Twenty Years of Advent Children

SPOILER ALERT: Plot details follow for Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children

Twenty years ago, we were gifted with two of the greatest swordfights in cinematic history. In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, we had the long-awaited duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan in the fires of Mustafar. In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, we had the long-awaited reunion of Cloud and Sephiroth in the ruins of Midgar. Both battles feature heroes standing against those who betrayed them. In Revenge of the Sith, a teacher must face his fallen student. In Advent Children, an admirer must face his fallen idol. I enjoy both of these films as operatic thrill rides that push the limits of computer animation. While both films are flawed when it comes to character and plot, one can’t help but admire the spectacle.

Advent Children is the sequel to the PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII. FFVII brought the FF series into the 3D era, aided in the success of the PlayStation, and helped to blur the line between video games and movies. For many gamers, it was their introduction to FF and the JRPG genre of video games. Cloud, Sephiroth, and Tifa have gone on to be as iconic as Link, Mario, and Sonic. FFVII also remains the most representative and popular of the FF entries, having its characters appear in Smash Brothers and Kingdom Hearts, while boasting of more spin-offs than any other FF game, including an ongoing remake trilogy.

Advent Children is the second FF film, with the first being the infamous Spirits Within. Even though it was directed by FF’s creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Spirits Within had little to do with FF and was a rather boring sci-fi film in its own right. Advent Children, directed by FFVII character designer Tetsuya Nomura, goes in the complete opposite direction. Far from having nothing to do with FF, it serves as a continuation of one of its most popular games. And far from being boring, it serves up a Matrix-style action scene every fifteen minutes. In fact, the original 2005 version is less of a film and more of an MTV music video in the Hot Topic era.

I was introduced to the world of FF through the character cameos in Kingdom Hearts. I eagerly watched Advent Children before having played FFVII, because it was near impossible for me to get an affordable copy of FFVII in 2006. I enjoyed the action scenes, but I had no clue as to what was going on. For many years, Advent Children was one of my favorite films to watch on repeat. The character designs lack the uncanny valley feel of Polar Express or the awkward cel-shading of Appleseed. It’s almost a perfect blend of realism and anime. The film is also greatly helped by the metal soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu, from the remixes of “Those Who Fight” and “One Winged Angel”, to the new pieces like “Cloud Smiles” and “The Promised Land.”

When I finally got my hands on FFVII, my opinion of Advent Children began to sour. Advent Children came out when emo culture was all the rage. Its influence was felt in many dark, brooding movies of the 2000s, like Batman Begins (2005), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Twilight (2008), and the aforementioned Revenge of the Sith (2005). It’s no surprise that Advent Children followed the same suit. With Cloud now a depressed, lone wolf. This did come at a cost, however. It undid Cloud’s character arc in the original game, severing him from all of his friends. The character interplay that made FFVII so endearing is virtually absent. Granted, this is a Cloud-focused narrative, but it’s weird that he has more dialogue with Vincent (an optional character) than with Barrett (the leader of AVALANCHE). Never mind that Barrett has no dialogue with his own daughter!

It’s also a little jarring that only two years after helping to save the world, Cloud insists that he isn’t fit to save anyone. It could be argued that Cloud’s depression makes sense due to his failure to save Aerith, but that grieving process had already taken place in the original game. The beauty of FFVII is in seeing our heroes confront death and finding that life still continues. Given Cloud’s sullen demeanor in the film, it’s almost as if that lesson has been forgotten. This isn’t to say that story about Cloud’s grief couldn’t have worked, but I would like to have seen how he came to be so detached from his friends.

That said, upon re-watch, I found that Advent Children asked questions which were just as important as the original. How does one rebuild after the apocalypse? How can the next generation inherit a broken world? How do those who broke the world atone? The Turks and Rufus grabbed my attention in this respect. They know now that they are largely responsible for the sordid state of the planet, but what should they do about it? Can they also be part of the solution? Or would history repeat itself? Could the hidden redemption story of Advent Children be about Shinra?

The original FFVII is more relevant now that it ever was in 1997 because of the growing instability of the climate crisis and the oligarchic elite that are causing it for their own greed. We, our children, and our grandchildren will be living in a post-climate change world. We will all be living with the consequences of the calamity long after it is past. This is what is meant by the lethal disease known as “Geostigma.” The planet’s revenge. The disease that symbolizes the trauma of the Meteor, as Chingy Nea at Kotaku observed, “It’s the emotional pain of loss manifesting as deterioration of the body.” The afflicted children, without direction and eager to cure their Geostigma, are taken in by fake miracle cures from predatory adults. Sound familiar, America?

This is where Cloud comes in. His new role will be as surrogate father to children like Denzel, raising them to be heroes as Zack once mentored him. The baptism scene, like the Lifestream scene at the end of FFVII, tells us that healing and rebirth can still occur even in the wreckage of the post-apocalypse. That’s message would call all use right now.

Advent Children’s sexy antagonist, Kadaj, reminds me of Kylo Ren from the Star Wars Sequels. They both worship the previous story’s villain, but they also secretly resent their inferiority to him. Both Rufus and Cloud deride him as a only a Remnant, a copy of the real thing. Cloud may also see a part of his younger self in Kadaj, as someone who once also admired Sephiroth and briefly became his puppet. Kadaj believes that he will be whole again when he completes his mission to revive Sephiroth, but instead he is left empty, only finding true peace when he stops trying to live in Sephiroth’s shadow and enters the Lifestream.

The fight scenes in Advent Children are still some of the best in animation. They take what The Matrix did for live action, what Dragon Ball Z did for anime, and apply it to the unrestricted power of the CGI. Whether its Loz throwing Tifa across pews in Aerith’s Church, the old team having a classic boss fight with Bahamut SIN, or the epic motorcycle chase through the ruins of Midgar, Testuya Nomura builds upon the fast-paced action he crafted in Kingdom Hearts for an awesome ride. The rematch between Cloud and Sephiroth is so much fun to watch. Especially as they fly around like Superman, cutting their way through skyscrapers like butter. That said, I wish there was less action and more character work. Cloud vs Sephiroth would be a lot more impressive if we didn’t already see a dozen of fights with similarly insane feats. The camera never sits still, even in the dialogue scenes. It almost has a numbing effect. In a game, constant rising action is helpful, as it is ultimately a toy, but a movie has different needs.

After all this time, there is still no other film quite like Advent Children. It’s influence is mainly restricted to the FF series, as both Dissidia and FFXIII borrow heavily from its action. Outside of FF, Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, was inspired by Advent Children, but even then you don’t really see it on screen. (The fights in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel felt a lot more like Advent Children by comparison.) There are also addictive animations of Monty Oum: Haloid, Dead Fantasy, and the RWBY series. Dead Fantasy itself featured Cloud and Tifa in major roles.

This lack of influence may be due to the high barrier of entry. In order to appreciate Advent Children, you’ll not only need to have played the original game, but you’ll also need to have seen the film a few times to understand the convoluted plot and confusing dialogue. The movie was also direct-to-video and never saw a proper theatrical release. So it naturally didn’t inspire a wave of action-paced animations. Maybe that will change in time, but for now, Advent Children is a crazy martial arts, gun-fu experiment that is not like anything else in computer animation.