SquareEnix has made questionable decisions regarding the Final Fantasy series since SquareEnix became SquareEnix. Square Soft was good, SquareEnix is bad. Having a Final Fantasy X-2, prequel games, MMOs (which have been at least somewhat successful), and turning their games into something that is no longer enjoyable. Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t a good game and was a bad Final Fantasy game. Having two sequels was even more confusing.
This leads us to Final Fantasy XV, which I am pretty sure was supposed to be a game called Final Fantasy Versus, which I first heard was supposed to be like Kingdom Hearts, but without Disney. Fantastic. Anyways, lot of delays, and we have the game now. But for some reason, they wanted to go all out with this release. They have a prequel, special demos, a VR game, and more. But also a goddamn movie. A movie! A movie that takes place at the same time as the game, about different events, with real Hollywood actors getting released in theaters.
I was shocked when I heard about Kingsglaive. I figured I would just not bother with Final Fantasy XV at all, too many parts, too complicated. And surprisingly they thought their movie was good enough to give to critics. Huh. I did not see that coming. Look, I love Advent Children, but most of that comes from FF7 Nostalgia and without it one might not like it. So, I am skeptical going in, but impressed with their confidence.
And of course impressed with their level of CGI detail.
This film takes on the planet of Eos which has a lot of nations that each used to have a powerful crystal, but now only one remains. The kingdom of Lucis has a crystal and they have used it to create a powerful barrier to protect the city and citizens. Another kingdom, Niflheim, has been warring the countryside and attempting to take down Lucas to get the crystal and become the top kingdom.
Final Fantasy XV is about a Prince of Lucis named Noctis, who is not in this movie. He apparently leaves the kingdom to do a video game’s worth of quests. Instead, Kingsglaive is about the King Regis Lucis Caelum (Sean Bean), and his personal body guard of soldiers. These soldiers are all outsiders not from the kingdom and have been granted magical powers to help defend the crystal and yes, they are called the Kingsglaive.
The best soldier is Nyx Ulric (Aaron Paul), a guy who protects his teammates and defies orders to do what is right. He is awesome at killing the Niflheimers (might not be the right term) and the monsters that also attack the city. But because they are still losing, the King is going to sign a peace treaty and give up some territory to protect the main city. But, but but…that territory is where these soldiers come from! Ugh!
Also involved is a princess, Lunafreya (Lena Headey), from Niflheim, who is meant to marry Noctis as part of the peace agreement. Of course, Noctis isn’t here, so she does other things in the movie. Anyways, war, fighting, death, more death, and politics. Featuring the voice work also of Liam Mulvey, Andrea Tivadar, Greg Blackford, Edward Saxby, and Adrian Bouchet.
It was surprisingly hard to find good fight scene pictures, so here is a boring one of the princess sitting down.
After playing the special FFXV demo, I sort of lost interest in playing the game. It wasn’t fun, it was weird, and it didn’t feel like Final Fantasy. With Kingsglaive, we get a movie set in a beautiful, but extremely unappealing world. The mix of fantasy and technology in here is dreadfully boring and unoriginal. It feels like just a futuristic society that anyone can think of, with like, 5% fantasy elements. It is extraordinarily unimaginative and it lacks excitement. Add in the extremely realistic modern day cars and one wonders what the hell were these world designers thinking.
The CGI is wonderful, sure. The motion capture was well done. The action scenes were a delight to see, very entertaining, and for some reason the images they released to highlight the film are mostly just close ups of characters.
This film is extremely WEAK in plot. First you have to be able to figure out what the hell is going on. With such elaborate character names, similar looking characters, and a lot of backstory thrown at you in the intro, it is easy to get lost and stay lost. Reading the plot outlines on wikipedia and a final fantasy pedia after the fact still really didn’t do me a lot of help.
The creators of course say that this movie can be enjoyed without the game and vice versa, but holy shit, I really have no idea what I watched. For the average movie goer, they will be scratching their head in confusion throughout. Sure, it looks well made, but it is unintelligible. Sure, the CGI is great, but the world isn’t even pretty or full of magic and wonder.
SquareEnix still has no idea what they are doing. Their games get less and less fantasy and this movie is a colossal waste of time. I mean, unless I have played the game, then it might seem better.