Final Fantasy: Advent Children

I finally watched this last night (and unfortunately, on a 17" dim monitor). Most of the time, All I could say is "wow".

Although not as clean as "Spirits Within", this time around they managed to get the hair better. And they still managed to keep it within the realm of Final Fantasy VII.

There are a lot of "woah!" and "holy shit!" moments in the movie. Most of it seems to be one long action scene. Too much actually...the viewer doesn't get much for breaks. Times the Matrix movies by 3 or so and you'll get an idea of how the fight scenes in this movie go.

As for story...it seems almost non-existent. It works for those who remember the game's story (luckily for me, a room mate played it recently). However, it's never really made clear exactly what is going on. But you get an idea, which I guess in this case is good enough.

As a result, all I could think is, "So when are they going to make a Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) style game out of this movie?" Sure, I'll play "Dirge of Cerberus", but this movie made me extremely disinterested in gunplay (we save that for Halo...or DMC if you are into that). And please...nobody bring up Ergheiz.

Anyway, all the FF7 playable characters make appearances, albeit only briefly. I was hoping for an actual movie, like "Spirits Within", but FF:AC is definitely not that. They could have allowed for more story development and cut down on some of the action (or a lot of it). When all of the original characters just show up out of seemingly nowhere, it's just too rushed.

However, if you are a huge fan of FF7, you may not be disappointed. Just think of the movie as a long tech demo. I can say that this movie has some of the best actions scenes I've ever seen, even if it is purely CG.