STORY
Midgar has gone from the top to the bottom in ruins while an illness by the name of “Geostigma” kills those afflicted with it. Slowly, the people have begun to try to rebuild what once was while living in fear of the dreaded disease. Cloud Strife now lives a quiet and normal life running a delivery service, but with a heavily guilty conscience has shut himself off from everyone. Upon the appearance of some unnatural “triplets”, shit starts to hit the fan, so to speak, and Cloud finds himself in the middle of battle again with a score that needs to be settled with himself and an old “friend”.
REVIEW
Okay, so I have class in about an hour from now, so I will have to be blunt with alot of stuff. First, the most obvious thing is the graphics of the film. Now, I remember back when Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came out I was absolutely stunned by the graphics, and to compare how happy I was with the animation of this film to FF: TSW would be like comparing a pepperoni piece to a 5-topping pepperoni pizza. Seriously, I knew what to expect graphically from screens and whatnot from the past god knows how long…but to actually see the movements and environments in action is a completely different ballgame. Another way to put this…if the Xbox 360 was capable of graphics this good, I would probably dish out however much money for one right away (which is a bold statement since I HATE the Xbox). The characters look perfect too, just they way they might look if they were real (only a little less computer-animated if they were real). To tell you how good this film looks is absolutely absurd as you should really experience it first hand.
I’m going to quote a friend on his thoughts on the storyline, which I feel are very accurate:
“The story is good but they almost didn’t even need FFVII to make it… like, the characters from FFVII are good because they don’t have to re-establish them but anyone would do, if they re-established the characters. Of course, there would not be that built up hatred for certain people by other certain people, so the movie would need to be a lot longer if it wasn’t based in the FFVII universe… but… it could still be done.”
Upon seeing it, I would completely agree with this statement. The film’s story was perfect for those who don’t necessarily know or have played Final Fantasy VII because it didn’t make so much reference back that you wouldn’t know whats going on. In the same context, it was perfectly done for those of us who have played and fallen in love with the whole FFVII universe, and I must admit there were many, MANY, moments in which I couldn’t help but find myself smiling(*cough* Bahaumut battle, Vincent’s first appearance *cough*) like a a horny schoolboy looking at nudie magazine for the first time. If just the idea of seeing the coolest, argueably, characters in video game history in real-time battle with as flawless graphics as we get them currently just isn’t enough for you, the storyline is good enough to want you to know what will happen next.
The soundtrack is enough to get any fanboy to wet himself with happiness, with re-done scores for classics such as the main battle theme, Aeris’ theme and One-Winged Angel and even a few surpise hints to the game (Victory Fanfare…that’s all I’ll say). Pretty much anything and everything you would expect soundtrack-wise for a Final Fantasy piece.
Like stated earlier, simply telling you how much I liked the film will probably not strike you as hard as if you actually were to watch it. Even if you hate (god forbid) Final Fantasy and everything to do with it, you should be able to still appreciate all the work that obviously went into the production of this film. Check it out as soon as you can, you won’t regret it.