Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
The 2nd of the Final Fantasy CGI films back in the early 2000s, Advent Children was an actual attempt to continue on with the Final Fantasy VII video games and turn the direction of future stories for the franchise vs. just being a “one off” film like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The flick starts up 2 years after the ending of Final Fantasy VII, and came onto the DVD market in Japan back in 2005, only to be delayed in the U.S. for another year. The film was decently received, but the filmmakers decided that the original release of the film (a 100 minute cut) wasn’t really what they wanted, so they created a SECOND version of the film called Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, which is what we got for the 2009 Blu-ray a few years later. The 26 extra minutes was a big thing for the film, as it fleshed out several plot lines and characters, and made a VERY confusing 100 minute film into a reasonably clear 126 minute film. Luckily for it’s 4K UHD upgrade, Sony has brought over the Complete edition as well, so no worries about getting the inferior original cut that has since been out of print for many years.

As I said, picking up 2 years after Cloud and his friends defeated Sephiroth and the life stream defeated the giant meteor housing the alien Jenova, the world is a much different place. The life stream may have destroyed the Shinra families stealing of it’s energy, the Jenova threat was eradicated, but the world was now in ruins. The lifeforce had sent mankind back hundreds of years in it’s technology, and a mysterious plague known as the “geostigma” was affecting everyone who had Jenova’s genes within them, including the super soldier Cloud himself. However, a mysterious trio of white haired beings (hint hint) lead by the vicious Kadaj, who appear to be looking for their “mother” (duh, we all know it’s Jenova from the get go). After a vicious battle in the desert, Rufus Shinra (the now crippled remnant of the Shinra power company) implores Cloud to come and work with him to stop the mysterious trio from finding the last remnants of Jenova after the fall of Sephiroth.

It turns out that Kadaj and his friends are up to something much more dastardly. They’re actively working to bring together all of the geostigma affected kids in an effort to revive Sephiroth with Jenova’s remains and bring punishment to the planet that created all of them 2 years ago. Now it’s up to Cloud, Tifa, Vincent and the rest of the FFVII crew to track down Kadaj and his minions and stop them before they destroy the world even further.

As much as I love the movie for it’s gorgeous visuals and it’s fantastic fight scenes (for 2005), Advent Children is a film that is REALLY hard to get right. You have to remember that it’s basically a continuation of a massive video game that fully fleshed out all these characters years and years ago, but is so dense that explaining EVERYTHING for a brand new audience who just wants to see an animated film and get caught up is near impossible. The film does a solid job dropping in quick explanations throughout the movie, but they are obvious plot drops for the uninitiated sake, and pretty much break the 4th wall so we can say “look, this is what’s going on for all you who don’t know who we are” quickly, then move on to the action.

The other big thing is that while it was definitely fleshed out a lot more in the 126 Complete cut, Advent Children is 50% battle scenes and CGI visuals for the sake of it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun and all that, but this is a tough movie to watch if you’re not one of the initiated gleefully nerding out over seeing Cloud, Vincent, and the rest of them face off against Sephiroth once more. That being said, it is 50% battles, so be prepared for lots of oooooing and ahhhhing as you watch some pretty nifty battles.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

I haven’t seen the Blu-ray for probably 5 or 6 years, but I distinctly remember there being a lot of artifacting in the source material when played upon a huge screen. It was a big thing back then since Advent Children was really nothing but an enhanced video game cut scene in movie form, and it’s interesting to watch the how the 2K upscale appears next to it’s 1080p brethren with that in mind. The first thing I noticed off the bat is how soft the film appears. Comparing against the Blu-ray it’s pretty obvious the technology just wasn’t there at the time to create photo realistic CGI on such a massive scale, but even so there’s tons of aliasing and haloing going on in the film. Background swarm with digital noise, and the animation style is just limited in how much fine detail can be rendered during the upscale. There’s a few minor upticks in detail levels, but really it’s more of a lateral thing as the 15 years old film just doesn’t have the gas in the tank to bring us stunning detail levels.

HOWEVER, the core of the film still shows a noticeable improvement over the Blu-ray in things like facial edges, rendering of clothing, and of course the HDR color upgrades. The colors alone are a rather substantial improvement, showing off the rich reds of Vincent’s cape, or the copious blues and grays of the city much deeper and clearer. There’s some banding here and there in the source material (same spots show up on the Blu-ray as well), but the blacks show some incredible depth and shadow detail that just isn’t rendered well on the Blu-ray. Check out the scene where the children are inducted into the “brotherhood” in the forest. The gray blacks that were present in 1080p are really deep and inky. Is it a massive upgrade at the end of the day? Nah, it’s not, but the differences are there and they are appreciated.



Audio:

With all things being equal on the sonic output, the difference between the English and Japanese Atmos tracks is nothing but a preference for original dialog vs. a dub, nothing more. Both are excellent tracks that showcase the advantages of the next generation audio mixes easily. Sony has included the original 5.1 mixes as well on the disc (but in a 5.1 DTS-HD MA wrapper vs the 5.1 Dolby TrueHD encode of the Blu-ray) for those who want the original mix, but the remix to Atmos is quite fun. The track survives on being massively immersive and just throwing everything at you at once from all angles. Some of the battles involve massive overhead usage as Cloud and his friends launch from one rooftop to the next, and the sheer ferocity of the bass is lovely. Being that 50% of the movies involves an exuberant battle, be prepared for a massive sense of immersion and incredible directional shifts. Dialog is always crisp and clean, and the balance is impeccable. My ONLY complaint is that the bass feels a tad softer than I would have liked (or remembered) but it’s a nitpick only.




Extras:

• Legacy of Final Fantasy VII
• Reminiscence of Final Fantasy VII
• Reminiscence of Final Fantasy VII Compilation
• On the Way to a Smile - Episode: Denzel
• Sneak Peek at Final Fantasy XIII
• Jump Festa 2009
• Tokyo Game Show 2008
• DKΣ3713 2008
• Tokyo Game Show 2007
• Square Enix Party 2007

Final Score: ​

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was always a fun jaunt, but a controversial film as fans of the series hated how it took the FFVII story line for future games and plots. It was a massive CGI spectacle that tried to bridge the gap after FFVII the game, and it works for the most part. It’s main failing is that there is so much backstory and characters to cram into one movie that everyone knows from the games, that it’s hard to include everyone without seeming rushed or cheesy. The end result is a movie that has great visual appeal, is a good story gap for gamers, but a difficult film to latch onto for general audiences who just want to watch a fun anime film. The UHD is a decent upgrade over the Blu-ray (although not massive) and extras included are just the typical legacy extras found on the Blu-ray (the UHD doesn’t have any on disc at all). Still a decently fun watch


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Takahiro Sakurai, Ayumi Ito, Shotaro Morikubo, Keiji Fujiwara, Taiten Kusunoki
Directed by: Tetsuya Nomura, Takeshi Nozue
Written by: Kazushige Nojima, Brian Gray (English Screenplay)
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (English Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), Japanese Dolby Atmos (Japanese Dolby Digital 7.1 Core), Japanese, German, Spanish, English, French DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Studio: Sony
Rated: NR
Runtime: 126 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: June 8th, 2021

Recommendation: Fun Enough Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Will check it out.