My Thoughts on Advent Children *SPOILERS*
Overrall it met my expectations.
Despite some critics, I thought the story was tasteful and tied in with the original very thoughtfully and it unfolded as best as it could, considering such things as pacing, given the hour and a half time slot. However, I'd be lieing if I were to say I wasn't dissapointed in atleast some areas. First, the screentime for most of the characters comprising Cloud and crew was laughabley short. It was really awkward watching them try and display the nuances of Yuffies character (such as her penchant for getting motion sick) in a total of a couple of pithy little lines. Other popular characters were exploited on this too (Barret to Tifa - "Is Marlene ok?!") Really ... c'mon... I could probably get pull string dolls of these characters with about as much depth in them as was shown in this movie. Really the only ones from the original cast that had real roles in the movie were cloud, tifa, aeris, and maybe vincent. The others were pretty much fluff that had no *real* reason to be in the movie at all, and the result is their presences feeling very forced and inauthentic.
Another big gripe of mine is the final battle with Sephiroth. Uhg where to start? Basically take your everyday generic recipe for final decisive battles with the bad guys and you're left with this scene. Here, I'll summarize with these 4 steps:
1) Hero is engaged with villain in a heatedly contested battle
2) *Gasp* our hero is taken off guard and is struck with a seemingly irrecoverable blow
3) Hero triumphs over setback with a burst of unfounded strength.
4) Hero proceeds to slay villain with some almighty glamarous finishing move.
Ok I've just got so many problems with this its ridiculous. Mainly it robs Sephiroth of his mythical-like aura. Sephiroth was what he was in FFVII Because after he killed aeries, the Midgar Zolom, the shinra president, and countless other hapless victims, you feared/hated/respected him or whatever because really you weren't sure what he was or wasn't capable of doing. In this movie he litereally appears and is defeated in a few minutes with absolutely no room for uncertainty during the course of the battle. They chose to play the same theme (One-Winged Angel) as they did in the final clash with sephiroth in FFVII, and I think many will agree with me here, It just didn't have the same dramatic effect because of the aforementioned cliches they chose to use.As a fan of Sephiroth this really saddens me. I want a defiant, evil, menacingly powerful character. Keyword character. not some james bond like villain who you know is just a bitch doomed to fall by the hands of the protagonist no matter what. Anyway main idea here is that it was quite cheesy.
Anyway other than that its a real visual masterpiece. Really, I've never seen Cloud look quite this cool. Its loaded with action sequences that are really quite impressive. Story is coherent and ,although is fairly well balanced with both story and action, I think the emphasis on this movie is definately action. Very flashy, over-the-top, undeniabley satisfying action.
So those are my main points. Let me know what you agree/disagree on.
