Reason to why i don't like the later FF7 adaptations

[Ite]

I don't know what I was expecting with a thread title like this. But hey! Right on.

The difficulty with post FF7 Cloud is that in the OG there was at least the illusion of role playing. For instance I always made the friendly choices and so I had a different read on the same dialogue that players who always made him a jerk would read. Cloud is a very personal character to us, mostly because we intoned for him (and other reasons I am sure).

When someone else submits their interpretation on a character who is fully realized already in your head, it is going to be wrong. Cloud's characterization is doomed at the start, as is any book-to-movie character that we truly invest in.

That said, I think that they did that problem no favours by making him a silent, gaping paste. He's not even unlikable, he's just constipated and bland. By all means let the roast continue!

 

[hian]

@Mr.Ite :

Very true, and it's a point I harp on about quite often.
Cloud had lots of dialogue options throughout FFVII and many of them were quite different.
Now, sure he had a lot of static dialogue to so I do think there are certain aspects of his character that aren't up to interpretation to the same degree as other aspects of him. Simply put, it's a spectrum.

I always played Cloud as the guy who asked for a drink the moment he sat down in Tifa's bar after the mission. I was generally kind to Aerith when and where I could, and the rest of the cast and the average people I came across as well.
In that sense Cloud always came off to me as a person who's slightly jaded, and who was kinda confused about what strength really is, but deep down a good guy - and in the aftermath of his identity issues being solved that made sense, because you essentially had the jaded soldier persona he had adopted for him always sort of clashing with his real personality throughout the game.
I sometimes suspect that in many ways, the dialogue choices are a mechanism for driving that point home, although I might be giving the devs a bit too much credit if I assume they really put that much thought into it.

I really think the best example of Cloud can be seen in his dialogue with Tifa when he's about to walk out of the bar and Avalanche.
You get the amalgamation of "Soldier Persona Cloud" and "Real Cloud" in a couple of lines and see the full spectrum of his character going from detached professional to bumbling insecure child-Cloud, then over to responsible adult post-memory fix Cloud all in the span of 4 or 5 text-boxes.

 

[Geostigma]

Sorry was just going over this again while making my coffee for the day and did want to reply to this after all.

I never said he was the Steadfast hero etc. I said him being the defeated hero is better over all.

He has weaknesses and character flaws, but the real lesson that the character is supposed to be a vehicle for is "we all have flaws, and that's okay, and what matters is how we deal with those flaws and that we don't just quite and sit around moping.".

*Kinda having trouble trying to articulate this one btw*

This is absolutely true for Cloud as a character. During and at the end of the game he is not the Steadfast Hero or w/e as you point out.

But progressing the story puts Cloud and other characters in a state where it has to be transformative. Otherwise whats the point of continuing the story (kappa) right?

After learning to work through those flaws and saving the world the next step is either he regresses or he moves on with what he learns and becomes the steadfast hero.

That's why I'm saying AC/C was better with him being the defeated character. If he would have just been your every day generic Goku AC/C would have been so much worse.

Yeah they wrote the whole thing horribly but it could have been so so much worse.

 

[Sofen]

If he would have just been your every day generic Goku AC/C would have been so much worse.

I whole heartly disagree

 

[hian]

Sorry was just going over this again while making my coffee for the day and did want to reply to this after all.

I never said he was the Steadfast hero etc. I said him being the defeated hero is better over all.

He has weaknesses and character flaws, but the real lesson that the character is supposed to be a vehicle for is "we all have flaws, and that's okay, and what matters is how we deal with those flaws and that we don't just quite and sit around moping.".

*Kinda having trouble trying to articulate this one btw*

This is absolutely true for Cloud as a character. During and at the end of the game he is not the Steadfast Hero or w/e as you point out.

But progressing the story puts Cloud and other characters in a state where it has to be transformative. Otherwise whats the point of continuing the story (kappa) right?

After learning to work through those flaws and saving the world the next step is either he regresses or he moves on with what he learns and becomes the steadfast hero.

That's why I'm saying AC/C was better with him being the defeated character. If he would have just been your every day generic Goku AC/C would have been so much worse.

Yeah they wrote the whole thing horribly but it could have been so so much worse.

I'm not sure I agree. Sure, the thing could have been worse, but whether or not Cloud having learned his lesson in the original game and taking that with him to the sequel is not something I think is directly related to whether the story would be good or not.
It entirely depends on the writing.

The "Son-Goku" trope isn't bad because it's a trope (I hate when people use tropes that way - tropes are merely a term for conventions in story-telling and have nothing to do with quality of writing in the slightest), it's often bad because when the trope is used it's so often poorly written.

In context of the original, Cloud grew as a person as he faced and overcame his challenges. You'd think that the natural progression of that would be Cloud being able to face similar challenges due to that fact (after all, they're similar challenges).

The answer to making that work is to not present him with a similar challenge, but to present him with something else entirely that would put him out of his natural element.
Or to have him come out of the gate confident, only to have that confidence be trashed later on.

The "broken hero" in the context of AC is inferior to my mind here because I don't think it's particularly believable when many of the same challenges (or worse ones arguably) didn't stop him before, and many of the doubts that tie into his insecurities are doubts he already processed in the original game. It's also the issue that he seems to come with his doubts out of the gate before we're really given time and reason to digest that change.

Could it be boring to have Cloud just come out of the gate being all "Hey, I've done this before, so I can do it again!" - Maybe, but I think that's a moot point if we're discussing changes that could have been made to AC, because there is no rule that says they only had a choice between those two approaches to the story.

They could just as easily have retained Cloud's personality and growth from the end of the original game, and then instead written a plot that provided challenges and reasons for his change that would be more believable or less grating - or provide him with a challenge that his previous resolve would not be relevant to.

 

[Geostigma]

I guess well have to agree to disagree.

I don't see SE being able to pull off that kind of character progression and story at all tbh. That's why I say it could have been so much worse, they couldn't even do the comparatively easier story (The Woe is me Hero overcoming personal flaws to save the day).

If they went full on Goku for him based off progression from end of FF7 to AC they would have gone to ham with it and we'd end up with even less story lol.

That said I do agree these are not the only 2 options available. These are just the only 2 options SE*At that time* can think of

 

[ForceStealer]

I only have a few things to complain about the later adaptions;

#1: They never(and obviously will never, much to my sheer annoyance) released Before Crisis outside Japan or even consider on remaking it.

#2: They're made the series and yet they're not gonna finish it after leaving the mystery in Genesis's return and how things will really ended up in 500 years later.

Don't take this the wrong way but you really gotta flip that record, you know

I get that you're frustrated about this, but reiterating the same points across several threads won't make it happen any sooner.

Especially considering that Before Crisis is a terrible mess, even by Compilation standards. And I'm the guy around here that actually likes the Compilation. I am more than happy with that game being a forgotten little Japanese-only spinoff.

And since then, as far as I can tell they have given us nothing of happy/resolved/ok Cloud. I've not played Dissidia or any of the KH games but that character seems to be trapped in the same hell where Sephiroth occupies his mind.

Dirge of Cerberus, Case of Tifa (and the very beginning of Yuffie), and Crisis Core.

The answer to making that work is to not present him with a similar challenge, but to present him with something else entirely that would put him out of his natural element.
Or to have him come out of the gate confident, only to have that confidence be trashed later on.

The disease is the new challenge. Incurable disease afflicting himself and the world he fought so hard and sacrificed so much to save. That's the new challenge. Now, you guys are playing both sides of the fence here by saying it was an unrealistic portrayal of Cloud and then when people say why that's not necessarily the case you say "well yeah but they chose to write it like that so it still sucks." If you don't like the direction that's fine, but as it is written, in-universe Cloud's reaction makes sense.

That does not mean I excuse Kingdom Hearts or Dissidia, that's stupid. But AC/C alone is not that outrageous.

 

[Geostigma]

The disease is the new challenge. Incurable disease afflicting himself and the world he fought so hard and sacrificed so much to save. That's the new challenge. Now, you guys are playing both sides of the fence here by saying it was an unrealistic portrayal of Cloud and then when people say why that's not necessarily the case you say "well yeah but they chose to write it like that so it still sucks." If you don't like the direction that's fine, but as it is written, in-universe Cloud's reaction makes sense.

Thank you. That kind of argument has always bothered me tbh lol.

It reminds me of like when people complain that Squall was to angst ridden as well.
"Well he was a 17 year old kid dealing with some seriously heavy stuff, how would you respond to that at 17?"

"Well that's just because they wrote it that way. He didn't have to be a teenager..."

"Well Randall Flagg is the embodiment of evil"

"Only because Stephen King wrote him that way..."

lol.


The fact of the matter is Geostigma happened. The triplets happened and Cloud regressed.
It's not like FF7 ended and he just cut ties with everyone and became a 1 man delivery service. Shit started hitting the fan again and he couldn't cope.

 

[hian]

The disease is the new challenge. Incurable disease afflicting himself and the world he fought so hard and sacrificed so much to save.

And as I said, the disease is not a good plot-device for that. It's a contrived and silly plot machination that depends on a retcon of the explicit ending of FFVII where both Jenova and Sephiroth are obliterated from the life-stream.

That's the new challenge. Now, you guys are playing both sides of the fence here by saying it was an unrealistic portrayal of Cloud and then when people say why that's not necessarily the case you say "well yeah but they chose to write it like that so it still sucks." If you don't like the direction that's fine, but as it is written, in-universe Cloud's reaction makes sense.

Firstly, I haven't seen a good argument for why it's reasonable.
Again, it seems to me, throughout the movie that Cloud's mopey attitude stems largely from Zack and Aerith, not from his Geostigma.
Even if Geostigma would be a reasonable explanation, it does not seem to be the one SE intended when writing the story.

But even if that weren't the case, your reply here is still literally a complete misunderstanding of the argument.
It's not that they chose to write it that way that sucks - it is that what they chose to write sucks, and that's why it sucks.

It has nothing to do with playing both sides of the fence.

Again, Cloud being mopey within AC only makes sense if you grant the flimsy retcon rational it's based on.
However, it's a ridiculously poorly thought out plot-device, and that's why it doesn't work.
I could get Cloud having to face terminal illness, but as far as I remember his moping demeanor is there before he even knows he has a terminal illness (or would reasonably know he has it), now add to the fact that the terminal illness is a ridiculous plot-device conjured out of nothingness which at the top of everything else is in direct conflict with the original plot, there is literally nothing there to reason it out.

It's shitty writing no matter how you spin it.

Cloud's emo because of Zack and Aerith's deaths, it's bad because he's supposed to have dealt with that.
He's emo because of Geostigma, great, by why is Geostigma there to begin with? That's right, it's literally there only to explain away his regression in order to build suspense for his new battle with Sephiroth (which is ultimately a futile exercise since anyone and their grandmother can predict the outcome of that battle regardless of the odds).

That does not mean I excuse Kingdom Hearts or Dissidia, that's stupid. But AC/C alone is not that outrageous.

I would actually argue that it's more outrageous for the simple reason that Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia are pretty much alternate universe spin-off bullshit. They don't have to adhere much to anything.
AC on the other hand is supposed to be a direct sequel, but where's the continuity? Where's the red line between it and the original?

No, they had to put a new town at the edge of Midgar, which as I've argued elsewhere makes no sense. They had to invent a bullshit disease in order to be able forcefully give Cloud a new arc dealing with the same stuff he already dealt with once before, and to top it all of, they spent almost an entire movie on actions scenes ignoring the vast potential for expanded characterizations and completely new plot-lines in what is arguably one of the most interesting fictitious worlds in modern media.
GG SE.

 

[ForceStealer]

Firstly, I haven't seen a good argument for why it's reasonable.
Again, it seems to me, throughout the movie that Cloud's mopey attitude stems largely from Zack and Aerith, not from his Geostigma.
Even if Geostigma would be a reasonable explanation, it does not seem to be the one SE intended when writing the story.

He's relapsing as a direct result of the disease. If this disease is going to destroy him and the world, it suddenly makes Aerith's and Zack's sacrifices a lot more meaningless. This shakes the foundation upon which he had moved past it in the original game.
Once again, you don't like the disease plot device, fine, but Cloud's reaction to it is fine.

I could get Cloud having to face terminal illness, but as far as I remember his moping demeanor is there before he even knows he has a terminal illness (or would reasonably know he has it)

Incorrect. He's fine until he gets sick. [EDIT: With slowly waxing doubts over the passage of time that contributes to him contracting the disease in the first place.]

Cloud's emo because of Zack and Aerith's deaths, it's bad because he's supposed to have dealt with that.
He's emo because of Geostigma, great, by why is Geostigma there to begin with? That's right, it's literally there only to explain away his regression in order to build suspense for his new battle with Sephiroth.

This is the both sides thing I'm talking about. You say here that he's depressed due to Geostigma, and then say that doesn't count because Geostigma was simply written as a means to an end.
There's nothing that's ever happened in your life, be it something bad, or maybe just something embarrassing that doesn't come back to haunt you now and again, even though you have effectively moved past it? Is it so hard to understand that the deaths of his two friends might be at the forefront of he mind when he's facing his own inglorious death?
Again, I get it, the argument is that it's boring to some people to watch him deal with it again. That's the writing argument, but in-universe it totally makes sense.

AC on the other hand is supposed to be a direct sequel, but where's the continuity? Where's the red line between it and the original?

The On the Way to Smile stories. Again, I'm not arguing that it's indicative of good writing that you have to read a book to fully understand a movie. But if you're asking for the link, there it is. It shows Cloud from his FF7 persona regressing to his state in AC (Case of Tifa), it shows the effects of Geostigma (Case of Yuffie/Denzel/Shinra), it shows the way a city on the edge Midgar comes to be (Case of Shinra), and the state of the world's infrastructure (Case of Barret/Shinra).


As for it being a movie of action scenes, well that was sort of always the point. It was originally conceived as exactly that, a little short that had a fight and some kids. There was no way it wasn't going to involve a fight with Cloud and Sephiroth. Given what it was, I think Nojima did a respectable job of giving it a bit of context. I don't claim that to be anything other than an opinion, but I do think the people that don't like it can be a little melodramatic about it about how horrendous it all is.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

AC/C makes sense if you take it as being On The Way To A Smile: Case of Cloud. It picks up the dangling plot threads of the other OTWTAS short stories and brings them to a solid conclusion.

As in all the other OTWTAS stories, it follows the arc of the main character facing a problem after the end of the main story and ultimately in the end overcoming that problem. Literally every single character in OTWTAS follows that same pattern, it's just that Cloud's "problem" ends up being a lot more physically realized/solved then the other character's problems are (Sephiroth infecting The Lifestream, guilt over the reactor bombing, realizing you're going to outlive everyone, figuring out your place now that the old order is gone, etc.). So it's a lot easier to just say that Cloud's depressed and ignore that really, everyone was. They just didn't have to defeat something like Sephiroth to sort their issues out.

AC/C honestly would have been better as a short story rather then a movie, but meh, it is a movie and we've got to deal with that. At least the fight scenes and the soundtrack were good and it brought the whole OTWTAS series to a good ending where everyone has gotten over their issues and the safety of everyone and The Planet is secured. You can't really ask more for a sequel to FFVII then that.

 

[ForceStealer]

I already know people are going to take issue with your closing line. But I totally agree with your line of thinking regarding AC being "Case of Cloud" and being part of that overall story.

 

[Tennyo]

It always bothers me when people say Cloud should have been happy in AC/C because he had apparently resolved all of his issues by the end of FFVII. There is nothing that happens in the game that cements this fact in stone and negates any idea of Cloud regressing later on. It's easy to pull yourself up and get to work when you have something to distract yourself with (and a revenge quest to save the world would be a huge distraction), but when all is said and done and it's time to go back to a mundane, normal life it's easy for intrusive thoughts to enter your brain and completely fuck you up later down the line.

Maybe I'm being too realistic for a fantasy story but this is how trauma actually works. Something can happen to you when you are a kid but then suddenly when you're 30 you'll hit a brick wall and can no longer cope.

This is why in the re-writing AC thread I said I would cut out some of the (mostly fighting) bits from AC/C and instead devote time to covering content from the novellas. Especially Case of Tifa, which is the most Cloud-heavy of all of them. We are shown him being happy and hopeful at first, but slowly over the course of TWO YEARS his resolve begins to waiver. He no longer has an epic quest to occupy his time, and he succumbs to PTSD/survivor's guilt/etc.

We didn't even need to be given a reason for it to happen. Geostigma didn't need to happen, nor did the Remnants need to happen, in order for it to be plausible for Cloud to succumb to this. But of course without a threat it would have been a boring movie, so they did.

Now maybe the portrayal could have been different. Such as, when Tifa is lecturing him, instead of just standing silently and taking it I would have had Cloud become angry and defensive (that's just my personal choice, though). Really let them have a proper argument. Stuff like that.

Now I'm not saying that EVERYTHING that happened in the compilation was solid gold but Cloud struggling with mental illness is one of the more plausible things to have happen.

EDIT: I started writing this before the previous two posts popped up.

 

[Geostigma]

AC/C makes sense if you take it as being On The Way To A Smile: Case of Cloud. It picks up the dangling plot threads of the other OTWTAS short stories and brings them to a solid conclusion.

Not to mention the scene at the end of Advent Children where Cloud cures the children of the Geostigma literally has the song "Cloud Smiles" as it's sound track. lol
It's definitely a conclusion to OTWTAS.

 

[Loxetta]

I always interpreted Cloud as having major depressive disorder even before the Nibelheim incident ever happened. And lemme say that in my opinion, he'd be one of the more accurate portrayals of depression I've seen.

No amount of 'getting over it' is going to change the way the brain works. And having depression (and/or PTSD, and/or low self-esteem, etc) doesn't mean Cloud can't have happy periods in his life and Get Shit Done, either.

I'm not saying I think AC/C was necessarily written well, for the record But when taken into account with the OG, OTWTAS, Crisis Core, et al -- I think Cloud's overall characterization across the compilation works.

 

[Sofen]

AC/C makes sense if you take it as being On The Way To A Smile: Case of Cloud. It picks up the dangling plot threads of the other OTWTAS short stories and brings them to a solid conclusion.

Not to mention the scene at the end of Advent Children where Cloud cures the children of the Geostigma literally has the song "Cloud Smiles" as it's sound track. lol
It's definitely a conclusion to OTWTAS.

If you count an emo cracking a smile of teary wonderfall, which is what this stuff wants to lead up to. Then sure... yeah it is one, not the natural ones though, its more the tear jerks type of ones

I always interpreted Cloud as having major depressive disorder even before the Nibelheim incident ever happened. And lemme say that in my opinion, he'd be one of the more accurate portrayals of depression I've seen.

More like ambitious but lack the willpower and motivation enough to do so, or well he tried more or less. Although he didn't made it as a SOLDIER, which is what it concluded too.

 

[Flare]

Again, it seems to me, throughout the movie that Cloud's mopey attitude stems largely from Zack and Aerith, not from his Geostigma.
Even if Geostigma would be a reasonable explanation, it does not seem to be the one SE intended when writing the story.

I know Force has replied to this already, but I think you're really oversimplifying this statement. I know these two points weigh on Cloud's mind, but I always thought that the movie established that he was more 'moping' over the whole Geostigma deal, especially since Denzel is infected with it. You know, he finds Denzel and takes him in, dedicates himself to trying to find a cure, can't find one, and gets infected himself. So he realizes that he can't save Denzel, or anyone else, or himself now, because there's no cure for this disease. Which the disease is all across the world and there seems to be no distinction on who gets infected.

I don't know about you, but that shit would be depressing enough.

 

[Claymore]

The problem is that a lot of that stems from the supplementary material that not a lot of people have actually read. It doesn't come across that well in the film.

 

[Tennyo]

I don't think anyone is saying that to the contrary, Claymore. At least, I'm not. I know there are a lot of people who have never read the novellas nor do they have access to them or know where to find them.

We here on TLS, though, do. And with Pixel's audiobooks we don't even have to read them.

 

[Loxetta]

I always interpreted Cloud as having major depressive disorder even before the Nibelheim incident ever happened. And lemme say that in my opinion, he'd be one of the more accurate portrayals of depression I've seen.

More like ambitious but lack the willpower and motivation enough to do so, or well he tried more or less. Although he didn't made it as a SOLDIER, which is what it concluded too.

...which are signs of depression

 

[Sofen]

I always interpreted Cloud as having major depressive disorder even before the Nibelheim incident ever happened. And lemme say that in my opinion, he'd be one of the more accurate portrayals of depression I've seen.

More like ambitious but lack the willpower and motivation enough to do so, or well he tried more or less. Although he didn't made it as a SOLDIER, which is what it concluded too.

...which are signs of depression

Lets check the emotion bubble.

Ok. So AC covers Nomura's flavor of sadness. Fine. Yeah i don't see that part which i covered. Actually excited seems to fit really well with FF7 PS1 model in my view, "I'll add that with a small flavor of scared and angry" and there you go . I will give all the emotions... except the sad part. That is pure Nomura's vision.

 

[Tennyo]

What is this "bubble" and where did it come from?

 

[Octo]

I don't know but I like it. I'm going to use it in my daily life

 

[Tennyo]

No but I mean, I really don't understand what kind of an argument Sofen is trying to make with this.

Who made that and what for what purpose was it made? Maybe that would clear things up.

 

[Pixel]

Cloud is an emotionally stunted, antisocial guy trying to get used to a normal life, which he has never had. He spends a lot of time on his own, travelling around the world and through his past. Pile on top of that the guilt he feels. Geostigma, which infects people who have given up on life, or accepted death. This would cause him to push people away.

He's not a whiny little bitch just because of Aerith and Zack