More Plot Depth in FFVII?

[jamesjuhn]

Hi, I'm a newbie, so please bear with me if I show any ignorance.
Having played FFVII about 4~5 times and watched advent children several times on DVD, I wasn't really expecting too much from ACC. But the ACC trailer did prove me wrong with spectacular visuals and extras (I downloaded the HD version of trailer in my PC ;D)

Having watched the trailer, I have one question. Will the plot be more in depth than AC was? I mean, when I was watching AC with my friends, most of them have never played AC before and were very confused about a lot of stuff and I had to explain it to them. The plot I think was also the reason many critics panned this movie (although they praised the visuals)

I know that this movie is "for FFVII fans" like us, but it would be nice if they had more story/plot depth added to explain rather than just 25 mins extra of action only.

p.s. I did notice the Northern Crater scene at the beginning of trailer - that was great! ;D

 

[Isabella]

Somebody somewhere said ACC is designed so that anyone can know what's going on. (I don't remember who said that, but I'm sure one of the adorable nerds around here will be able to help me out.) Whether that will translate to actual added plot or not, who knows. I would really love to see some meaningful dialogue.

 

[Ryushikaze]

Well, we already know from the trailers alone that at the least Zack's demise, Denzel's finding, Cloud explaining his motive from afar (It's my turn to protect, etc.) and Rufus being a bit more explicit in his explanations should be found within the movie, to say nothing of the 25 or so extra minutes of runtime and the 20 minute bonus feature.

And then there's stuff like Denzel fading into an image of Zack's backside as he walked away from Cloud just before he died and such.

We know the entire movie is getting an overhaul, the only question is how much will be plot and how much will be spiffy action, and can they blend the two?

 

[Isabella]

Denzel fading into an image of Zack's backside

OK I'm just feeling far too immature today for a line like that.

ACC is shaping up to be a "AC for dummies." What was Cloud's motive? Here it is! What was up with Rufus and the SHM? Here it is!

 

[jamesjuhn]

ACC is shaping up to be a "AC for dummies."

True very true. I started this post because most of my friends (who haven't played FFVII before) wonder what is going on but are too lazy to play FFVII to find out.

Ryushikaze, I noticed the extended Truck scene between Cloud and Zack, but I wonder if they will feature any bit from ending of Crisis Core (the ending for that game was very emotional for me)

 

[Cat Rage Room]

ACC is shaping up to be a "AC for dummies." What was Cloud's motive? Here it is! What was up with Rufus and the SHM? Here it is!

And that's just fine. A movie generally, should not have to refer viewers to outside material to make sense of it, and it's plot and exposition should be sufficient enough to be self contained within the movie itself.

That was one of the biggest criticisms and problems with AC originally, shit didn't make much sense.

 

[jamesjuhn]

maybe I should get my friends to watch the Reminiscence of FFVII along with others on youtube(because I have a feeling no matter how hard they try, I don't think they'll be able to make ACC a stand-alone movie which is self explanatory - there's just too much details to cover in FFVII)

I found some very cool links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lh2Imlw4rU#noexternalembed

Link to Reminiscence(3 parts) - seems somebody kindly translated all the text,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aCyQef2-s#noexternalembed

Link to explanation of original Nibelheim incident(5 parts) - seems the uploader has creatively fused footages from FFVII, The Last Order, Before Crisis and Crisis Core to make this wonderful footage.

 

[Masamune]

Could AC even make its mind up? The movie was self-admittedly for fans, yet there's a recap movie so people can play catch-up. From a marketing point of view, it was obviously a raving success. But from a cinematography standpoint it was a shambles.

 

[ForceStealer]

Well not everyone had played FF7 recently I suppose, was it Mako who confessed to not even recognizing the final battle reference in Dissidia?

 

[Makoeyes987]

Yeah, that was me.

I know, pretty n00bish of me not to have even caught that. But Masamune has a point. I don't necessarily think the opening movie is a good example of what he's saying but there wasn't a good balance between exposition on stuff we knew, and stuff we didn't.

 

[ForceStealer]

Yeah I know, but recap at least was sensible. And I liked seeing the quasi-stills of the party fighting Sephiroth, too bad they didn't show Bizarro

 

[Suzaku]

I think AC really honestly suffers from the fact that they essentially made it up as they went along, or at least that they kept adding to it until they had to render a final version for distribution. There are some redundant elements, things that aren't fully explained, blah blah blah. Some things were written in on whim, other things probably should've been removed or rewritten as new elements were introduced, but they just didn't have an awful long time to work on it.

I generally try to look at the action scenes and cameos as, more or less, icing on the cake. The movie can easily be cut down to a 15-20 minute narrative with only a bit of action and a handful of characters. I still remember, while they were still working on it, every couple of months there'd be an announcement that it was going to be 10 minutes longer, 20 minutes long, 40 minutes longer, and on, and on. What we finally got was a fairly long movie with a moderately well developed story with a decent structure at its core, surrounded by a hefty chunk of fluff and fanservice.

It's already known that ACC will be reworking some stuff and providing greater clarification, so it can only get better.

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, that.

They should at the very least make the intro sequence less cryptic, it's a collection of vague statements by some kid and some distracting footage, instead of a factual recap in the style of 'PREVIOUSLY ON LOST'.

Wait, the above analogy isn't a really good one.

But yeah, they should instead do a summary of FFVII, and not like that 'reminiscence' they added to the dvd as an extra, that was more like a random collection of scenes from the game that didn't make much sense either. Granted, I only watched a short bit of that, but you get the idea.

No, a flowing story that tells the tale of FFVII would work a lot better.

In fact, do the whole game in movie form. And do VIII and IX as well while you're at it, especially IX would make an awesome movie, both from a story and a visual perspective.

 

[jamesjuhn]

Yeah, FFVII in movie form, I could dig that. But I don't think they could fit the storyline all into a 2 hour or more movie(even after excluding the not so important parts).

If they do decide to make a cg movie, I'm guessing they'll have to make it into 2 part movie (of at least 2 hours), or even 3 part movie like they did with Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

To me honestly, I'm hoping for a movie form of entire FFVII rather than a remake game (yeah remake game sounds nice, but its been years since I last played FFVII, and I'm not sure if I want spend hours and hours of playing the game again, being busy with job and all)

 

[Cthulhu]

That would make it the largest all-CG movie project ever, which would be awesome and whatnot, but also very risky, since it hasn't actually been done before.

Sure, there's CG-aided animes (like Hellsing Ultimate) that use a lot of CG, and a lot of modern Hollywood movies use a load of CG, but full CG movies are still limited to 90-minute cartoon-style ones, which often don't really push the limits of what's possible. AC did push the limits though, and, with the exception of the humans, so did Wall-E, with excellent environments and whatnot.

I should still see Beowulf btw, which, now that I think about it, is also a full CG movie. I'm just afraid that it's just a regular movie in a CG sugar-coating though, without actually using CG as a tool to make a better movie. I quite liked AC's impossible camera usage in some scenes.

 

[looneymoon]

[quote author=Cthulhu link=topic=484.msg16668#msg16668 date=1234300582]
That would make it the largest all-CG movie project ever, which would be awesome and whatnot, but also very risky, since it hasn't actually been done before.

Sure, there's CG-aided animes (like Hellsing Ultimate) that use a lot of CG, and a lot of modern Hollywood movies use a load of CG, but full CG movies are still limited to 90-minute cartoon-style ones, which often don't really push the limits of what's possible. AC did push the limits though, and, with the exception of the humans, so did Wall-E, with excellent environments and whatnot.

I should still see Beowulf btw, which, now that I think about it, is also a full CG movie. I'm just afraid that it's just a regular movie in a CG sugar-coating though, without actually using CG as a tool to make a better movie. I quite liked AC's impossible camera usage in some scenes.
[/quote]

Beowulf was a terrible movie, and the CG didn't do much for the film. IMO, it would have been more visually pleasing without the CGed people.

 

[ElMonk86]

Advent Children always struck me as the TRUE ending of Final Fantasy VII. It's not a movie that stands on its own, so right after I play the game, I read the novella and watch the movie. It feels more complete that way.