Final Fantasy: Advent Children

After a long time of being too unmotivated to blog, I’ve come to the point where I am still too unmotivated to blog. However, since I’m also bored to tears, I’ve decided to amuse myself by writing down what I think of a movie I watched yesterday, Final Fantasy: Advent Children. Posterity will long be awed at my sparkling wit and keen observations, I’m sure.

Final Fantasy: Advent Children is about a lot of women who are really good at defying physics. They’re like Neo on crack. Most of them are about as flat as him, too. They fly around having graceful fights, being doused by water, and riding motorcycles through all kinds of debris; and they do this all without messing up their hair. Or even getting wet. You’d think there’d be a lot of she-looks-sexy-in-her-wet-clothes scenes, but nope, not a one. They stay bone dry no matter how hard it rains or how many pools they fall in. Before I tell you about the plot, let me introduce the characters.

Most of them are women. In fact there are four men in the entire movie (not counting the peons that are an unfortunate part of the masses destined to be killed to demonstrate how really evil the bad guys are). There’s Cid Highwind, a guy with a bit part if I ever saw one. There’s Loz, the crybaby brother of the two main bad chicks. Barret Wallace, the token black guy, is an oil driller who’s into fishnets and BDSM. And there’s Rude (yes, that is his name), one of those gentlemen of the suit and sunglasses persuasion, with the added twist of a multi-pierced ears. And that’s the entire cast of gents—oh, except possibly Clifford the big red dog might be a guy. Didn’t see any direct evidence one way or the other.

The women vastly outnumber the men. Cloud Strife is the main female lead in the movie. She’s a lesbian who’s hung up over this girl she knew in the past that turned into some kind of Earth mother type thing. Cloud is blaming herself for it, because you know it’s bad for your love to be turned into an all-powerful, immortal Earth mother, and so she’s having trouble in the day-to-day, withdrawing from her friends.

Then there’s the first of those friends, Tifa Lockhart. She’s really cool for about the first ten minutes of the film and then falls into the role destined for her: being the only woman with really big boobs. There’s also Reno, the red-haired wife of Rude. Rufus Shinra is an invalid woman who hides her face for most of the movie because she doesn’t want everyone to know she looks like Cloud without gel. Yuffie Kisaragi shows up late in the movie, with a bit part, along with Cait Sith (a stuffed animal) and Clifford. Vincent Valentine is the stern, strong type of girl.

Now then, the villainesses and villain. The main one is Kadaj, a badass woman with no other goal than to find Mum. Mum is the progenitor of Kadaj and her siblings, a disembodied head. Yazoo is Kadaj’s little sister, and Loz is their brother. There’s also Sephiroth, who shows up only at the end, expressing a desire to replace Cloud’s old girlfriend as the Earth spirit.

There, that’s the cast. Now, this is the way the movie goes: All of Cloud’s friends live in this city that’s partially destroyed. They’re bummed because of it, or perhaps because of the sadness that a useless girl mentions in the opening narration (apparently two years ago there was a huge struggle, and things got out of hand, and so the all-powerful Earth mother thing washed away the greed and sadness of the world, but… sadness was the price to see it end. Yes, that’s what she says. I don’t get it either.). Now, people in this city are getting a disease, because the planet is mad at them. That’s bad.

Cut to shabby bar. This is the headquarters of Strife’s Delivery Service. Why? No idea. Haven’t got a clue what she delivers either. Reno calls to tell Tifa that she’s got work for Cloud. She leaves a message for Cloud and Cloud goes to find out what it is. She gets attacked on the way in, by ferocious beasties at the beck of Kadaj, plus Kadaj’s siblings. They’re looking for their Mum, and they call her sister. Cloud is very unemotional about finding out that she has murderous siblings. Fortunately she gets away okay. The motorcycles, despite the abuse they go through, also make it out.

She goes on to meet Reno and get attacked by her, but defeats her in one move. That prompts Rude, Reno’s husband, to get edgy, but the bosswoman, Rufus Shinra, comes in and her cloaked presence calms him. They talk; it’s exposition time. Cloud gets told she’s needed as muscle, cause that’s always a good way to make friends. She says her muscle capability is all in her head, but, being curious about that Mum that Loz and Yazoo were talking about, stays to hear Shinra out. Some very unconvincing lies happen here too.

Then it’s time to move on. Tifa and a brat go to visit Cloud at the wrecked church where she lives and don’t find her. Tifa gets the opportunity to be cool when Loz shows up, but it turns out he’s the better fighter and she gets knocked out, after they ruin the church some more. Loz steals the brat and some important spheres. But meanwhile, Kadaj has beaten up Reno and her husband and is threatening Shinra. She’s angsty. Also during this time, Cloud is being overcome by memories. She goes back to the church too late to save anyone and in fact passes out to some really cheerful music.

When she comes to, she’s in a strange place. Reno and her husband, Rude, picked them up. Reno thinks Cloud is fat and her husband asks what’s been done with the kids Cloud lived with. They’re suspicious that she was living alone with them in a wrecked church, possibly. Eventually they go out looking for the missing brats. Meanwhile Kadaj absorbs some of the important spheres. Cut back to Cloud; we find out she’s worthless, in her own estimation. Reno comes back to say that they’ve found the kids.

Surprise surprise, we find out that Kadaj has the kids and is turning them into little monsters via a process of making them drink water she’s tainted by immersing herself to the waist in. We don’t even want to think about what it was that made the water that highly suspicious colour. She gives an inspirational speech where she psyches the kids up about dear old Mum. But oops! Now Cloud attacks! The glowing trees get heavy use as springboards, and Kadaj and her relatives proceed to attack Cloud with the mob of demon kids. Though Cloud can block bullets with her sword, she still can’t beat the peeps with edged weapons.

Cloud gets beat. A floating rag rescues her, which turns out to be an old lover, Vincent Valentine. Vincent’s depressed that her voice is that of a two-packs-a-day-for-thirty-years smoker, or perhaps because some buds of hers have been tortured. In any case, she helps Cloud get over her depression. The brat that was stolen from Tifa arrives, having escaped from Kadaj during the confusion, and is bratty. They go back home.

Next morning, there’s a mob of unsuspecting peons watching the demon kids behave oddly. Yazoo sets some beasties on them and they start to die. Tifa arrives in the confusion. Reno arrives with her husband. They start getting pounded by Loz and Yazoo. Meanwhile, high in a ruined skyscraper, Kadaj torments Shinra, because she’d do anything for Mum. She summons a gigantic beastie. Down below, Tifa is helpless, because as the chick with the biggest boobs, it’s preferable that they get as much notice as possible, which is difficult when you’re kicking ass. She’s near death many times as she tries to save a demon kid, but fortunately at this point the men of the movie start showing up to save her. Barret and Cid make their grand bit part entrance this way. Valentine shows up too, along with Yuffie, Cait Sith and the red dog.

Then Cloud shows up. Tifa is informed that Cloud thinks Cloud’s lost some weight (really!). I guess Reno’s gibe got to her. The huge monster is killing people by eating them in interesting ways, or barfing up spheres at them. A big battle happens. Cloud finally kills the monster by flying with the help of all her friends. While she’s doing that, Shinra’s finally revealing her resemblance to Cloud, plus showing Kadaj that she’s got Mum. Shinra throws the box containing Mum over the side of the ruined skyscraper, so Kadaj blasts her off for it. Kadaj has to dive over after Mum; Shinra tries to shoot her on the way down but has terrible aim. She does hit the box, however, breaking the cryo-seal on the disembodied head. Kadaj lands safely forty stories below. Shinra is saved from a gruesome death by two henchwomen that show up out of the blue.

Kadaj and her siblings see Cloud coming. This is frightful to them despite that they beat her up only yesterday night, so they run away. Cloud has to chase them onto an empty freeway. She almost gets decapitated eighteen times, and shot at a lot, but, fortunately, emerges without a scratch, as does her motorcycle. This is where we learn that the motorcycles are alive, and can be steered with the knees (and even feet) alone, like horses; and that they follow along faithfully waiting to catch their mistresses when the said feel the need to fly into a fight. Loz loses his bike and has to double up with Yazoo. Reno and her husband flirt a bit and then blow Yazoo’s motorcycle up (but not Yazoo and Loz, they make it out).

Cloud catches up to Kadaj and there’s some fighting before she loses track of Kadaj. Cloud reveals her arm has the disease from the beginning of the movie, which was why it was hidden all this time. Kadaj goes to Cloud’s church, ‘cause you know no one would ever look for her there. Cloud goes there too and finds her weeping over Mum, whose box has been shot, which means that Mum’s gonna be defrosted and dead. Kadaj flees when Cloud’s old girlfriend, now the all-powerful Earth mother, shows up and heals Cloud of her disease. Cloud pursues. They fight. Cloud’s buddies show up in an airship, but, because it’s her battle, they don’t fight, just watch. Yuffie doesn’t understand why, and Cid tells her it’s a man thing. Not realising that Cloud is a lesbian denying the existence of her boobs, Barret is confused by this information.

Kadaj absorbs Mum’s head, which changes her into Sephiroth. Now, Sephiroth has a grudge against Cloud because she wanted to have the place of Cloud’s girlfriend; she wanted to become the immortal Earth spirit. So they fight about it. A lot. Matrix-style with swords, in a giant storm… lots of Reloaded and Revolutions vibes here. Turns out that Cloud wins, and Sephiroth changes back into Kadaj, who dies in Cloud’s arms on top of the tallest tower in the city. There’s a curiously un-wetting downpour, during which Cloud is shot by Loz and Yazoo, and then blown up. But Loz and Yazoo die because the effort of climbing up to Cloud on the skyscraper was too much for them after being blown up by Reno and Rude.

Cloud’s dead now, and floating in white limbo. She gets sent back to the land of the living by her old girlfriend, whom she now thinks is her Mum. Everything goes back to being fine and dandy again. The city is a little more ruined but that’s okay since it was partially destroyed to begin with. Cloud agrees to not distance herself from her friends, and then does this baptismal thing with diseased peeps to restore them to normal. The End.

And that’s Final Fantasy: Advent Children for you. Okay, yes, as you can tell, I got about zero of the plot. But it was pretty to watch all the girls fighting. And the music was beautiful. It’s an excellent movie if you turn your brain off.