advent children

7 years ago, square-enix released what was quickly to become one of the most popular video games ever in Final Fantasy 7. While banal by today's standards, it featured then-amazing 3d graphics, especially during the CGI cutscenes, and involved a fun cast of strange characters. Square recently released a movie sequel to the game last week.

Hooray graphics in 1998!

I traveled to Japan to buy a legal copy of the movie because I would never, ever, never pirate anything - especially not software, games, or music. I also bought a Japanese DVD player to watch it with, a bowl of rice, and a giant panda named Gwendolyn who now lives in my basement.

That's right. Giant. Panda.

The movie is, needless to say, freakin' sweet. It features all of the essentials to an awesome action guy movie: a hero with an impossibly big sword, cute heroines, odd side kicks, a guy with a gun for a hand, a vampire, sword fights on motorbikes, strangely effeminate male antagonists, and very large Godzilla-like dragons destroying towns filled with Japanese people.

why, yes; I am wielding this impossibly large
sword whilst riding my motor cycle into battle
against strangely effeminate male antagonists.

The movie takes place 2 years after the game's ending, but largely re-hashes the game's old plot. The story focuses on Cloud, the distant and lonely tragic hero who finds something worth fighting for and learns to love his friends. In the mean time, he fights a lot, often either on motor bike or while flying in the sky between motorbikes. He's spurred on by the cute and coy Tifa, who tries to stay close (very close) to Cloud despite his adolescent-like refusal to forgive himself for the death of Areis, who died during the game. Tifa alternates between encouraging and lecturing Cloud, and occasionally boxing with strangely effeminate male antagonists.

I'm cute and coy, and I get into
big fights with strangely effeminate men.

You might wonder why I keep saying "strangely effeminate male antagonists." It's because the movie features three main antagonists, all of which are male, and all of which are, quite strangely, quite effeminate.

Darren Bradley on Estrogen?
Darren Bradley?

The movie does an excellent job of not making the frequent fight scenes boring exactly the way "the matrix" trilogy doesn't. The animation is absolutely gorgeous, and if the plot isn't anything to make a musical out of, it's still interesting. And by interesting I of course mean "very, very strange", especially if you've never played the game. Near the end of the game, Cloud finally finds peace and forgiveness and is shown to be whole again by falling to his knees in the rain, just like Andy Duphrane, but instead of having to crawl through three miles of his own excrement first, he simply wins a big fight.

I'm healed and whole, and
this is not in the least bit cliche.

So if you're looking for a movie that features awesome animation with all the staple requirements for a great geeky hero movie, or if you're just looking to watch a few strangely effeminate men, this is definitely the movie for you.
I loved it. For the first set of reasons, I mean. Not the guy thing.
Seriously.

If you're looking to instead watch the death of a franchise in the utter ruin of pathetic acting and abysmally bad dialogue, watch Star Wars 3.