Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)

Dear Final Fantasy VII fans! We have been cheated! The FFVII original game was, certainly, a masterpiece for its time - no one who played it would question that. I anticipated that the movie could only be two things - either great, or crap. Unfortunately, it turned out to be crap.

Taking into account all the positive feedback that Advent Children has received from FFVII fans, you, probably, would like it too. However, if you're like me - that is, quickly getting tired of achingly similar, protracted battles, poor dialogues and a weak "existentialist" story - you shouldn't watch it. This horror doesn't have anything to do with the original game, it's just another FFVII money-time-draining franchise.

I can't imagine the reaction of someone who, despite not having played the video game (i.e. knowing the characters beforehand), would have risked to see this nightmare of a film.

Not recommended. Unless you're a die-hard fan.

Fmovies: Since I fudge around with Maya more than any other program on my computer (even more than the games), I figured I might as well buy the newest FF film, even though I hate the games. I kept in mind that this was a movie and not a game, so the boring turn-based gameplay could not play a factor in keeping me from liking this movie.

Well I popped it in and, to my surprise, the CG did blow me away. About a half of an hour into the film, the "wow" wore off and I was faced with the shame of buying one of the stupidest films I've ever purchased. As a game, the story is not a big deal to me, and the gameplay (if it's good enough) can make me forget about the stupid plot.

Unfortunately this is a film, and unless the plot, characters, setting, and overall drama of the film can outweigh the special effects, it's nothing more than a B movie.

As great as the look of the film is, it's just another stupid anime in my eyes. Yet another sci-fi/fantasy hybrid portraying a solitary, slightly-feminine-looking hero to bare the weight of his world's future on his shoulders.

While the essence of the plot is viewer friendly, the film is only completely understandable to the people who know the story of the previous game. Thankfully I forced myself to read up on the original story myself, however I know little reason why to release such a public-unfriendly film to....... the public.

While I can see a positive side to the movie, the CG is brilliant and it feeds the hunger of the series' many fans. When comparing this to other films within AC's corresponding genre, this film is a piece of eclectic junk. I cannot stress this enough, creativity does not mean throwing in a bunch of meaningless, however cool-looking things.

Unfortunately, that doesn't entitle me to a refund.

So an obvious question is, do I like this film better than the first? The answer is: Hell-freaking-no. While both films suffer from a poor story, the realistic design of AC is marred by backwards motorcycle driving and unrealistic flipping and jumping around.

Come on, people, a film doesn't need mindless action to be good...

...at least for most people.

I'm saddened to say this film is a waste of brilliant 3D talent, in the eyes of anyone who isn't ignorant enough to mindlessly follow such poor franchise.

This film is stupid, simple as that.

Weak cinematic follow-up to the hit Playstation game. I think a majority of people who have played the Final Fantasy games consider VII the best (I slightly prefer VI myself), so this was certainly a good idea. Unfortunately, the execution is very poor. Video games and movies are different media, but the filmmakers here don't seem to realize this. They also seem to think that the most entertaining part of the Final Fantasy series are the endless battles, because that's all this movie is. The plot is largely incoherent. This is a mainstay of the series, that the story is somewhat difficult to follow. However, you play the video game for hours and hours and you start to get a sense of the mystery and mythology. You just can't do that in a two hour movie (I always imagined that it might work well as a television series). The film looks awesome and sounds awesome, but otherwise it's kind of a piece of junk. Even the American Final Fantasy movie was better.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children fmovies. If you didn't play Final Fantasy VII, you're not going to know what's going on in this movie.

And if you did play Final Fantasy VII? Well, there's a less-than-zero chance you're also probably not going to know what's going on in this movie.

Advent Children is two hours of manic fight sequences, innumerable flashbacks, and a plot that looks deep on the surface but is otherwise quite thin. A new team of bad guys has emerged to finish what Sephiroth started back in the original game, and most of the movie is spent doing battle in order to stop them from bringing about the end of the world.

Why do they want to bring about the end of the world? Just because, apparently. Sephiroth's motives were many in Final Fantasy VII, but Advent Children's Kadaj and crew don't really have any motivations or even any actual back story. They literally materialize out of thin air and that's all you get. We're told they are "remnants," as if that actually means anything in the context of this movie or the game (it doesn't). They're villains for the sake of having something for our heroes to fight.

And fight they do. Fight sequences are frequent and long, with the movie's back-to-back-to-back final battles taking up nearly a solid hour of the overall run time. Unfortunately, fights lack any impact -- characters fly around environments totally weightless, punching each other with enough force to send the recipient sailing across city blocks. Mostly, this damages property more than it causes any real physical harm. It's like watching a child play with action figures.

But the real culprit that destroys this movie is how much it relies on the non-linear delivery of information. I am not exaggerating when I say almost every other scene in Advent Children is a flashback, either cutting to a scene from the Final Fantasy VII video game or to a scene that happened earlier in the story that we only see through a character's memory of it happening. There are so many that one flashback will interrupt another, and at one point, a character's cellphone seems to experience its own flashback. Not only is it hard to keep all of this straight in your head, at one point I wasn't actually sure if what I was seeing was actually happening in the present or if I was seeing another flashback (I eventually deduced it was the latter).

It's a mess, basically. Non-linear storytelling at its worst, with flashy-but-vacuous fight scenes, and zero motivation for anything other than to invoke a navel-gazing sense of nostalgia.

I put more than a hundred hours in to the game back in 1997, and Advent Children is a struggle for me to watch. It is 100% focused on being "cool" and "epic" leaving everything else to fall by the wayside.

Japanese animation section are always a top-notch quality and pure fun. today i watched their finest animation yet named Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I am amazed by the animation and motion capturing quality created by Square Enix studio. It just looks picture perfect and seems like pixer is way out of its league. But when comes to the story character development and other issue, FFVII seem to lack what's necessary to build up a animation.I know it's an game adaptation but Sqere-enix needed to more detailed on story rather than fighting bonanza. It's felt like matrix reloaded movie where everyone fighting for too long and too much. but i still hoping t see some other game made by SE to pop up in future to create some bad-ass competitor of Hollywood fun based animation. Cheers!

I had heard about this movie many a time, and to me it seemed to be a movie that you either loved or hated. I had heard that the movie had no plot but sometimes I heard that it had a great plot. I decided to take it upon myself to take a look at the movie. The summary up there should tell you what I think of the movie. For one thing, the CGI is absolutely mind-blowing! I mean this movie came out in 2005! You would think it came from the future, like say, 2020, but no, it's 2005. Also, the fight scenes were a blast to watch and there's plenty of sword play and explosions to keep you entertained. Sadly, though, that's where the positive ends. Out of all the movies I've seen, this movie had to be the one movie where I couldn't begin to understand what the hell was going on. If you wanna know the plot, get an FFVII fan to tell you. At least in EVERY OTHER MOVIE EVER MADE, you could, at the very least, get a vague idea of what's going on. This movie, however, will confuse the hell out of its audience, unless they're FFVII fans, then they'll probably understand a bit of it. I'm not an FFVII fan, so I didn't understand, so I'll play the games instead, like you should. I did say this seemed like a love-hate movie, but honestly, I don't hate it, as the good things about the movie are really good. The movies I hate are ones that enrage me in one or more ways (looking at you Hoodwinked Too!). This is not one of those movies. If you love the movie, good for you, you'll probably need to explain the plot to me. If not, that's also fine. Whether you love the movie or not, is up to you. Mrohnoes, out.