it wasn't worth pushing the boat any further with AC when they knew they had a very limited market to sell to.

ShiverinEskimo

aidan_walsh wrote:

Given the amount spent on TSW compared to the returns, it wasn't worth pushing the boat any further with AC when they knew they had a very limited market to sell to.

That's it in a nutshell - The Spirits Within nearly plunged Enix into the ground...

Retr0gamer

Actually it nearly plunged Squaresoft into the ground. Enix saved them by the merger. Enix now have the controlling stake in the merger. It explains the commercialisation of the Sqauresoft IP's and the mostly poor quality of their games lately due to a mass exodus of the quality staff.

ShiverinEskimo

Sorry - In saying Enix I was speaking in their current name. Yes, Squaresoft suffered under TSW...

bluto63

I've only seen it in Japanese with subtitles and it was....mmm...alright. Nothing great but I didn't think it was crap either. Worth a look but I wouldn't go buy it

de5p0i1er

I thought it was only ok, I would have prefered if they had a better story line. They made a second game for FFX they should have got the script from there games writers.

Octavarium

The storyline was a bit lame alright...

But, if you had played the original game, and become as connected to the characters as most people did, it was good to just get a better insight into them...for me, it was almost like seeing loads of old friends again.

RetroRainbow

The first time I watched it, I was too 'OMFGZ CGNESS!111' to take in any of the story.
Second time, watched it properly, and liked it.
A tad snooze-worthy- especially during the motor-bike chase. I couldn't concentrate on that at all.
But there were a lot of good moments in the movie.
Like... uhm... pretty looking?

ec18

only part worth watching it for is the cloud/sephiroth fight at the end ignoring everything they both say and just looking at it.....that and it made Vincent even cooler

solas

I love it.

Retr0gamer

I still can't see how some people can't see what utter, utter ****e this film was. There were no redeeming features whatsoever other than it looking rather nice. The story was pathetic, totally illogical. Characters were changed to suit the film, most damning of all Cloud (off wandering for no reason despite after sorting himself out well into FFVII). Even more damning, characters who were clearly dead were brought back in either cliched flashbacks or just plain brought back to life because they were fan favourites. The fight scenes are ridiculous affairs with characters who were previously humans augmented with some magic power by materia now performing superhuman feats. And don't get me started on the character role call at the bahemoth fight.

ec18

Retr0gamer wrote:

The fight scenes are ridiculous affairs with characters who were previously humans augmented with some magic power by materia now performing superhuman feats. And don't get me started on the character role call at the bahemoth fight.

Who got augmented?


And isn't materia supposed to give you magic powers?

Retr0gamer

ec18 wrote:

Who got augmented?


And isn't materia supposed to give you magic powers?

Firing a bit of thunder or fire around or calling a summoned beasty to do your bidding. Not once did we see an characters scaling builds and flying in mid air having a fight with the exception of maybe omnislash which certainly wasn't of the same stupidity of the fights in advent children. Absolute stupidy that was made for impresionable teenagers who should know better.

Mark Hamill

Retr0gamer wrote:

Firing a bit of thunder or fire around or calling a summoned beasty to do your bidding. Not once did we see an characters scaling builds and flying in mid air having a fight with the exception of maybe omnislash which certainly wasn't of the same stupidity of the fights in advent children. Absolute stupidy that was made for impresionable teenagers who should know better.

But that was probably because of the restrictions of having the game on the ps1. They simply couldn't have gameplay with realtime movement on the ps1, so why should they limit themselves in the movie (come on, did you expect an ATB to pop up during the Sephiroth fight?). Yes it was quite a bit silly, yes the storyline was stupid and the roll call was completely idiotic, but the one on one fighting was pretty cool and that sword was deadly.
(If you still don't agree with how they changed the fighting just look at the kingdom hearts games. In those the fighting gameplay had you bouncing off walls, shooting fireballs and even gliding around during fights, all because they where on a console that it could handle it better)

Retr0gamer

Mark Hamill wrote:

But that was probably because of the restrictions of having the game on the ps1. They simply couldn't have gameplay with realtime movement on the ps1, so why should they limit themselves in the movie (come on, did you expect an ATB to pop up during the Sephiroth fight?). Yes it was quite a bit silly, yes the storyline was stupid and the roll call was completely idiotic, but the one on one fighting was pretty cool and that sword was deadly.
(If you still don't agree with how they changed the fighting just look at the kingdom hearts games. In those the fighting gameplay had you bouncing off walls, shooting fireballs and even gliding around during fights, all because they where on a console that it could handle it better)

That didn't happen in Kingdom Hearts 1, a game that was under the supervision of Hironobu Sakaguchi who would know a lot more than anyone about the world in FFVII which he created. When KH2 was made the FF team had left for Mistwalker and Square wanted to tie in KH2 with Advent Children which would never have been made if the original team had been around.

I think having the characters flying around completely removes the humanity from the characters. FFVII worked well because the characters felt human and displayed human characteristics that you could understand. The best scenes in the game were the quiet moments between the characters, the date at the golden saucer, Red XIII discovering the truth behind his father ect. not the hyper kinetic battles of which there were none in the original game. Just look at how sephiroth was killed by cloud in Nibleheim or aeris' death scene, they weren't 20 minute idiotic battle scenes, even though Links digiworks could easily have produced them in a CGI cutscene at the time. The hyperkinetic fights are so out of place in an FF game. there is nothing anywhere near as ridiculous as the fight scenes in FF AC in any of the FF games. I don't get this limitations of the hardware excuse. The FF team were clever enough to produce a game based on the limitations of the hardware.These silly fight scenes don't belong in the FFVII universe.

CodeMonkey

I've said this before on other FF7AC threads and basically I agree with retr0gamer here. It's a bad movie. Only people who likes it are impressionable teenagers or big fanboys of ff7 or cgi animation.

I am actually a fan of the game and love all types of animation but I also like movies and this will never be considered to be a good movie. Hell even the Final Fantasy movie the Spirit Within was a more coherent, better paced, directed and written movie than this.

The makers of the movie doesn't know how to make a feature length movie. It just looked like a bunch of scenes put together by a bunch of people who thought it'd look cool to have this and this etc. God I was so disappointed by this cause I did thought the trailer looked cool.

Mark Hamill

Retr0gamer wrote:

I think having the characters flying around completely removes the humanity from the characters.

One character is a talking wolf whose weapon was a hair pin...

Retr0gamer wrote:

The hyperkinetic fights are so out of place in an FF game. there is nothing anywhere near as ridiculous as the fight scenes in FF AC in any of the FF games.

Look at the clips for Final Fantasy 13 and FF13 Versus and tell me they wouldn't have dynamic battles if they could have. Hell in FFVIII the starting sequence had a pretty dynamic fight between Seifer and Squall. I'm not at all saying VII lost out because of the lack of big battle FMVs (VII is my favourite game because of the brilliant storyline), but I'm also not saying Advent Children lost out because they decided to put them in (it lost out because the storyline was crap)
On a side note, what did you think of Final Fantasy: Last Order?

solas

CodeMonkey wrote:

I've said this before on other FF7AC threads and basically I agree with retr0gamer here. It's a bad movie. Only people who likes it are impressionable teenagers or big fanboys of ff7 or cgi animation.

I am actually a fan of the game and love all types of animation but I also like movies and this will never be considered to be a good movie. Hell even the Final Fantasy movie the Spirit Within was a more coherent, better paced, directed and written movie than this.

The makers of the movie doesn't know how to make a feature length movie. It just looked like a bunch of scenes put together by a bunch of people who thought it'd look cool to have this and this etc. God I was so disappointed by this cause I did thought the trailer looked cool.

funny. I'm not a player of the game, my kid isn't a ff game fan either but I am a fan of animation. The cgi is outstanding and I consider it a work of art and am quite happy to have it as part of my collection. The story line made perfect sense to me even though I had no previous FF knowlege, which I would only expect from a movie made for an objective audience. (as opposed to FF fans only)

Retr0gamer

mark hamill wrote:

One character is a talking wolf whose weapon was a hair pin...

And not once in the whole game did we see him having a 20 minute fight while suspended in mid-air.

Lord of the rings had orcs but we never seen them flying about fighting in an over the top manner. Many RPGs have characters based on animals but they don't stray into the ridiculous like much as Advent children did. Suikoden series has races based on dogs and cats but doesn't see fit to treat any of their characters as having stupid OTT super powers.

mark hamill wrote:

Look at the clips for Final Fantasy 13 and FF13 Versus and tell me they wouldn't have dynamic battles if they could have. Hell in FFVIII the starting sequence had a pretty dynamic fight between Seifer and Squall. I'm not at all saying VII lost out because of the lack of big battle FMVs (VII is my favourite game because of the brilliant storyline), but I'm also not saying Advent Children lost out because they decided to put them in (it lost out because the storyline was crap)
On a side note, what did you think of Final Fantasy: Last Order?

Well Final Fantasy XIII and FXIII versus have come out after Advent Children and will be taking the style of the previous film especially seeing as some of the producers and advisors behind Advent Children are on board for FXIII's production. These games aren't being made by the people behind FFVII. Every game since FFX has been under almost completely new teams which is why there has been a complete change in style and gameplay.

As for the battle in FFVIII it was very dynamic but wasn't ridiculous. It was motion captured by real actors and the characters kept their feet firmly on ground. There was a fireball thrown in there but it's entirely in keeping with the final fantasy series.

You should take a look at mistwalkers new games Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey and you can see that they are much more similar to the FF games of old than the newer games in the series. In particular take a look at the 10 minute presentation of Lost Odyssey. Now thats how you do a dynamic and kinetic battle!

Didn't get around to watching Last Order. Was so annoyed at how bad Advent Children was that I didn't bother with it.

I feel the battles in Advent Children are just incredibly out of place since these types of 'powers' the characters had were never alluded to in the entirety of FFVII. It was the equivalent of it LotR: Two Towers had replaced the realistic battle scenes with slow motion Matrix type fights. For me the characters in FFVII were humans with human emotions and abilities that gained a small amount of magic power from materia.

grimloch

solas wrote:

funny. I'm not a player of the game, my kid isn't a ff game fan either but I am a fan of animation. The cgi is outstanding and I consider it a work of art and am quite happy to have it as part of my collection. The story line made perfect sense to me even though I had no previous FF knowlege, which I would only expect from a movie made for an objective audience. (as opposed to FF fans only)

Really? I'm no great fan of CGI but I'd like to think I know poor animation when I see it, if you looked at TSW and AC, side by side, there's no way you'd think that one was made 3-4 years later. Everyones hair in AC looks absolutely crap and the characters have a tendency to move like barbie dolls. The fact that everything moves so fast covers this up to a certain extent.

Not to be picky but there surely must have been some parts of the story you didn't understand?

Floydaholic

I thought that it was good, even if the general plot of it was a bit thick. I'd probably give it 7/10, it was a good effort, very watchable and enjoyable.