What can I say... If you have never played the game don't bother watching the film, but if you have, be prepared to drool.
This film could be considered the biggest waste of time by 1000's but to it's credit it has made a lot of fans extremely happy, me being one of them. This isn't a main stream box office hit, hence the strait to DVD, but it did go into the DVD chart at no7... well at my Tesco's it did anyway which I thought rather spooky :oP
Cult classic is all this film can be discribed as, and as I have said, is only one for the fans. I wish I could say it stands alone, but it doesn't, no character build up, no explainations (well maybe a few to jog the memory of the gamer but not enough for mainstream). By all means watch it if you haven't played, but you won't get it, sorry. The graphics are pretty amazing though and you could forget you are watching CGI at times, even though they still haven't got the hair quite right yet, but that is their style.
It has nothing to with the first Final Fanstay film, Spirits within, which as a FF7 I was disapointed with as there was nothing to do with the game in it at all, so if you enjoyed that one, you probably will be very unhappy with this one.
If you haven't played Final Fantasy VII you might as well look away now as the rest will probably make no sense at all, but I will try to explain the game, to help, but it might not help much....
Basically FF7 is a roleplay game, you are Cloud, a young ex-soldier member, who with his band of men (and women and dog) go round the islands in the game fighting baddies and summoning giant monsters to stop the evil group called Shinra from destroying the whole planet. There is a lot of force of nature references, very green and hippy like at times, your magic spells are called materia, which you equip to your weapons and each player in your team can have different spells to help win the battles.....you start off with 3 in your team and as your travel around you pick up more characters to help you, but during fights you can only have 3 fighting so the rest stay back, this is where the equipping of the 3 you are going to use is important, is no use having all your best spells on one character and not using him, but as you can swap out side the battles it isnt a problem.
There is also a very bad baddy called sephiroth, who is probably the coolest character in a game ever, he looks just totally awesome, and has the biggest sword you could ever imagine. He was created by Soldier doing weird genetic experiments using a nasty alien, Jenova, that fell to the planet. He wasn't the only genetic creation, as it turns out Cloud is too, but he is the most like the original. Cloud wants no part of what he is so is fighting Sephiroth too.
The game has lots of cinematic flash backs, one is so long it has a save point in the middle of it! And this is where the film comes in.... it follows the style of the flash back side of it all.
The game does have a cartoony feel most of the time, but the flash backs make up for that.
Hope that made a bit of sense to you non players, probably didn't but it's hard to explain at the best of times.... needless to say it is one of the best games i have played and has a very big following, this is the reason for the film, also they are releasing it for the ps3 when it eventually comes out, so they could just be reminding us how good the game is :o)
For the fans it is the bees knees, the graphics are stunning, all the favourite game characters appear (even some of the less popular) I spent most of the film shouting names at the telly :o)
It's story is a few years after the end of the game, and the children of Midgar have a srange dissease and some of the soldier clones are back sniffing around, they want Mother (jenova) even though she was basically destroyed in the game. I won't tell you what happens, or who turns up as for fans that would spoil it.
I was disappointed by the summons though, an hour into the film and all they can summon is the first one you get in the game.... no knights of the round!! but that would have added an extra 30 mins onto the running time I guess :o)
I must mention the music.... it is strait from the game, and there is one point in it where someones phone goes off and their ring tone is something every player will want to have as their ring tone after hearing it :o)
Film isnt over long at 1 hour 41 so once its finished you can reach for the playstation and start playing again :o)
So highly recommended to all FF7 fans but avoid if you aren't.
Better mention the extras on the dvd... not that good unless you speak japanese, but the sneak peeks at the new games coming out are worth a look :o)
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Soundtrack
Outstanding
How does it compare to others by the same director?
Not applicable
Value for Money
Excellent
What format are you reviewing?
DVD
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