Yesterday, I went to the sold out showing of Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theater to a sold out crowd of Final Fantasy fans. A line out the door; hard to find seats for four, a brotherhood of friends. In the lobby, local independent video game store World 8 was showcasing Final Fantasy games and goods.
Soon, after the lights flickered and a trailer for a documentary on Spock played...something happened.
SQUARE STILL DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE MOVIES!
Sigh, ten to fifteen minutes in I ask my bro in brotherhood, "Are we still in the opening?," and as I said those words the title of the movie came on screen as a joke to me on how dumb the film is.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Sigh again, where do you start with a mess like this about two kingdoms at war that you couldn't care less about.
Spoilers
Sigh, the film starts off with both a flashback of King Regis leaving Princess Lunafreya behind to the empire of Niflheim. Confused, well to bad. He leaves the Princess to the empire.
Going on in the present the Kingsglaive, King Regis' personal army imbued with his powers are fighting a bunch of monsters and sh*t while mages are summoning a cloud of fire. That's when enemy forces send in a giant demon that shoot outs missiles everywhere. Dudes are throwing swords and being transported to where they throw their swords while fighting all kinds of monsters.
This scene should be cool. It's not though, because the director obviously has never directed a film before. Checking IMDB, he directed Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children back in 2005. So yeah, he hasn't directed anything.
Fight shots are so close and tight it's like viewing something on a small screen of your phone even when it's on the screen of a theater. You could barely see or make out what's happening in this fight.
This continues in every fight in the film. A complete sense of miscommunication with your eyes to your brain as to what's going on. Frustration overwhelms you, it's like missing every good scene as it's in front of you.
Lo and behold it's our main hero, the dude from Breaking Bad, Aaron Paul. I mean Nyx Ulric an outlander of sorts. Oh no, he's friend Libertus is under a big rock. Oh no, oh he saved him against orders because he's a hero!
Great writing, Takashi Hasegawa. I mean not really and I hate you and I marvel at how much of it was trying to be an action thriller based on American movies.
It's the trope of Japanese movies of just being bad again. And for many reasons this one was just trying way too hard, way, way too hard.
People casually don't care about insane levels of danger and death around them or just act stupid.
It's hard to not get sidetracked as I've told you so little of the plot so far in writing this review, it's just that bad.
Nyx saves his friend, then we sit down with his Kingsglaive crew who talk about racism and immigration policy in the wake of everything going on in the world. Japan can shut up on these issues because like the rest of us they have not mastered them at all. If it was on trying to care for so many old people as it's population gets ever smaller, then yeah, but here we get struck in the face with some dumb, dumb, dumb ideas.
The whitest people with cool haircuts I've ever seen were complaining about racism and immigration because they weren't born in the main city, but in the outer villages around it. I sighed deeply as the only racism I saw toward them on this was one guard saying to Nyx, you suck, cause you're a foreigner. That guard even redeems himself later and helps Nyx out. It's just hilarious to see Final Fantasy trying to tackle racism and immigration policy which it can in no way do on a level that isn't just a farce.
Then come the drugs, Libertus is taking some pills. He's also in a cast with a broken leg...but, those are the bad drugs, the movie tries to just jut in there. Just tries to smoosh in there, though we see absolutely no negative affects on him and one could say is taking to compensate for the pain of having a giant rock fall on him.
The Kingsglaive is rewarded by King Regis by having all their villages taken in by the empire in a peace treaty so the capitol city of Insomnia can stay free. King Regis is a terrible king. He just doesn't do a very good job on so many levels.
Ardyn shows up with the Kingdom of Niflheim to both present the treaty at first and as part of the diplomatic envoy, which all goes to crap. Yeah, it's a ruse, a ruse you saw coming a mile away.
The CGI crowds who raise their hands up in joy of the peace treaty celebration look straight out of early CG movies...on console. I don't even want to let go how odd the crowds looked in this. Who just raises their hands at celebrations? Do we not have enough celebrations or is just some odd thing that got stuck in Square's head? I distinctively remember seeing people oddly celebrate in Square games over the years. There would be less reason to celebrate in the city of Insomnia soon.
She's so cold, her face looks down on the polygon count and just her overall demeanor makes her unlikable. This is the princess, the princess, the major focus of the film. Her motion captured reactions are that of a forty-year old man, out of shape and frail. Her emotions are that of trained assassin, to old to be on the job and to stupid to give off the work for the pay. You just want her to leave the film as soon as possible. Now, sigh, it's a rescue mission for her and you can't shed tears enough for how annoying she is.
The third act is all about what many hate in games, an escort mission, that and a giant battle between living statues an demon monsters taller than most buildings.
To get to the end battle/escort mission we first have to deal with the giant Cthulu octopus on the transport ship with the Princess. The Princess was moved out of the city onto one of warships of the empire so the kingdom would be unprotected as the kingsglaive, the only army the kingdom, would leave it defenseless.
Before this happens Nyx has to warn the king about the attack and comes the fun of the worst guards in movie history. We see scenes where guards are told outright not to let anyone through the many areas of the castle. Nyx, just wanders through without any questions. The guards just move to the side, he doesn't even knock over anyone. The unintentional laughs from the audience said it all about how poorly constructed the film was.
On to Cthulu.
Fleet Commander:Hey let's put a giant octopus in one of our transports with it not strapped down or contained at all.
General:Great idea.
I don't know if that happened or what sort of air force planning happened, but they somehow got a giant Octopus monster on a flying ship and it almost killed the princess. Really unsure if the ships just have robots powered by magic on them or there were people on board. If a regular soldier got that mission I think he would just abandon that job. Because of the giant octopus.
Nyx saves the Princess from the Octopus, whose fairly smart. Because when the Princess, without any emotions gets onto another ship in the air while the Octupus in destroying the ship the octopus tries to escape onto another ship too, because it's ship is going down. That's one of the dumbest things I've written down in a while.
At the same time some to most of the Kingsglaive has betrayed King Regis, because he is a terrible leader, so members of the Kingsglaive are just killing each other. One... one of them sees Nyx kill another member of the team in defense and calmly asks, "What's your problem?," He gets stabbed right after that from behind.
Nyx then gets the Princess to the King to see him get murdered by General Glauca, which is a funny name to say in English, cause it sounds like the start of guacamole. Good riddance, you awful king. The Princess gets a magical ring at this point that imbues people with super powers or sets you on fire.
When people get set on fire, we laughed a lot in the theater. Sure the writer was trying to make it mean something, but we just laughed our hearts out when people were set on fire.
Sigh, now to the awful escort mission. There's some amazing moments to laugh at here: A car drives in reverse up a building with no magical powers. A great moment, one of the best, where Nyx out of nowhere starts talking about his little sister dying. The audience abrupted into laughter. This dialogue was so forced and so out of the blue you couldn't chuckle of how inappropriate it was for Nyx to suddenly start talking about her death. The dumbest scene in the movie.
It was revealed that General Glauca, who does have really cool powers and armor was some guy who was sort of Nyx's commander. If there had be any real character connection or if Nyx saw this character as a close friend or father figure it probably would have mattered.
Then Nyx gets the magical ring and gets even better super powers and summons statues to fight the invading forces. The statues even have the same powers of the kingsglaive where they can throw their weapons and then be transported to their weapons. It would have been great to watch if a competent director did the film. We had an idiot.
This is where questions like:
Why didn't the King activate these statues from the start?
Wait, were the statues always part of the defense of the city or did Nyx just power up the statues?
Why destroy a city that you've almost completely conquered that has no army or leadership anymore? It's kind of your city at that point.
What's happening right now?
An average person should be freaking out as giant demons and statues are duking it out as robot soldiers fall out of the sky, remember though none of this was focused on so try an imagine it happening as their is no video footage of this to really show, even when this gets released on Blu-ray.
Libertus cracks the line, "Well, you don't see that every day." To me thinking, "F-U Libertus, F-U!" Really, you mean the destruction of essentially your life and the life of all you hold dear. Time to crack a joke.
Holy cr*p can the writers of this not make anything again.
As the insane battle goes on Nyx is fighting General Glauca the whole time. So they're all flying around as the giants fight each other, which looks, I don't know, and I was there, to much happened for me to remember any good moments.
There's a very unsubtle attempt to show a statue fighting a demon as Nyx is fighting the General, which was just directed so poorly it looked awful.
Nyx dies of the deal to get super powers stopping General Guacamole. What an effing depressing ending to a film.
Oh, and Princess coldheart, after being rescued, just decides to leave and walk out of the city without any help?
Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is as bad as it's title. Square Enix has learned absolutely nothing since it's previous two CGI films. Frankly, they copied the model of the first one getting some big name actors to voice the film while keeping a Japanese script that makes no sense to anyone. Failing on every level to entertain by even screwing up the action makes sure to set back anything the Japanese try to do in the field of CGI animation. This is while short films from Blizzard on Overwatch look so much better. Square you've done it again.
Hope the game is better than the movie.
List of sighs:
-You can't see sh*t in a fight
-Racism, just for white people now. White on white crime
-Immigration; no Japan, you don't no how to tackle this
-Drug problems; problems with explaining what are drug problems
-King Regis is a terrible king a deserves everything that happens to him for poor leadership
-Shut up Chancellor Ardyn, just shut up, ya dirty hobo
-Well, excuse me, Princess Lunafreya
-Who puts a giant Cthulu octopus on a flying transport?
-Your city is destroyed, not a time to crack jokes
-Would be nice to see the fight
-I hate that Princess
Give me Libertus or give me death!
