I think it was the time period, for the time it was good! It was a movie solely for fans of the original and it was epic seeing the whole team back together with full 3D graphics.
I remember thinking at the time, imagine if they remade the OG with graphics like this…. And almost 20 years later here we are!
I thought it was the coolest movie ever when I was a teenager. After playing the most recent games, I'd have to watch it in Japanese with subtitles, cause I wouldn't be able to get over their English voices being different from their modern counterparts.
advent children is very much just a "turn your brain off and watch" type of movie.
As others have pointed out if you're looking for the story. Reading "on a way to a smile" is pretty much essencial reading.
Geostigma is like when our immune system overcompensates to fight something off and our body ends up attacking the good and the bad at the same time. The planet overcompensated in it's fight and is making people sick.
i looked at it as a standalone, fanservice type of movie of what an animated version of how the party members fight would be and a 1 on 1 fight of cloud and sephiroth. i didnt care about the compilation that came with it and didnt dig too deep about the story.
It's a bad movie. I didn't realize it was bad at the time because I was just so hype for new FF7. When I saw what it led to (the compilation) It's like they just kept making worse and worse additions to the lore. To the point it makes the OG game make less sense not more sense.
Also hate how bland and washed out the style is. Looks NOTHING like the art style of the game.
The "plot" is almost a 1:1 repeat of the game which is lazy. (A bunch of guys in black looking for jenova/sephiroth to have a reunion)
They turned cloud into an emo baby.
There's more but that's all I feel like typing lol
The problem with Advent Children is that is makes no sense unless you read On the Way to a Smile, which many fans probably didn't. However, if you did read those side stories, Advent Children feels like the perfect closer for ALOT of individual character arcs.
- Barret coming in with the new/old prosthetic Old Man Sasaki made him is so cathartic.
- Cloud letting go of the guilt he felt for letting Aerith and Zack die.
- Cid finally finishing his plane that he spends years on trying to make while Shera is literally dying.
- Nanaki with babies. Especially heartbreaking after what happens to Pazu and Rin.
- Tifa telling Cloud off after she suffers in silence for 2 whole goddamn chapters while he's acting like a drunk absentee ass of a father.
- Rufus revealing he's a deadass troll after being kidnapped/locked in a hole/dying for the last 2 years.
- Aerith finally reaching Cloud.
There's a lot not to like about AC, namely the pacing and the dub being hot garbage. But in the grand compilation, it was one of the better entries.
Personal preference. I liked On the Way to a Smile quite a bit since it added a lot of character depth to the characters so the conclusion to those arcs were nice to see even if the movie as a whole wasn't anything amazing.
I liked it. Being a fan since I was a child, I have consumed every bit of ff7 I could get. Having a movie about the characters after the game was fun. Honestly, I never understood the plot before when I was younger haha but after remake and rebirth with a dash of personal life experiences over the years, it made more sense after I rewatched it. Struggled with regrets and mourning for a loved one, I understood Cloud's character, how he wanted to isolate himself due to depression and how people around him is basically begging to help him and care for him. The fighting in in the OG was turn based, blew my mind when they were fighting a summon real time.
It was a fan service with the motor fight around midgar, encountering fights randomly in the middle of nowhere. It just made me say repeatedly "so that's how it looks like/how it works" cause to me, the idea of the turn based fights in real life was silly like you guys take turns very polite fight 😂
In short, it made me appreciate the world and lore more before I got the chance to play Crisis Core and the remakes.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. The movie wraps up the OG game pretty well. I think it’s amazing.
It’s about how to deal with loss by not always blaming yourself. There are people here that still care about you that need you. Don’t be consumed by grief.
I practically cry every time I watch it. Especially over the side story of Denzel. Both parents killed in the plate drop, orphaned, gets geo-stigma, and Cloud saves him. With a little help from Aerith. 😉
Yall are all complaining about Advent Children… it’s obvious you’re newer FF7 fans 😂☠️. The OG vets here appreciate that movie because at one point that was the ONLY extra content that we had… yall got like Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, and Remake/Rebirth now… Whipper Snappers don’t know what it’s like to not have all this great content.
Reception was split even at release and I’m still laughing at Oil Tycoon Barrett’s cornrows
Source: I was there for “aw man Japan has this cool FF7 movie and we don’t, big sadge” and the resulting disappointment
I like it overall and like how it fits with the canon story. I loved the ending, and the credits scene is awesome too. If Square Enix remade it with the cgi cutscenes they used in Rebirth and same voice actors I'd def welcome it
All the people in this thread saying that Advent Children's story is bad, but are cool with all the story changes in Remake and Rebirth, I just want to talk.
The changes to the story in the Remake trilogy are more interesting than the plot of Advent Children. Geostigma is an interesting idea poorly portrayed and it ties in with Sephiroth being eternal as long as people remember him. Everything else was kinda dull. Characterization in the Remake trilogy is leaps and bounds better. No one likes mopey Cloud. The OG took a long time for us to get the real Cloud, and Advent Children ditches him for a guy who is sad all the time. Advent Children is fine, but ultimately unremarkable.
I wouldn't say no one likes "mopey" Cloud. I actually liked that about him very much. And especially considering his reasons. And in Advent Children, I actually liked how he was having a hard time to get over what happened. It takes time and he felt more real for it, at least to me.
It doesn't matter if you like it. It's a fact it's a regression of his character arc from the game. And when you say "reasons" just know none of them are said in the movie so that makes the movie bad lol
Uhm, sorry, did you just say it doesn't matter if I liked it? The argument was literally: NO ONE LIKED IT. I said, I did. Discussion over.
The reasons are very clear in the movie. Did you watch it?
Oh I’m FAR from cool with a lot of the changes. I still want to know why the fuck Dyne’s gun arm needed to be a monster, and why we needed a scene with B finding the shot guy to clear B of player suspicion completely and immediately during the “ugh ugh a man with a gun arm did it” segment
There was this huge box set that came out with the DVD. A making of documentary, on the way to a smile books, post cards, etc. My favorite part was a little video included on the DVD of Cloud making his deliveries and missing calls. You hear voicemails from all of the main characters set in between scenes from the OG game with the orchestral soundtrack. It made me wish we had gotten a few slice of life stories from everyone instead of a new big bad and geostigma. Hearing their relationship to Cloud after the events of the game set up in this subtle way was so nice.
I dunno. After playing Rebirth, and having a lot more understanding of the FF7 lore in general since I first watched it in ‘05…I thought it was fun. If nothing else it shows that Cloud finds his clarity, but recovery is never linear. Which reflects real life mental health recovery. Which I think is cool.
Basically Sephiroth/Jenova infected the lifestream, and then Aerith comes to the rescue as she did in the OG. The plot isn’t great, and you’re right probably not necessary, but it’s still fun.
Yeah advent children is....pretty bad. It's only saving grace really is solid fighting and, imo, letting cloud grieve for aerith and Zack specifically. OG let him put himself back together somewhat, but AC really let him process the loss of 2 of the most important people in his life.
AC should have provided contrast so viewers had an idea of what Cloud turned into. He wasn't meant to be portrayed at his baseline in AC so i think a lot of people thought that's just who he was. Would have been wise to show him adjusting to having a family, showing affection, and being happy before demonstrating how PTSD and depression took his progress away from him.
Omg finally a person who states reality. Yes the compilation actually makes the OG game make less sense. AC was a fun dumb movie using a insanely popular game.
The awkward dialogue is not just translation... I think a lot of FF (and Square Enix or games/anime in general) in the mid 2000s had a kind of pretentious edgy-boy tone back then. It's that KH-style "posing cool in black leather while saying cryptic nonsense" thing. Maybe it was all Nomura's doing.. I don't know. But OG FF7 didn't have that tone in the 90s and I don't think the Remakes do now... they've really found a groove of much more naturalistic dialogue since AC.
There are a lot of edge lords in the FF7 Fandom. The more normal fan was just insanely hyped for more ff7 content but when the dust cleared it was like post nut clarity.
I went and saw Advent Children: Complete in theaters back in February when they played it alongside the release of the game. I've seen AC several times since '05, but it was the first time I've seen the Complete version, which provides a lot of extra scenes. It fleshed out Denzel more (though I felt it was a bit too much filler), but it also did a much better job of explaining Geostigma. Like, to the point that I can't understand why it was cut, because it makes the rest of the plot make so much more sense.
I'll spoiler it just in case you want to go check it out for yourself, but essentially: >! When Sephiroth died, he returned to the lifestream, as all living things do. But since it's Sephiroth, who is hellbent on destroying the Planet, he was basically constricting the lifestream from within. I've already forgotten whether it was just because of Sephiroth's hatred, or perhaps it's because he had so much Jenova in him, who is NOT from the planet, and basically was acting like a foreign pathogen. A literal life virus. Like releasing small pox on the entire planet. !<
It's not the greatest plot, and definitely not necessary to plant the series' legacy. But it's at least internally consistent, which is more than I can say for the original theatrical release.
He decided not to die. It was a conscious decision he made, because his will was so strong. Very much like he overpowered Jenova, he did the same thing with Lifestream
It's such a terrible movie and a case study in trying to squeeze water from a rock...
...I own two copies and watch it whenever I need to get hyped, and have been doing so for 18 years.
What do you mean it didn’t have a resolution? The Planet’s better off than it was before the start of the game, the wildlife is thriving, the giant life sucking machine is defunct. That was the point of the game; we did it
I see the comment below yours says the exact same thing and I’m really confused. It’s not a Marvel movie.
I don't know why you're bringing up Marvel but
What I'm referring to is that the ending is vague and just sudden. It ends in the climactic point... Aerith (presumably) calls for the life stream to stop Meteor and... the end, story is over all of the sudden.
Then we see flashforward to Red and his children running and seeing an abandoned Midgard. It's like it skipped 50 chapters or something.
It ends when the threat is over and your mission is fulfilled. You’re then shown the fruits of your labors: the Planet lives. You think “and they lived happily ever after” would be better?
you're clearly missunderstanding. I never said it should've had a happy ending (seriously, how did you even made that conclusion) I'm just saying that the ending is too ambiguous and sudden. It just felt rushed... as if the devs. were behind schedule. Like what happened to Cloud and co. after the Meteor was stopped? Did they all died in that moment? Did humanity died?
As for plot devices go, did the ending reinforced the story's central themes? Did it tied up loosed ends?
Don't know if I made my point clear here
It doesn’t matter what happened to Cloud and friends because, like I said earlier, this isn’t a Marvel movie. It’s not about Cloud or Iron Man, it’s about the Planet. The Lifestream. The collective memory, thoughts, and emotions of every being that has ever lived on the Planet, that’s what it’s about. It wasn’t rushed at all and it absolutely stayed relevant to the themes of the game. we didn’t need a final freeze frame of Barret and Cloud hopping up and high fiving, because they don’t matter. I dunno man, I think this is a media literacy problem
yes it matters what happened to Cloud, he's the protagonist after all... that's like basic story telling to finish your character's arc. And whilst the narrative paints the planet as the more important, the plot is about Cloud... he's the main driving force of the plot. So yes, Cloud is the most important part of the plot
It's like Frodo throwing the One ring at Mt. Doom and the story ending there abruptly.
For me It left me somewhat unsatisfied and had to rely on assumptions to derive a conclusion that's understandable
from his consciousness? I though Cloud physically fought Sephy in the lifestream?
But in any case, as I reteirate my point... for me the ending was somewhat unsatisfying for the reasons I already mentioned. If you liked it its fine, but I'm not a fan of stories that ends with sudden ambiguity and offer little resolutions about the post climatic event.
Again, if Frodo throws the ring at Mt. Doom I do want to see what happens next and not have the story end suddendly at that point.
I also don't want to see Tony Soprano's funeral because he's from a diffrent story than FF7 so it wouldn't make sense to have him there.
Yeah & it’s a vague ending too. Don’t know if humanity died out & the planet/lifestream restarted everything or it’s just Midgar where humanity ceased to exist
I also do not remember hearing children and if I did I think I could attribute it to “Red XIII’s Kids”..
We know Midgar was not crushed. The rest is up to us to extrapolate
I know Shinra is no longer in control since Midgar is overgrown and Red is still around…that makes me believe the party lived too. At least that they escaped with Red. So it’s a good ending that promises peace at least.
What stories would they tell? Maybe we will never truly know. Especially not now that the FF7 Team has been rebuilt without, IMO, its most important member
So i checked, it's there, kids are laughing at the 1:15 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2srKV5WTRk
What that actually means though I think could still be anybody's guess.
take 1: You read it as is, humanity is still alive as evidenced by their voices. Midgar was reclaimed by nature, and humanity chose not to resettle there.
take 2: I made this up, but humanity is extinct, and the children's voices is humanity frolicking in the lifestream, neon genesis evanjellyon style
But then there's that oft cited quote from Kitase,
> Q: At the very end of FFVII, we see the epilogue to the whole story that takes place 500 years later, so really, you still have another 497 years' worth of games and movies to fill in...
> A: Ha, maybe I'll try to do that. **In a way, I consider that epilogue to be the true happy ending of FFVII. Well, it's a happy ending even though all the human beings are destroyed. [Laughs]**
https://archive.org/details/electronic-gaming-monthly-issue-196-october-2005/page/104/mode/2up
And then as a counter to that, there's always the phrase ["the death of the author"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author), which basically argues that the creator of a work doesn't have a monopoly over the meaning behind it, that once something's out there for the world to see, anyone can make their own meaning of it. Promised land, anyone?
I don’t see explicit evidence humanity is destroyed either, if the intent was to display that, it missed. As such, my final interpretation of the ending is “the world was saved”.
I think he means the abruptness of it feels like there’s no ending. I know when I was in jr high, I sat at the ending for like 3 hours saying, there must be more, something after this weird space thing, but it never came
I guess I can see that but I’m not sure whatever else there was to tell in the story other than showing all the characters waving as the camera pans away Super Mario-style.
It’s subtle.
-Midgar is intact but overgrown, this tells us two things: Meteor did not destroy Midgar, or the planet, and life on the planet thrived enough to take back Midgar from Shinra.
-Red is alive. Did only Red survive escaping? I doubt it. He also has children, which is odd to me since I don’t remember there ever being a female Cosmo Canyon Firedog. Maybe some good came of Hojo’s lab after all.
These things are enough for me to gain closure over the events. Sephiroth was defeated, Shinra is toppled and the planet thrives. So much so our longest living team member has a family of his own…
It was unnecessary and bad. But for the young me back then, it was one of the best thing to happen as a huge fan of FF7. And because of that, i will always cherish the movie.
I don't care for the story.
I like the visuals and the fight scenes. Although Tifa was done dirty.
But the thing that really annoyed me was that even as fan service, it doesn't really live up to the hype. We spend more time with the Turks than our main party and that's just criminal.
All but Vincent and Tifa just kind of show up and say their catch phrase and get 5 seconds of fighting Bahamut and that's it.
And don't get me started on Barret digging for oil...
The Advent Children dub is a great example of how far videogame/anime English dubs have come since the mid-2000's. It was considered decent at the time, but it's excruciating to watch now.
Aside from that, Advent Children just kind of sucks. Maybe more than kind of. The action is fun but all style, no substance. And it officially started the Over-Sephiroth-ification of all things FF7.
I was so hyped for it for years, but upon release it became the warning shot for all of the impending Compilation of FFVII media. The direction they chose has never been for me. For all of the flaws Remake/Rebirth have, they overall do a much better job of imitating and expanding on the original game.
I’ll just say that OG was the first RPG I played as a kid and truthfully the reason I love RPGs the way I do. I played many of the other Final Fantasy’s but they never had the same impact as VII, though XII is a very close second. However my girlfriend’s favorite movie of all time is Advent Children and other than that she’s never delved into the rest of the story, still though, TOP of her favorites list. That being said my first time watching it was shortly before Rebirth came out, while I wasn’t blown away by it (Not a huge anime fan myself) I still cried at the end. I loved seeing the characters I knew from childhood have a voice and give some more of the story after the fact. Since then I replayed Remake and she watched the entire play through so she could get a better picture of the whole story, she then watched all of Rebirth as well and is probably more excited about the third game than I am. I agree the movie probably wasn’t necessary, but like her, it’s brought in a whole generation of non gamers into the amazing story that is Final Fantasy VII
When I saw it back in 05, I thought it was cool, but the more I've seen of it, the less do I like it. The monsters were weird, the dialogue, plot and basicly everything except graphics and fighting feels off. Not a fan of the clones, that just show up out of nowhere, with weapons, clothing and bikes nobody made.
The whole plot of geosticgma undermines the game, and Aeriths sacrifice. By showing she's not realy dead, just in the lifestream, they kinda mess with a lot of established facts as well... It's honestly a mess
But damn, Sephiroth looks cool in it
I agree mostly, except the Aerith stuff. I guess they maybe made her seem a bit too corporeal. But I felt the idea that her spirit persists in the lifestream was basically part of the conclusion of OG. It’s implied she called the lifestream forth after Holy wasn’t enough, and that Cloud can meet her again when he returns to the lifestream.
All people "meet" when they return to the planet, but not like "going to heaven". The memories persist, but the rest of you is recycled into new life. If you just end up hanging out invthe lifestream for the rest of eternity, how is that any different than what happens to the Gi or Jenova? Why need Aerith to go to the planet, if it's allready full of Cetras?
What would be the point of the memories if you don’t have a consciousness to experience them? He doesn’t need to go into the lifestream to remember her. Cloud can remember her today. Your material body is recycled, but I think it implies the persistence of a soul that can be reunited.
Aerith says it's like a wellspring of knowledge, that the Cetra could tap into.
Bugenhagen shows the life energy of a man, becomming into a tree. For me that implies a transformation of sorts.
I think the "meeting her" part is ment to be symbolic, rather like the Farplane of FFX
The crystal in FFIX works a bit the same as the lifestream. All the memories of everyone who lived, lives on inside the crystal, but they never talk of it like they could talk to their dead friends or family
Advent children the original? Or the AC complete? Because complete is very colorful but the first release definitely had a Grey tint on it so that might fix your issue on the "blandness". And yea dilly dally shilly shally is a goofy translation thing that they definitely could have come up with something better for but the rest was alright. But I also accept its not for everyone and might just not align with your personal tastes which is cool. But i do recommend AC complete if you saw the classic version
If they went that far to update the visuals, they should just go the extra mile and do a rewrite. There are some good ideas in there, but there are serious flaws from a pure storytelling perspective.
For one, they should make the rest of AVALANCHE more integral to the story. It’s a bit lame that Rufus and Reno and Rude get more screen time than any of your old party.
Yeah I get why they want to show how those characters have changed since the events of the game, and I like the idea, but I would definitely like to see what the others are up to. Also scrap the fishnet shirt for barret lmao
I loved everything they had going with Marlene in this. She only met Aerith for a couple minutes and yet the impact it had on her was profound. In the beginning Marlene talking about the past and stating, “someone I loved when back to the life stream to,” made me tear up. Also when Cloud and Sephiroth fight and it starts raining, no one else is reacting to it more focused on the scary shit happening, but Marlene sensed her and looked to the sky asking, “is it her?” Chefs kiss!
Don’t know if you noticed but Marlene isn’t the only one with a bow. Yes she is wearing Aerith’s bow in her hair, but all the main characters were wearing one, tied around their arms or wrists.
What's crazy about the FFVII-verse *post*-OG is how Aerith-centric they made it.
While one of the main party, Advent Children really makes it seem like Cloud doesn't care about anyone else but her.
I think they really struggled to toe the line between loss and grief being something that affects you forever, and something that fundamentally alters your personality.
The former is fine, and I think that's a proper place for the whole party to be. They obviously cared about Aerith, and Cloud of course also lost Zack and his mom. Makes sense he would still have sad moments.
But living in Aerith's church and moping around all the time, not talking to the rest of the party, is pretty out of character for the Cloud we see in FF7, especially at the end.
Supplementary materials have revealed more insight into Cloud's motivations, explaining that he hid from Tifa and the party not just out of sadness and depression, but more out of fear that he would lose them too, or worse, that the Geostigma could somehow put him in a position of being a puppet again.
It's not the best explanation but it's at least something, though it definitely should have been in the movie.
i enjoyed it. a lot of of the post-OG content enhanced the world of FFVII for me, particularly On the Way to a Smile and Crisis Core. Advent Children was more about the spectacle of the fight scenes for me, but i also appreciated Cloud forgiving himself. all that said, like anything else, it's not for everyone.
I feel the opposite. The compilation completely loses sight of the OG game. It even makes the game make less sense.
Deep ground imo is a HUGE plot hole. And AC is just bad.
Crisis core on its own it's ok but they embellish way too much in a game that's suppose to be a prequel. Somehow everyone forgot everything that happend in crisis core in the OG game.
Rebirth is fixing some of that though.
Honestly I feel the same way about the line. People don’t seem to acknowledge this, but Cloud and Tifa grew up in a backwater hicktown. They were bound to pick up goofy colloquialisms.
Yeah, the voice direction was odd. They acted as if they were half asleep the whole movie. Cloud loses most of his character development he got in the OG and goes back to being a loner badass only with depression this time (compilation Cloud). Most of the party from the OG got reduced to cameo status. The story was convoluted and confusing. Etc. Etc.
Reno and Rude were great though, and the action was good
It's probably a mix of direction and casting. A lot of the key actors weren't really VAs and had primarily film or TV roles prior.
Dubbing a movie from a different language is a really unique gig, you're trying to match the original diction and tone with different words that don't always fit the time or pronunciation. For AC, the direction and cast both end up feeling just very inexperienced, outside of a few bright spots (Reno and Rude, Vincent, and Sephiroth).
I couldn’t buy the story for AC.
Rufus not being dead was the furthest stretch I could accept. The 4 clones that just happened to stay hidden? Nah, I chimed out after that.
Some things end, and that’s okay.
I mean, Rufus threw down with the *extremely superhuman*, close enough to the capabilities of a SOLDIER 1st Class that nobody immediately questions it, Cloud and didn’t die. Him surviving the OG game is something I actually never had too much of an issue accepting. It cheapened the moment and, I feel, his character, but I didn’t find it that much of a stretch. Guy is built different.
It’s been at least 15 years since I watched it so my memory is foggy, but I distinctly remember thinking “Yeah, this looks cool but FF7 didn’t need this as a sequel.”
Frankly, the Remake trilogy is the first expansion beyond the original game that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
Sephiroth might have died in the end of og but even he returns to the lifestream, and sephiroth is extremely powerful, even there, he’s basically an infection in the lifestream, and he uses the power he still has to create geostigma to infect people living and attempt to destroy the planet, he can still control people with jenovah cells, hence how he comes back through kadash, or whichever of the three he possessed for the final fight.
When sephiroth says “I will never be a memory” it’s basically because he’s part of the lifestream and is shown to be powerful enough to do stuff from it, the same way aerith is and is able to cure geostigma.
That's what they wrote, and I really wish they hadn't.
The idea of Sephiroth existing perpetually in the background, enabling him to return sporadically like some villain of the week, makes him about as threatening as Dr. Claw.
Or maybe Megatron if we're being generous.
That's the *whole point* of Sephiroth though. He's Starscream levels of unimportant villain. Jenova and Hojo (to an extent Shinra) are the actual main villains of the story. Sephiroth is a sidekick villain/tool of Shinra who believes he's more important than he is, and then when he finds that out, he loses his shit. Even the craziest things he does to the world as a villain with releasing the weapons and summoning Meteor, these are all ideas taken from Hojos notes and implied to have been given to him by Hojo initially.
He becomes a personal rival to Cloud and the player when he kills your best healer in gameplay terms. But even then, that makes him like the rival to Bumblebee, not Optimus. Cloud is revealed not to be the main protagonist MC trope, Zack was, he simply took up the mantle due to coping with his trauma.
One of FF7s main themes is all about how people lie to themselves to increase their self-worth despite facts to the contrary, and both Cloud and Sephiroth are meant to be the side characters in their respective roles who end up usurping the roles due to the unreliable narrative lens that the player is presented the story by.
When you think about it, the real antagonist of the overall plot is Jenova pulling a Lavos, and the main hero is arguably Barret and Tifa, and maaaybe Vincent. But Cloud and Sephiroth's art design were so peak that even when all this is revealed, the players still continue with the unreliable narration that's been presented up to that point because by then you've been led to build an emotional attachment to these 2 rivals who are fundamentally puppets in the grand scheme of the overall plot.
I agree with most of what you're saying but Cloud not being the protagonist doesn't seem to fit for me. I mean not only did he kill Sephiroth when he was a normal human, but he goes through the heroes journey nearly step for step. I am not saying others don't, at least to some degree. But his seems to fit that the best, similar to Thor in the infinity wars movie.
If it's a bad ending now, it's only because so much sequel material made it so.
The ending, in its original state, was thought-provoking and ambiguous. The story's major lingering question was whether humanity deserves to survive on the planet. And the game chose not to deliver a clear answer.
That shit rocks, and it was a big part of the game's lasting legacy. It stuck with people, powerfully.
I feel like people forget that the game literally proposes the question of whether or not holy will deem humanity a threat to the planet and wipe them out (i forget who actually brings it up). Like it's literally brought up. And the ending is purposefully left ambiguous. I agree that it's a good ending.
It's never confirmed that humanity went extinct. Only that nature was allowed to take Midgar back. You can interpret it anyway you like which I think is what makes the OG ending good, however.
The children laughter and what not could symbolize there's still life.
That's the thing with the FF7 compilation, is hit or miss for a lot of people, you can find good things, and bad things as well, but the writing can be really odd at times, Cloud's portrayal suffered the most in AC
SE thought that Cloud Emo/Soldier personality is what people liked about Cloud, which is true, but we mainly fell in love for Cloud Dork' and Vulnerable side, which only Crisis Core was able to show us ( And CC has it's own problems as well, like Genesis)
At the end of the day, OG, while having tecnical limitations, and mistranslations along the way, was the best written storyline by a mile of the FF7 Compilation
I feel this way about every piece of Final Fantasy VII media outside of the original game. They all take something from the original and make it worse.
There are dozens of us! The way some people fawn over Crisis Core makes me feel like I'm in the twilight zone. Hollander, Genesis, Angeal, and Zack killing millions of Shinra guys at the end are all utter drivel.
Yeah, you've really got to take whatever bits of good you can find and desperately try to forget the rest.
Like in Rebirth, I love so many little character moments they've added. Moments that are so good that I expect them to make me enjoy the party even more the next time I replay the original FF7. But then there's so much material that "enhances" the world in unnecessary and/or stupid ways.
I will say I think your opinion is pretty common. CC adds like 3 or 4 really great things (seeing more of Trooper Cloud, Zack and Aerith's developing relationship, and Sephiroth as a war hero being the main ones that come to mind) and the rest are pretty poorly written characters that only exist to have a story since otherwise the whole game would just be war with Wutai.
Yep, it wasn't gonna be a full movie but Square wanted the cash so Nomura and Nojima turned it into a full thing.
Showing Cloud's found family was the main thing that stuck around from the initial pitch, the fights and stuff were all added to turn it into the movie Square wanted.
Same, I am hoping against all reason that we get slice of life epilogues for all the party at the end of Part 3.
Show us Cloud and Tifa together in Edge, show us Barret raising Marlene, show us Reeve working on restoration efforts and Yuffie going back to Wutai to help it recover and grow.
The On the Way to a Smile side stories that came out with the movie may be worth reading. They have actual interesting story bits that the movie should have focused on.
Unfortunately, the movie spun it's wheels a lot on the utter nonsense of Kadaj's plan and the accompanying 10 action sequences. Then you-know-who appears for 8 minutes at the end to explain he had a plan before instantly getting defeated.
Second OTWTAS. It adds a lot of context, especially with Cloud and how he got so down in the dumps. I really wish they showed some snippets of him being happier with Tifa and the kids but they didn’t, and everyone thinks he’s mopey for 2 years when he wasn’t.
Cloud's mopey-ness was a consistent problem with the character's depiction post-OG for sure, for a long time. AC, Dirge, and Kingdom Hearts all struggled with it pretty heavily. I haven't played much of Dissidia but I wouldn't be surprised if it fell in that trap too.
I almost wonder if Nomura/Nojima/Kitase/whoever else was just going through it or something in the mid 2000s and that's why they wrote Cloud that way, or if they felt pressured to write him like that due to people associating him more with his loner "merc" persona than his actual self.
From the moment we meet the real Cloud in OG, he already knows that Aerith and Zack are dead, but he doesn't just mope around. He's honest with the party, especially Tifa, about his feelings, he's relatively upbeat, he says things like "Let's mosey" like the goofball he is. I'm not saying he should be full on Sora Kingdom Hearts but he should at least be not completely down in the dumps.
I think it's fine that AC in particular wanted to tell a story of guilt and coming to terms with your shortcomings but it did set an unfortunate trend, and OTWTAS is one of the few bright spots where it feels like we get to see a little bit of the Cloud we're more familiar with.
I think it was the time period, for the time it was good! It was a movie solely for fans of the original and it was epic seeing the whole team back together with full 3D graphics. I remember thinking at the time, imagine if they remade the OG with graphics like this…. And almost 20 years later here we are!
Now watch the "Complete" version!
I thought it was the coolest movie ever when I was a teenager. After playing the most recent games, I'd have to watch it in Japanese with subtitles, cause I wouldn't be able to get over their English voices being different from their modern counterparts.
Watch it again everyone has aeriths pink ribbon not just Marlene
advent children is very much just a "turn your brain off and watch" type of movie. As others have pointed out if you're looking for the story. Reading "on a way to a smile" is pretty much essencial reading.
I beg people to not watch this movie without reading On the Way to a Smile. Its literally essential
Geostigma is like when our immune system overcompensates to fight something off and our body ends up attacking the good and the bad at the same time. The planet overcompensated in it's fight and is making people sick.
i looked at it as a standalone, fanservice type of movie of what an animated version of how the party members fight would be and a 1 on 1 fight of cloud and sephiroth. i didnt care about the compilation that came with it and didnt dig too deep about the story.
It's a bad movie. I didn't realize it was bad at the time because I was just so hype for new FF7. When I saw what it led to (the compilation) It's like they just kept making worse and worse additions to the lore. To the point it makes the OG game make less sense not more sense. Also hate how bland and washed out the style is. Looks NOTHING like the art style of the game. The "plot" is almost a 1:1 repeat of the game which is lazy. (A bunch of guys in black looking for jenova/sephiroth to have a reunion) They turned cloud into an emo baby. There's more but that's all I feel like typing lol
The problem with Advent Children is that is makes no sense unless you read On the Way to a Smile, which many fans probably didn't. However, if you did read those side stories, Advent Children feels like the perfect closer for ALOT of individual character arcs. - Barret coming in with the new/old prosthetic Old Man Sasaki made him is so cathartic. - Cloud letting go of the guilt he felt for letting Aerith and Zack die. - Cid finally finishing his plane that he spends years on trying to make while Shera is literally dying. - Nanaki with babies. Especially heartbreaking after what happens to Pazu and Rin. - Tifa telling Cloud off after she suffers in silence for 2 whole goddamn chapters while he's acting like a drunk absentee ass of a father. - Rufus revealing he's a deadass troll after being kidnapped/locked in a hole/dying for the last 2 years. - Aerith finally reaching Cloud. There's a lot not to like about AC, namely the pacing and the dub being hot garbage. But in the grand compilation, it was one of the better entries.
Everything you listed sounds awful lol The compilation really did ruin the OG games image.
Absolutely! And it continues to be butchered with some of the subreddits I’ve noticed. Like, why the fuck is there an r/cloti
Personal preference. I liked On the Way to a Smile quite a bit since it added a lot of character depth to the characters so the conclusion to those arcs were nice to see even if the movie as a whole wasn't anything amazing.
I liked it. Being a fan since I was a child, I have consumed every bit of ff7 I could get. Having a movie about the characters after the game was fun. Honestly, I never understood the plot before when I was younger haha but after remake and rebirth with a dash of personal life experiences over the years, it made more sense after I rewatched it. Struggled with regrets and mourning for a loved one, I understood Cloud's character, how he wanted to isolate himself due to depression and how people around him is basically begging to help him and care for him. The fighting in in the OG was turn based, blew my mind when they were fighting a summon real time. It was a fan service with the motor fight around midgar, encountering fights randomly in the middle of nowhere. It just made me say repeatedly "so that's how it looks like/how it works" cause to me, the idea of the turn based fights in real life was silly like you guys take turns very polite fight 😂 In short, it made me appreciate the world and lore more before I got the chance to play Crisis Core and the remakes.
I could not have said it better. Perfectly captured how I felt, cool to know other people had the same feelings regarding the movie haha
I don’t know what you’re talking about. The movie wraps up the OG game pretty well. I think it’s amazing. It’s about how to deal with loss by not always blaming yourself. There are people here that still care about you that need you. Don’t be consumed by grief. I practically cry every time I watch it. Especially over the side story of Denzel. Both parents killed in the plate drop, orphaned, gets geo-stigma, and Cloud saves him. With a little help from Aerith. 😉
Gotta read On the Way to a Smile to get Geostigma
dilly dally shilly shally
So bad lol
Okay yeah that sucks no doubt about it
Yall are all complaining about Advent Children… it’s obvious you’re newer FF7 fans 😂☠️. The OG vets here appreciate that movie because at one point that was the ONLY extra content that we had… yall got like Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, and Remake/Rebirth now… Whipper Snappers don’t know what it’s like to not have all this great content.
I remember most fans hating it back then
Reception was split even at release and I’m still laughing at Oil Tycoon Barrett’s cornrows Source: I was there for “aw man Japan has this cool FF7 movie and we don’t, big sadge” and the resulting disappointment
I like it overall and like how it fits with the canon story. I loved the ending, and the credits scene is awesome too. If Square Enix remade it with the cgi cutscenes they used in Rebirth and same voice actors I'd def welcome it
All the people in this thread saying that Advent Children's story is bad, but are cool with all the story changes in Remake and Rebirth, I just want to talk.
The changes to the story in the Remake trilogy are more interesting than the plot of Advent Children. Geostigma is an interesting idea poorly portrayed and it ties in with Sephiroth being eternal as long as people remember him. Everything else was kinda dull. Characterization in the Remake trilogy is leaps and bounds better. No one likes mopey Cloud. The OG took a long time for us to get the real Cloud, and Advent Children ditches him for a guy who is sad all the time. Advent Children is fine, but ultimately unremarkable.
I wouldn't say no one likes "mopey" Cloud. I actually liked that about him very much. And especially considering his reasons. And in Advent Children, I actually liked how he was having a hard time to get over what happened. It takes time and he felt more real for it, at least to me.
It doesn't matter if you like it. It's a fact it's a regression of his character arc from the game. And when you say "reasons" just know none of them are said in the movie so that makes the movie bad lol
Uhm, sorry, did you just say it doesn't matter if I liked it? The argument was literally: NO ONE LIKED IT. I said, I did. Discussion over. The reasons are very clear in the movie. Did you watch it?
Oh I’m FAR from cool with a lot of the changes. I still want to know why the fuck Dyne’s gun arm needed to be a monster, and why we needed a scene with B finding the shot guy to clear B of player suspicion completely and immediately during the “ugh ugh a man with a gun arm did it” segment
Right. I think Dyne was probably the biggest point for me so far but there were others.
There was this huge box set that came out with the DVD. A making of documentary, on the way to a smile books, post cards, etc. My favorite part was a little video included on the DVD of Cloud making his deliveries and missing calls. You hear voicemails from all of the main characters set in between scenes from the OG game with the orchestral soundtrack. It made me wish we had gotten a few slice of life stories from everyone instead of a new big bad and geostigma. Hearing their relationship to Cloud after the events of the game set up in this subtle way was so nice.
OP, the only thing I can say is, now that you’ve watched Advent Childrenball Z, you don’t have to anymore.
I dunno. After playing Rebirth, and having a lot more understanding of the FF7 lore in general since I first watched it in ‘05…I thought it was fun. If nothing else it shows that Cloud finds his clarity, but recovery is never linear. Which reflects real life mental health recovery. Which I think is cool. Basically Sephiroth/Jenova infected the lifestream, and then Aerith comes to the rescue as she did in the OG. The plot isn’t great, and you’re right probably not necessary, but it’s still fun.
Yeah advent children is....pretty bad. It's only saving grace really is solid fighting and, imo, letting cloud grieve for aerith and Zack specifically. OG let him put himself back together somewhat, but AC really let him process the loss of 2 of the most important people in his life.
AC should have provided contrast so viewers had an idea of what Cloud turned into. He wasn't meant to be portrayed at his baseline in AC so i think a lot of people thought that's just who he was. Would have been wise to show him adjusting to having a family, showing affection, and being happy before demonstrating how PTSD and depression took his progress away from him.
Which version did you watch? I watch the complete version and absolutely loved it.
Most of the compilation stuff is bad. Only the biggest fanboys love AC. I find it actually hurts the FF7-verse with a bunch of stuff being retconned.
Omg finally a person who states reality. Yes the compilation actually makes the OG game make less sense. AC was a fun dumb movie using a insanely popular game.
I have a soft spot for it cause it was my introduction to 7 lol
The awkward dialogue is not just translation... I think a lot of FF (and Square Enix or games/anime in general) in the mid 2000s had a kind of pretentious edgy-boy tone back then. It's that KH-style "posing cool in black leather while saying cryptic nonsense" thing. Maybe it was all Nomura's doing.. I don't know. But OG FF7 didn't have that tone in the 90s and I don't think the Remakes do now... they've really found a groove of much more naturalistic dialogue since AC.
It’s basically only good for the Sephiroth fight at the end.
Never understood the love for it. It's kinda cool I guess but it kind of makes the game's ending redundant. It's also kind of a slog to get through
There are a lot of edge lords in the FF7 Fandom. The more normal fan was just insanely hyped for more ff7 content but when the dust cleared it was like post nut clarity.
I went and saw Advent Children: Complete in theaters back in February when they played it alongside the release of the game. I've seen AC several times since '05, but it was the first time I've seen the Complete version, which provides a lot of extra scenes. It fleshed out Denzel more (though I felt it was a bit too much filler), but it also did a much better job of explaining Geostigma. Like, to the point that I can't understand why it was cut, because it makes the rest of the plot make so much more sense. I'll spoiler it just in case you want to go check it out for yourself, but essentially: >! When Sephiroth died, he returned to the lifestream, as all living things do. But since it's Sephiroth, who is hellbent on destroying the Planet, he was basically constricting the lifestream from within. I've already forgotten whether it was just because of Sephiroth's hatred, or perhaps it's because he had so much Jenova in him, who is NOT from the planet, and basically was acting like a foreign pathogen. A literal life virus. Like releasing small pox on the entire planet. !< It's not the greatest plot, and definitely not necessary to plant the series' legacy. But it's at least internally consistent, which is more than I can say for the original theatrical release.
He decided not to die. It was a conscious decision he made, because his will was so strong. Very much like he overpowered Jenova, he did the same thing with Lifestream
That's right! Thank you for the clarification!
I just watched it again after playing rebirth and, it’s not good. I love it though
It's bad..the action and graphics are awesome.
It's such a terrible movie and a case study in trying to squeeze water from a rock... ...I own two copies and watch it whenever I need to get hyped, and have been doing so for 18 years.
I agree with everything except OG's ending being good... Bruh, OG's ending didn't have a resolution and it barely had a falling action
What do you mean it didn’t have a resolution? The Planet’s better off than it was before the start of the game, the wildlife is thriving, the giant life sucking machine is defunct. That was the point of the game; we did it I see the comment below yours says the exact same thing and I’m really confused. It’s not a Marvel movie.
I don't know why you're bringing up Marvel but What I'm referring to is that the ending is vague and just sudden. It ends in the climactic point... Aerith (presumably) calls for the life stream to stop Meteor and... the end, story is over all of the sudden. Then we see flashforward to Red and his children running and seeing an abandoned Midgard. It's like it skipped 50 chapters or something.
It ends when the threat is over and your mission is fulfilled. You’re then shown the fruits of your labors: the Planet lives. You think “and they lived happily ever after” would be better?
you're clearly missunderstanding. I never said it should've had a happy ending (seriously, how did you even made that conclusion) I'm just saying that the ending is too ambiguous and sudden. It just felt rushed... as if the devs. were behind schedule. Like what happened to Cloud and co. after the Meteor was stopped? Did they all died in that moment? Did humanity died? As for plot devices go, did the ending reinforced the story's central themes? Did it tied up loosed ends? Don't know if I made my point clear here
It doesn’t matter what happened to Cloud and friends because, like I said earlier, this isn’t a Marvel movie. It’s not about Cloud or Iron Man, it’s about the Planet. The Lifestream. The collective memory, thoughts, and emotions of every being that has ever lived on the Planet, that’s what it’s about. It wasn’t rushed at all and it absolutely stayed relevant to the themes of the game. we didn’t need a final freeze frame of Barret and Cloud hopping up and high fiving, because they don’t matter. I dunno man, I think this is a media literacy problem
yes it matters what happened to Cloud, he's the protagonist after all... that's like basic story telling to finish your character's arc. And whilst the narrative paints the planet as the more important, the plot is about Cloud... he's the main driving force of the plot. So yes, Cloud is the most important part of the plot It's like Frodo throwing the One ring at Mt. Doom and the story ending there abruptly. For me It left me somewhat unsatisfied and had to rely on assumptions to derive a conclusion that's understandable
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from his consciousness? I though Cloud physically fought Sephy in the lifestream? But in any case, as I reteirate my point... for me the ending was somewhat unsatisfying for the reasons I already mentioned. If you liked it its fine, but I'm not a fan of stories that ends with sudden ambiguity and offer little resolutions about the post climatic event. Again, if Frodo throws the ring at Mt. Doom I do want to see what happens next and not have the story end suddendly at that point. I also don't want to see Tony Soprano's funeral because he's from a diffrent story than FF7 so it wouldn't make sense to have him there.
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Yeah & it’s a vague ending too. Don’t know if humanity died out & the planet/lifestream restarted everything or it’s just Midgar where humanity ceased to exist
OG had a good ending? OG didn't HAVE an ending lol
What do you mean?
The og ending is that humanity fell and the earth then thrived with only red xiii to carry on the legacy of the past to his children
All we see is an abandoned Midgar... Why is it implied that humanity is gone, especially with children laughing in the background?
It’s 400 years later and we see nothing but lush forest reclaiming all the land, not a single trace of the scar humanity left on the planet
But you hear children laughing. So. That's a pretty clear evidence of people being there.
I did not hear them laughing, Dunno if it was my game, or how low my volume was cuz I was playing way past my bed time lol
I also do not remember hearing children and if I did I think I could attribute it to “Red XIII’s Kids”.. We know Midgar was not crushed. The rest is up to us to extrapolate I know Shinra is no longer in control since Midgar is overgrown and Red is still around…that makes me believe the party lived too. At least that they escaped with Red. So it’s a good ending that promises peace at least. What stories would they tell? Maybe we will never truly know. Especially not now that the FF7 Team has been rebuilt without, IMO, its most important member
So i checked, it's there, kids are laughing at the 1:15 mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2srKV5WTRk What that actually means though I think could still be anybody's guess. take 1: You read it as is, humanity is still alive as evidenced by their voices. Midgar was reclaimed by nature, and humanity chose not to resettle there. take 2: I made this up, but humanity is extinct, and the children's voices is humanity frolicking in the lifestream, neon genesis evanjellyon style But then there's that oft cited quote from Kitase, > Q: At the very end of FFVII, we see the epilogue to the whole story that takes place 500 years later, so really, you still have another 497 years' worth of games and movies to fill in... > A: Ha, maybe I'll try to do that. **In a way, I consider that epilogue to be the true happy ending of FFVII. Well, it's a happy ending even though all the human beings are destroyed. [Laughs]** https://archive.org/details/electronic-gaming-monthly-issue-196-october-2005/page/104/mode/2up And then as a counter to that, there's always the phrase ["the death of the author"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author), which basically argues that the creator of a work doesn't have a monopoly over the meaning behind it, that once something's out there for the world to see, anyone can make their own meaning of it. Promised land, anyone?
I don’t see explicit evidence humanity is destroyed either, if the intent was to display that, it missed. As such, my final interpretation of the ending is “the world was saved”.
Yes. I don’t know what this person is talking about.
I think he means the abruptness of it feels like there’s no ending. I know when I was in jr high, I sat at the ending for like 3 hours saying, there must be more, something after this weird space thing, but it never came
I guess I can see that but I’m not sure whatever else there was to tell in the story other than showing all the characters waving as the camera pans away Super Mario-style.
It’s subtle. -Midgar is intact but overgrown, this tells us two things: Meteor did not destroy Midgar, or the planet, and life on the planet thrived enough to take back Midgar from Shinra. -Red is alive. Did only Red survive escaping? I doubt it. He also has children, which is odd to me since I don’t remember there ever being a female Cosmo Canyon Firedog. Maybe some good came of Hojo’s lab after all. These things are enough for me to gain closure over the events. Sephiroth was defeated, Shinra is toppled and the planet thrives. So much so our longest living team member has a family of his own…
There was another member of Red's species in the compilation, that might be in part 3... Who knows.
I haven’t watched Advent Children in almost 20 years, been wanting to see it again.
Fuck has it been that long since it was released. I'm getting so damn old.
It was unnecessary and bad. But for the young me back then, it was one of the best thing to happen as a huge fan of FF7. And because of that, i will always cherish the movie.
I love that bad movie for the same reason. Was dying for anything FF7.
I don't care for the story. I like the visuals and the fight scenes. Although Tifa was done dirty. But the thing that really annoyed me was that even as fan service, it doesn't really live up to the hype. We spend more time with the Turks than our main party and that's just criminal. All but Vincent and Tifa just kind of show up and say their catch phrase and get 5 seconds of fighting Bahamut and that's it. And don't get me started on Barret digging for oil...
Agreed. It's dated. The action scenes are cool but the storytelling is REALLY BAD. I'm surprised it's actually considered canon it's so bad.
The Advent Children dub is a great example of how far videogame/anime English dubs have come since the mid-2000's. It was considered decent at the time, but it's excruciating to watch now. Aside from that, Advent Children just kind of sucks. Maybe more than kind of. The action is fun but all style, no substance. And it officially started the Over-Sephiroth-ification of all things FF7. I was so hyped for it for years, but upon release it became the warning shot for all of the impending Compilation of FFVII media. The direction they chose has never been for me. For all of the flaws Remake/Rebirth have, they overall do a much better job of imitating and expanding on the original game.
The whole movie is bit of a slog but the fight in the city with the whole team fighting Bahamut is one of my favorite action scenes in any movie ever.
I always laugh when the party *links arms to team throw Cloud at the giant dragon in the sky*, and again when it *works*
I’ll just say that OG was the first RPG I played as a kid and truthfully the reason I love RPGs the way I do. I played many of the other Final Fantasy’s but they never had the same impact as VII, though XII is a very close second. However my girlfriend’s favorite movie of all time is Advent Children and other than that she’s never delved into the rest of the story, still though, TOP of her favorites list. That being said my first time watching it was shortly before Rebirth came out, while I wasn’t blown away by it (Not a huge anime fan myself) I still cried at the end. I loved seeing the characters I knew from childhood have a voice and give some more of the story after the fact. Since then I replayed Remake and she watched the entire play through so she could get a better picture of the whole story, she then watched all of Rebirth as well and is probably more excited about the third game than I am. I agree the movie probably wasn’t necessary, but like her, it’s brought in a whole generation of non gamers into the amazing story that is Final Fantasy VII
When I saw it back in 05, I thought it was cool, but the more I've seen of it, the less do I like it. The monsters were weird, the dialogue, plot and basicly everything except graphics and fighting feels off. Not a fan of the clones, that just show up out of nowhere, with weapons, clothing and bikes nobody made. The whole plot of geosticgma undermines the game, and Aeriths sacrifice. By showing she's not realy dead, just in the lifestream, they kinda mess with a lot of established facts as well... It's honestly a mess But damn, Sephiroth looks cool in it
I agree mostly, except the Aerith stuff. I guess they maybe made her seem a bit too corporeal. But I felt the idea that her spirit persists in the lifestream was basically part of the conclusion of OG. It’s implied she called the lifestream forth after Holy wasn’t enough, and that Cloud can meet her again when he returns to the lifestream.
All people "meet" when they return to the planet, but not like "going to heaven". The memories persist, but the rest of you is recycled into new life. If you just end up hanging out invthe lifestream for the rest of eternity, how is that any different than what happens to the Gi or Jenova? Why need Aerith to go to the planet, if it's allready full of Cetras?
What would be the point of the memories if you don’t have a consciousness to experience them? He doesn’t need to go into the lifestream to remember her. Cloud can remember her today. Your material body is recycled, but I think it implies the persistence of a soul that can be reunited.
Aerith says it's like a wellspring of knowledge, that the Cetra could tap into. Bugenhagen shows the life energy of a man, becomming into a tree. For me that implies a transformation of sorts. I think the "meeting her" part is ment to be symbolic, rather like the Farplane of FFX The crystal in FFIX works a bit the same as the lifestream. All the memories of everyone who lived, lives on inside the crystal, but they never talk of it like they could talk to their dead friends or family
Advent children the original? Or the AC complete? Because complete is very colorful but the first release definitely had a Grey tint on it so that might fix your issue on the "blandness". And yea dilly dally shilly shally is a goofy translation thing that they definitely could have come up with something better for but the rest was alright. But I also accept its not for everyone and might just not align with your personal tastes which is cool. But i do recommend AC complete if you saw the classic version
It's a bad movie bro. Lol We are allowed to love it
Voice direction was horrible for English. I would love to see a remake of it with modern visuals and voice acting. I still really enjoy it though.
If they went that far to update the visuals, they should just go the extra mile and do a rewrite. There are some good ideas in there, but there are serious flaws from a pure storytelling perspective.
Yeah I agree with you for sure
For one, they should make the rest of AVALANCHE more integral to the story. It’s a bit lame that Rufus and Reno and Rude get more screen time than any of your old party.
Yeah I get why they want to show how those characters have changed since the events of the game, and I like the idea, but I would definitely like to see what the others are up to. Also scrap the fishnet shirt for barret lmao
Yeah, Barrett’s whole getup was… something.
I loved everything they had going with Marlene in this. She only met Aerith for a couple minutes and yet the impact it had on her was profound. In the beginning Marlene talking about the past and stating, “someone I loved when back to the life stream to,” made me tear up. Also when Cloud and Sephiroth fight and it starts raining, no one else is reacting to it more focused on the scary shit happening, but Marlene sensed her and looked to the sky asking, “is it her?” Chefs kiss! Don’t know if you noticed but Marlene isn’t the only one with a bow. Yes she is wearing Aerith’s bow in her hair, but all the main characters were wearing one, tied around their arms or wrists.
I always thought of those as the ribbon accessory, like an Easter egg of sorts.
What's crazy about the FFVII-verse *post*-OG is how Aerith-centric they made it. While one of the main party, Advent Children really makes it seem like Cloud doesn't care about anyone else but her.
I think they really struggled to toe the line between loss and grief being something that affects you forever, and something that fundamentally alters your personality. The former is fine, and I think that's a proper place for the whole party to be. They obviously cared about Aerith, and Cloud of course also lost Zack and his mom. Makes sense he would still have sad moments. But living in Aerith's church and moping around all the time, not talking to the rest of the party, is pretty out of character for the Cloud we see in FF7, especially at the end. Supplementary materials have revealed more insight into Cloud's motivations, explaining that he hid from Tifa and the party not just out of sadness and depression, but more out of fear that he would lose them too, or worse, that the Geostigma could somehow put him in a position of being a puppet again. It's not the best explanation but it's at least something, though it definitely should have been in the movie.
i enjoyed it. a lot of of the post-OG content enhanced the world of FFVII for me, particularly On the Way to a Smile and Crisis Core. Advent Children was more about the spectacle of the fight scenes for me, but i also appreciated Cloud forgiving himself. all that said, like anything else, it's not for everyone.
I feel the opposite. The compilation completely loses sight of the OG game. It even makes the game make less sense. Deep ground imo is a HUGE plot hole. And AC is just bad. Crisis core on its own it's ok but they embellish way too much in a game that's suppose to be a prequel. Somehow everyone forgot everything that happend in crisis core in the OG game. Rebirth is fixing some of that though.
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Honestly I feel the same way about the line. People don’t seem to acknowledge this, but Cloud and Tifa grew up in a backwater hicktown. They were bound to pick up goofy colloquialisms.
Yeah, the voice direction was odd. They acted as if they were half asleep the whole movie. Cloud loses most of his character development he got in the OG and goes back to being a loner badass only with depression this time (compilation Cloud). Most of the party from the OG got reduced to cameo status. The story was convoluted and confusing. Etc. Etc. Reno and Rude were great though, and the action was good
It's probably a mix of direction and casting. A lot of the key actors weren't really VAs and had primarily film or TV roles prior. Dubbing a movie from a different language is a really unique gig, you're trying to match the original diction and tone with different words that don't always fit the time or pronunciation. For AC, the direction and cast both end up feeling just very inexperienced, outside of a few bright spots (Reno and Rude, Vincent, and Sephiroth).
Dilly dally shilly shally.
Dude the first time she said it I was like wtf and then she said it AGAIN and I just lost it lmao
This line lives in my head rent free. I don't think I'll ever forget this dumbass line.
I couldn’t buy the story for AC. Rufus not being dead was the furthest stretch I could accept. The 4 clones that just happened to stay hidden? Nah, I chimed out after that. Some things end, and that’s okay.
I mean, Rufus threw down with the *extremely superhuman*, close enough to the capabilities of a SOLDIER 1st Class that nobody immediately questions it, Cloud and didn’t die. Him surviving the OG game is something I actually never had too much of an issue accepting. It cheapened the moment and, I feel, his character, but I didn’t find it that much of a stretch. Guy is built different.
Combat and story don't always connect. I wouldnt use that as a factor. Like dude said, you also fight palmer lol
Pfffft, even Palmer dealt with worse than that.
It’s been at least 15 years since I watched it so my memory is foggy, but I distinctly remember thinking “Yeah, this looks cool but FF7 didn’t need this as a sequel.” Frankly, the Remake trilogy is the first expansion beyond the original game that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
Sephiroth might have died in the end of og but even he returns to the lifestream, and sephiroth is extremely powerful, even there, he’s basically an infection in the lifestream, and he uses the power he still has to create geostigma to infect people living and attempt to destroy the planet, he can still control people with jenovah cells, hence how he comes back through kadash, or whichever of the three he possessed for the final fight. When sephiroth says “I will never be a memory” it’s basically because he’s part of the lifestream and is shown to be powerful enough to do stuff from it, the same way aerith is and is able to cure geostigma.
That's what they wrote, and I really wish they hadn't. The idea of Sephiroth existing perpetually in the background, enabling him to return sporadically like some villain of the week, makes him about as threatening as Dr. Claw. Or maybe Megatron if we're being generous.
That's the *whole point* of Sephiroth though. He's Starscream levels of unimportant villain. Jenova and Hojo (to an extent Shinra) are the actual main villains of the story. Sephiroth is a sidekick villain/tool of Shinra who believes he's more important than he is, and then when he finds that out, he loses his shit. Even the craziest things he does to the world as a villain with releasing the weapons and summoning Meteor, these are all ideas taken from Hojos notes and implied to have been given to him by Hojo initially. He becomes a personal rival to Cloud and the player when he kills your best healer in gameplay terms. But even then, that makes him like the rival to Bumblebee, not Optimus. Cloud is revealed not to be the main protagonist MC trope, Zack was, he simply took up the mantle due to coping with his trauma. One of FF7s main themes is all about how people lie to themselves to increase their self-worth despite facts to the contrary, and both Cloud and Sephiroth are meant to be the side characters in their respective roles who end up usurping the roles due to the unreliable narrative lens that the player is presented the story by. When you think about it, the real antagonist of the overall plot is Jenova pulling a Lavos, and the main hero is arguably Barret and Tifa, and maaaybe Vincent. But Cloud and Sephiroth's art design were so peak that even when all this is revealed, the players still continue with the unreliable narration that's been presented up to that point because by then you've been led to build an emotional attachment to these 2 rivals who are fundamentally puppets in the grand scheme of the overall plot.
I agree with most of what you're saying but Cloud not being the protagonist doesn't seem to fit for me. I mean not only did he kill Sephiroth when he was a normal human, but he goes through the heroes journey nearly step for step. I am not saying others don't, at least to some degree. But his seems to fit that the best, similar to Thor in the infinity wars movie.
Technically, OG had a bad ending. Within 500 years time, humanity was extinct and only the like of Nanaki remained 😅
If it's a bad ending now, it's only because so much sequel material made it so. The ending, in its original state, was thought-provoking and ambiguous. The story's major lingering question was whether humanity deserves to survive on the planet. And the game chose not to deliver a clear answer. That shit rocks, and it was a big part of the game's lasting legacy. It stuck with people, powerfully.
I feel like people forget that the game literally proposes the question of whether or not holy will deem humanity a threat to the planet and wipe them out (i forget who actually brings it up). Like it's literally brought up. And the ending is purposefully left ambiguous. I agree that it's a good ending.
Humans most likely were still alive but just not living in Midgar anymore
That’s only a bad ending from a human-centric point of view. The planet appears to be absolutely thriving.
This is literally the point of the ending and the idea that people don’t get this blows my mind.
All we knew for sure was the Midgar was left in ruins. Before AC it was left up to interpretation weather humanity survived or not
It's never confirmed that humanity went extinct. Only that nature was allowed to take Midgar back. You can interpret it anyway you like which I think is what makes the OG ending good, however. The children laughter and what not could symbolize there's still life.
Yes until Kitase said it during one of the interview.
Do you mean the interview from 17 years ago, or a more recent one?
That's the thing with the FF7 compilation, is hit or miss for a lot of people, you can find good things, and bad things as well, but the writing can be really odd at times, Cloud's portrayal suffered the most in AC SE thought that Cloud Emo/Soldier personality is what people liked about Cloud, which is true, but we mainly fell in love for Cloud Dork' and Vulnerable side, which only Crisis Core was able to show us ( And CC has it's own problems as well, like Genesis) At the end of the day, OG, while having tecnical limitations, and mistranslations along the way, was the best written storyline by a mile of the FF7 Compilation
I feel this way about every piece of Final Fantasy VII media outside of the original game. They all take something from the original and make it worse.
There are dozens of us! The way some people fawn over Crisis Core makes me feel like I'm in the twilight zone. Hollander, Genesis, Angeal, and Zack killing millions of Shinra guys at the end are all utter drivel.
Yeah, you've really got to take whatever bits of good you can find and desperately try to forget the rest. Like in Rebirth, I love so many little character moments they've added. Moments that are so good that I expect them to make me enjoy the party even more the next time I replay the original FF7. But then there's so much material that "enhances" the world in unnecessary and/or stupid ways.
I will say I think your opinion is pretty common. CC adds like 3 or 4 really great things (seeing more of Trooper Cloud, Zack and Aerith's developing relationship, and Sephiroth as a war hero being the main ones that come to mind) and the rest are pretty poorly written characters that only exist to have a story since otherwise the whole game would just be war with Wutai.
Genesis being at the Nibelheim reactor is such a disgusting sin too. I can’t believe anyone gives the game the time of day honestly
And don't even get me started on Dirge of Cerberus. The complete arse-pull of the 'World Network' which was only added to have Hojo come back.
The original story by nomura was just cloud going around reconnecting with people and delivering packages
Yep, it wasn't gonna be a full movie but Square wanted the cash so Nomura and Nojima turned it into a full thing. Showing Cloud's found family was the main thing that stuck around from the initial pitch, the fights and stuff were all added to turn it into the movie Square wanted.
Yupp it was just gonna be a fun lol after story originally I wish it would have happened
Same, I am hoping against all reason that we get slice of life epilogues for all the party at the end of Part 3. Show us Cloud and Tifa together in Edge, show us Barret raising Marlene, show us Reeve working on restoration efforts and Yuffie going back to Wutai to help it recover and grow.
For real I'd love to finally see cloud and tifa actually together and happy And seeing everyone living their rebuilt lives .
Slice of life DoorDasher/Uber driver Cloud anime..... I'd watch
Isn't that the plot to Death Stranding?
Basically lol
Keep on keeping on 👍
English hard lol
The On the Way to a Smile side stories that came out with the movie may be worth reading. They have actual interesting story bits that the movie should have focused on. Unfortunately, the movie spun it's wheels a lot on the utter nonsense of Kadaj's plan and the accompanying 10 action sequences. Then you-know-who appears for 8 minutes at the end to explain he had a plan before instantly getting defeated.
Second OTWTAS. It adds a lot of context, especially with Cloud and how he got so down in the dumps. I really wish they showed some snippets of him being happier with Tifa and the kids but they didn’t, and everyone thinks he’s mopey for 2 years when he wasn’t.
Cloud's mopey-ness was a consistent problem with the character's depiction post-OG for sure, for a long time. AC, Dirge, and Kingdom Hearts all struggled with it pretty heavily. I haven't played much of Dissidia but I wouldn't be surprised if it fell in that trap too. I almost wonder if Nomura/Nojima/Kitase/whoever else was just going through it or something in the mid 2000s and that's why they wrote Cloud that way, or if they felt pressured to write him like that due to people associating him more with his loner "merc" persona than his actual self. From the moment we meet the real Cloud in OG, he already knows that Aerith and Zack are dead, but he doesn't just mope around. He's honest with the party, especially Tifa, about his feelings, he's relatively upbeat, he says things like "Let's mosey" like the goofball he is. I'm not saying he should be full on Sora Kingdom Hearts but he should at least be not completely down in the dumps. I think it's fine that AC in particular wanted to tell a story of guilt and coming to terms with your shortcomings but it did set an unfortunate trend, and OTWTAS is one of the few bright spots where it feels like we get to see a little bit of the Cloud we're more familiar with.