I’ve always had a distaste for fanboys, I don’t mind them but I usually don’t get the fanatical levels they reach in praising and defending their favorite title. Along with that I also hate people who hate on games simple because that game is popular, these kind of people tend to be elitist ass-hats and are the kind of idiots who listen to punk bands that they know will never become popular and buy all of their clothes at Hot Topic.
I have one exception for my general avoidance of fanboyism, Final Fantasy VII (as if my username didn’t give that away already). Is it the best game in the series? In my opinion yes it is, but I can understand strong cases for a few of the other games in the series; Final Fantasy VI and IX in my opinion are the two other titles besides VII that I would consider the class of the Final Fantasy franchise (for the record, no, FFX is not even close to a top-tier Final Fantasy). However for me personally there’s just something about the characters, world, and storyline that make up the FFVII universe that just pull me into it more than the others. While I can respect that others may not like Final Fantasy VII, it’s very hard to deny that it didn’t have a dramatic impact on the video game industry similar to how Akira changed anime and how Star Wars changed movies.
Needless to say, a few years ago when I found out Square was making a film sequel to FF7 in the form of Advent Children I was pumped. Considering that FF7 ends on a semi-cliffhanger ending I was eager to see the continuation of a story that I became engrossed in almost ten years beforehand. When I did finally see Advent Children I finished the movie with a feeling of satisfaction and I was happy that SquareEnix finally threw a bone to one of their biggest fan bases. What started out as originally a short 15-20 minute short film featuring Cloud had blossomed into a full-length picture that reignited the FF7 franchise as a whole. Then the announcement of Advent Children Complete, essentially a director’s cut, got my attention simply because even an inkling of additional FF7 stuff is enough to peek my interest. Of course, the first real trailer for Complete made me a little giddy seeing Sephiroth dangle Cloud in the air on the Masamune… because Cloud is kind of a pansy and Sephiroth, in my opinion, has always been a more important and central character than Cloud ever was. After patiently waiting for its release a friend of mine gave me the privilege of viewing Advent Children Complete last weekend so, in an attempt to impress the Destructoid editors with a video-game relevant movie review, and here’s my overall review.
The core storyline of Advent Children, obviously, is unchanged so don’t go expecting Complete to do anything earth shattering that you weren’t expecting, however if you don’t want anything spoiled for you about the new extras in the movie then consider this your spoiler warning. Like I said, this is a director’s cut and all of the extras are bits of stuff that didn’t make it into the original cut of the film. However, while most director’s cuts contain deleted scenes that make very little difference in the film the new scenes for Complete feel very relevant and make the overall story in Advent Children make more sense. This actually makes me scratch my head and wonder why these were cut from the film in the first place, but of course there’s no sure fire way to guarantee that half of these scenes weren’t just thought up of afterwards and were just added for Complete, so it’s all kind of murky in general. In the original cut of Advent Children the geostimga disease feels like it’s played off more as nuisance rather than a legitimate threat. Thankfully the full effect of the geostigma is fleshed out a little more in this version of the film. Adults are shown lumbering in the streets in an almost zombie like state with discolored skin while throwing up whatever odd substances are left in their body, and children with the disease are treated like modern day lepers whom everybody avoids and are told to do everyone a favor by staying indoors. The origins of Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo are touched upon just a little bit more so that there’s a little more mystery and creepiness to them, rather than placeholder villains who just kind of show up and say “Hey guys, what’s going on?”. Nothing too much more is added to the trio of villains beyond that however the minor additions are just enough to make them feel a little more mystical and intimidating, making them more appropriately feel like gatekeepers to a greater evil (Sephiroth).
One very welcomed addition was the fleshing out of Denzel’s story. Denzel’s purpose in the original cut’s storyline is about as relevant as Yuffie was to the actual game. It was great for them to put some focus on this younger character and show his connections to Tifa and Cloud, and how he kind of became part of the reason Cloud began taking in orphans. Now I’m not sure if this is a change per say or if it was something I just overlooked originally but it seems like a few of the main characters in this cut of the movie are a lot less tolerant of Cloud being such a whiney bastard. It seems like Tifa and a few of the others seem to be more up front with their ‘STFU’s towards Cloud pulling an Eeyore for most of the movie. Even Aeris, the girl who died and the main reason Cloud’s so fondle longingly down about himself, tells him he needs to kick the attitude. Like I said I’m not sure if it just wasn’t as noticeable in the first cut, but it seems like it was an update to the movie and I’m going to treat it as such. I’ll admit, Cloud’s attitude in Advent Children even bugged me after a while because Cloud was never that angst-ridden in the original game, so seeing a little bit more of the ‘GTFO’ treatment given to him was welcomed and it even made Cloud’s return to normalcy make a tad bit more sense. There are additional things in Complete I could talk about, some of the fight scenes are tidied up a little bit and the big chase scene near the end of the film is extended and given an extra bit of Live Free or Die Hardesk over-the-top style to it.
Complete adds-on a bunch of stuff to the original Advent Children but there is only one true change to the film that occurs, the fight between Cloud and Sephiroth. The first half of the battle is unchanged from the original, it’s just after the falling-tower portion of the fight that the scene drops all of the original content and throws something totally new at you. Instead of Cloud magically getting tired and basically letting Sephiroth punch and kick him in the face, Cloud takes one powerful blow from Sephiroth and then bursts into a DBZ-esk blue aura and begins the Omnislash-proper a la the final battle in Final Fantasy VII. It is at this point that Sephiroth pretty effortlessly blocks and dodges around the most awesome special move in the franchise and, logically, runs Cloud through with the Masamune while Cloud was hanging in the air prepping for a final powerful slice. Sephiroth says something cool, sprouts his one wing, and then proceeds to thoroughly pwn him a little worse than Y0j1mb0 did to me in Street Fighter IV. Just as everything looks bleak for our hero, he gets a motivational talk from the great beyond in the form of Zack, gets a second wind, and performs his aerial Omnislash attack on Sephiroth (which looks even cooler now, by the way) and wins the day. In short, the fight is just a lot fondle longingly cooler.
The video quality obviously is still impressive, I don’t want to state the obvious but BluRay makes everything better, and the new scenes have the same amount of polish as the rest of the movie. One thing that came as a surprise to me was that all of the original scenes look like they were reworked as well and didn’t just go through the upscale-copy-paste procedure. Many tiny details are added to each character; Cloud’s bike gets scratched up a bit by the end of the movie, during fight scenes the combatants actually get dirty and show wear and tear, and there’s *gasp* blood in this movie now! This isn’t just reserved for the main characters either, there are extra little bits of environmental damage as well and some of the basic foes in the movie look beat up too - and Bahamut SIN gets seriously fondle longingly up a bit during his fight with AVALANCHE, including having a bit of his face actually blown off and seeing his exposed eye hanging there a little. The damage & blood additions add a nice little bit of realism to the fight scenes, well, about the same amount of realism that DragonBall Z received when Funimation finally put the blood back in the series. My only complaint with Complete’s visuals is that characters’ lips are still not synced up to their English dubs. I know - it would require them to render the movie all over again, but they went back and added the dirt and grime to everything so why not work on the lip-syncing as well? They did it for the North American release of Crisis Core.
Audio in this cut of the film is obviously superior to the original as well (duh). It sounds like a couple of voice actors were changed from the original to now, some of which are good while some of which are bad (Steve Blum is still the voice of Vincent, so all is well). Nobuo Uematsu’s score remains stellar and some of his tracks are extended and reworked to accommodate some of the new and extended scenes in the film. The only complaint I have with this happens at the start of the Cloud/Sephiroth battle as they actually decided to revert back to the original version of One Winged Angel instead of the rock-oriented Advent version, I don’t like this because the Advent version is frankly much better and the lyrics of the newer version make sense in the context of the fight, however the Advent version takes over for the second half of the battle. My ear also caught a few audio balancing issues with some of the voices in the English dub. During a couple of scenes it seems like one character’s voice will be noticeably louder than another, and this mostly seems to happen when a character from the original English dub is talking to a newer voice actor for this dub. However it did take me a couple of sittings to pick up on this, so the untrained ear probably won’t pick up on it at all.
Overall Advent Children Complete is, for lack of a better term, a very complete film. Very little of the extra half hour of new content feels out of place and turns the movie into a well oiled 126 minute machine. The movie as a whole makes a more sense and flows better than its 2006 counterpart, although you still obviously need to know about Final Fantasy VII in order for Advent Children to make sense at all. If you have a copy (or copies, in my case) of the original Advent Children I would still urge you to pick up Complete, and anyone who still hasn’t picked up the movie should just wait for the July 2nd US release on BluRay. Advent Children Complete renders the original film obsolete in pretty much every way.
Score: 9 -- Superb (9s are a hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won't cause massive damage to what is a supreme title.)
(Yes, I’m using the ‘Buy It!’ thing. Piss off, this is a review and it’s relevant)
