What does Advent Children mean to you?

[Edge7]

There's more than three (Cloud and Tifa in the church, the scene where Kadaj dies, Cloud with the townsfolk at the end of the movie...). The scenes you've listed are all from the first half of the movie, which is where Cloud gets his head together. I don't blame you for remembering only these scenes though. They're good ones! Also, half of Cloud's character development takes place in action scenes, so it's a little unfair to only count the non-action scenes.

I think the fact that Cloud is angsty is awesome. He actually feels like a human being. Action movies with confident/headstrong protagonists with no other perceptible weaknesses are boring to me. It's shocking how weak Cloud is despite his super strength and physics-defying abilities.

I'll admit, that's one of my favorite things regarding the character as well.

I think may I have to readdress my problem with the fight scenes. They're *fine*, but my problem with most is that they go on for too long, or I feel like the audience doesn't learn anything. It's action for action's sake, or at least that's how they read to me. The one I'm thinking of in particular is the fight in the Sleeping Forest/Forgotten City in which Cloud goes to save the children. Going into the scene, we know that Cloud is outmatched by the three silver haired men, and that he doesn't believe he'll save the kids. After the fight scene, comprised of varied choreography involving creative use of the environment, the only new thing we learn is that Vincent's in the movie. The entire fight scene, while flashy, failed to engage with me because I felt it didn't add anything to the film. You could cut the scene out with the kids having already been moved to Edge and nothing would've changed. Granted, it's entirely possible that that's the film's weakest scene; It's been at least 7 or 8 years since I've watched the film in its entirety (though I will say that when I was super into this movie, I watched it at least 20 times, so I remember it pretty well), and I've only watched the "Complete" version once, so there might be some ambitious visual storytelling I had simply not noticed. I'm just throwing my two cents in on why time has soured this movie for me.