Beautiful Stupid Cool

It’s been out for a while now, but I only just got around to finally watching it–with English subtitles–yesterday, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

Almost seems to be a running theme what with Silent Hill having just been viewed a few days ago and now I’ve got a video game movie that’s even more video game movie than Silent Hill was for multiple reasons. The most obvious being that it’s a direct sequel to the game it’s based on, Final Fantasy VII. The other most obvious being that, just like its originator, it too uses CG animation rather than live action, and the most telling of all, it’s made by the creators of the game, Squenix.

Visually, it’s so good looking that I suffered from sensory overload minutes into it and just gave up trying to appreciate the enormous level of talent that went into the modeling and animation; if you try to point out every single cool technical thing going on in this movie, your head will explode. Narratively however, there are problems, and this is quickly becoming a hallmark of game-based movies. In this case, it suffers from a similar problem to Silent Hill, in that what was passable as a game plot starts to suffer as a movie plot. In particular, the extremely vague and borderline incomprehensible epic melodrama of FFVII carries over here with deep, profound, almost German Existentialist ramblings that seem totally out of place in a world where people jump 30 feet into the air and effortlessly swing swords that are bigger than they are.

But DAMN if it ain’t the most beautiful looking CG I’ve ever seen in my life. You have to throw any reasonable assumptions about story–or even Newtonian physics–out the window for Advent Children, but if you can do that, a sumptuous CG feast of impressive animation and never, EVER before seen action-based insanity rips across your screen in between cryptic mumblings about collective planetary energy waves that are thinly disguised metaphors for community spirit, friendship, and what happens when you don’t trust people or, more importantly, yourself.

Ultimately, Advent Children fits in my “I’ll watch it again occasionally for the kick ass animation, but other wise I don’t care for it much” category.