Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children: Limited
Edition Collector’s Series
Picture: B- Sound: B- Extras: B Feature: C+
Final Fantasy began in the simpler days of
Nintendo as an early videogame franchise, but it has become so successful and
unique in the very crowded videogame field, that it has survived and grown in
ways that is rare in that industry.
Essentially a Fantasy genre anthology series with touches of other
genres where applicable, Sony and Columbia Pictures thought it so popular that
they spent a mint to release a theatrical all-CG epic back in 2001. However, it was a huge bomb and that was the
end of the big productions.
A few
years later, as CG animation became less expensive and the franchise rolled
along without any trouble, Sony and Square Enix decided on another feature and
the result was Final Fantasy VII –
Advent Children in 2005. To its
advantage, the characters look more naturalistic, Science Fiction is not being
marginalized as it was with Final
Fantasy VII – The Spirits Within and the outright Fantasy story is more
like the material they should have went with back in 2001.
A city
named Midgar is a wreck after ugly options to bring peace were exercised, but
no one could have expected the viral plague that was about to kill without
prejudice. This gives the extremists new
ammunition for war and Cloud, who left this "wild west" situation
because he knew how wrecked it was, may just get involved again whether he
likes it or not.
It is a
formula story, but at least it is nicely done on its videogame level. The speed of memory seems better here than in
the 2001 production, but the best speed in the world will not change a style
that this critic is no fan of. This set
is for fans only, especially with the extensive added goods included.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is a little soft, but that turns out to
be the style of the series, as demonstrated by the previous feature film. Color is limited, but the presentation is
good enough to show that softness is the style and not a problem with the
transfer. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is
about the same in all three language options (English, Japanese, French) with
surrounds towards the front channels when the soundfield surfaces. The combination is fair, but nothing too
exciting.
Extras
from the two-disc set include a nice box that has the novel (72 pages) with
side stories of each character), the screenplay in English (112 pages) and 10
postcards, all the size of the DVD case.
DVD 1 has reminiscence of the story digest, while DVD 2 has deleted
scenes, sneak peek at the next videogame in the series, trailers for this
release, a making of featurette called The
Distance with English voice actors included, Venice Film Festival Footage
connected to the title and a new Animé feature Last Order, Final Fantasy VII.
That is
an amazing package of goods for fans, even if they bought the more basic
previous release. Even with the
franchise marching on with all kinds of memorabilia and releases, this is a
desirable version fans and collectors might not want to ignore. Rarely do you see any DVD set this upscale.
- Nicholas Sheffo
