Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children is a computer animated movie released straight to DVD in 2005, based on the widely popular Final Fantasy VII (7) game - which was released on Playstation and PC in 1997. Its creators, Square Enix (formally SquareSoft/Square) had previously released one other CGI movie called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which has no relevance to any other games in the franchise and did not do very well in the box office.
Advent Children is set two years after the events of Final Fantasy VII, and a lot has changed since then. The Earth is recovering from the meteor attack while the former inhabitants of Midgar (the major city hit by the meteor) have created a new city on the edge of its ruins. However the city has a major problem as a disease called Geostigma has spread across its people. The main hero from the game, Cloud Strife, has practically hung up his sword for a quieter life by starting and running his own delivery service
along with Tifa Lockheart, whom he now lives with in the new city. With them are Barret's daughter Marlene and a young orphan called Denzel.
The film starts off with Cloud making a delivery however he is being followed by three mysterious brothers who believe Cloud knows where their "mother" may be. Cloud, not knowing what is going on, travels to Rufus Shinras (head of now defunct Shinra Company) for answers. However Rufus wants Cloud to get rid of the trio of brothers. After the meeting, the brothers Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz break into Rufus' home and reveal that their "mother" is Jenova (an extraterrestrial lifeform whose cells have been injected into many of the games characters) and that the way Jenova was killed in the lifestream (the Earths lifeforce) during the events of FFVII, that she was spreading a disease across the Earth where this lifeforce was oozing out - the disease is Geostigma. If that isn't worse enough, the brothers have raided the city outside Midgar for those suffering from the disease (including the kids living with Cloud and Tifa) and kidnapped them as a source of power. Not only this, if th brothers find what they are looking for and "fuse" with Jenova, they will bring back Clouds arch enemy, and Earths worst nightmare - the legendary warrior Sephiroth!
The movie itself is voiced by many unknown actors to us, but experienced voice actors who have worked as voices for various animations. Because the movie was made for Japanese speech, the voice acting may be a little off however it is much better than previous attempts from other releases.
The plot is ok, it does get a bit confusing if you don't pay attention to what happens but it does include many action scenes involving a number of characters from the game including all the playable characters. I also advice those wanting to buy this that because it is based on an old game that the explanation/character story etc. is lacking because it is in the game and the movie is really aimed at its fans.
The soundtrack is brilliant, and will be most enjoyed by the fans of the game as the movie uses heavy metal and newer version of iconic tracks from the game but all the music is used to convey the atmosphere - whether it be a battle scene or an important bit of dialogue. Examples of the music used are (for the fans who know about the game music) a remake of One Winged Angel (Sephiroths theme and probably most regconised piece of music from the game), J-E-NO-V-A as well as remakes of the battle music.
As for the DVD extras, you get a whole DVD full of them, from a look back at the story from the game, deleted scenes, featurettes of the making of the movie, as well as trailers of the movie and the games from the Final Fantasy VII compilation. There is a lack of audio commentary for the film however I think this is understandable as the voice artists are barely known and the producers etc. would have to do the commentary for each of the languages the movie was released for.
As a fan of the game, I couldn't wait for the movie to come out and I wasn't disappointed. The movie had everything, from decent fight scenes to a great soundtrack. Although the story was a bit confusing I still enjoyed it that much I watched it again. However I expect those who never played Final Fantasy VII would enjoy the film as much, if at all.
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Production Year: 2007 - Science Fiction - Director: Francis Lawrence - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok, Will Smith, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
Science Fiction - Director: Hiroyuki Yamaga - Original Language: Japanese - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Ayako Kawasumi, Fujiko Takimoto
I didn't like it that much.... it relied too heavily on the animation. It was very obviously based on general anime, which detracted from the genuinely deep story behind Final Fantasy 7. But then I'm a computer geek!
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![Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2 Disc Special Edition) [DVD]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78503800.jpg "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2 Disc Special Edition) [DVD]")
Jul 2nd, 2007
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