First thing first, and it’s something that has to be said about this film, is that the quality of the animation is simply fantastic. Now, I realize I don’t tend to include graphics much in my reviews… But that’s for games. This is a film, so graphics tend to start being a lot more important, seeing as they can imply subtle things that aren’t spoken and so on. Also, yes, the graphics are unrealistic. But, it’s Square and animation. When this was announced, I doubt all that many people would have thought that everything would be true to life, although they do get quite close.
Now, we hit a bit of a snag with the film here… You must have played or at least watched a friend play it to completion to understand most of this movie. That’s one of the flaws with this movie, it’s made with the intention that most people watching it will be fans of the series or game. This isn’t always the case, and has left quite a few negative reviews roaming around the internet because of that. Just be warned of that if you haven’t watched the movie yet, unless you like not understanding a majority of the film.
Now, to the story. The story is fairly by the numbers here, with three main bad guys (Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz) wanting to get back Jenova, constantly referring to her as “Mother” through-out the film. You get an adequate explanation of why towards the end, though, so luckily this isn’t really something that you have to know before-hand. An condition known as “Geo-Stigma” has also swept the lands of Edge, basically the new Midgar for the film, just without the looming Mako Reactors.
Now, seeing as it’s Square, you can pretty much take for granted that there’s going to be some zippy fight scenes in here. Here we see another small problem though, in the form of the camera just tends to whizz about trying to follow them, which tends to obscure most of the fight in motion-blur while your eyes are trying to figure out what the hell just happened. This tends to be less of a problem towards the end of the film, as they then start to stick with some mostly fixed cameras instead of making it whizz around, so it’s not really something you have to put up with for all of the film, which redeems it just slightly.
The characters are also pretty generic, just like they tended to be in the Final Fantasy 7 game. Their personalities do tend to stay the same though, which is good if you want players of the game to relate the film’s version of the characters to the game’s versions. Also worth noting is that many of the characters have undergone some slight and some radical cosmetic changes. Vincent, Red XIII and Cait Sith are the only ones that avoid this. Some changes are major, like Barret’s new string vest and white coat, with a more upgraded arm-gun. Some changes are also minor, such as Yuffie’s clothes having a pretty minor re-design and new colours.
Also, something to be warned of. This movie probably won’t seem all that great the first time round. You don’t really notice much of the background things that they’re trying to put across, and a re-watch heightened my opinion of it greatly. It’s not the best film in the world, but it does make for a good 1 1/2 hours. If you hated it the first time around, rather like I did, just try a re-watch. You might then decide it is quite a good film for what it is.
Final score: 7/10
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