If you didn't play Final Fantasy VII, you're not going to know what's going on in this movie.

And if you did play Final Fantasy VII? You're also probably not going to know what's going on in this movie.

Advent Children is two hours of manic fight sequences, innumerable flashbacks, and a plot that looks deep on the surface but is otherwise quite shallow. A new team of bad guys has emerged to finish what Sephiroth started back in the original game, and most of the movie is spent doing battle in order to stop them from bringing about the end of the world.

Why do they want to bring about the end of the world? Because that's what Sephiroth wanted to do, and these guys want to continue his work for... some reason, I guess? Sephiroth had many motives in Final Fantasy VII, but Advent Children's Kadaj and crew don't get any back story. They literally materialize out of thin air, and that's all you get. We're told they are "remnants," as if we're automatically supposed to know what that means. They use "remnants" like it's some kind of group name, or a term for something that existed in the game. As far as I know, it's not. They're just one-dimensional villains for the sake of our heroes having something to fight.

And fight they do. Fight sequences are frequent and long, with the movie's back-to-back-to-back final battles taking up nearly a solid hour of the overall run time. Unfortunately, fights lack any impact -- thin, wispy characters fly around environments totally weightless, somehow punching each other with enough force to send the recipient sailing across city blocks. Mostly, this damages property more than it causes any real physical harm. Anime-style action like this can be done well, but this is like watching a child play with action figures.

The real culprit that destroys this movie is just how much it relies on flashbacks. I am not exaggerating when I say almost every other scene in Advent Children is a flashback, either showing a scene from the original Final Fantasy VII video game, or something that happened off-screen earlier in the movie. There are so many that one flashback will interrupt another, and at one point, a character's cellphone seems to experience its own flashback. After long enough, it became hard for me to keep it all straight in my head, to the point where I lost track of what was a flashback and what was currently happening. I've never had that happen with a movie before.

It's a mess, basically. Non-linear storytelling at its worst, with flashy-but-vacuous fight scenes, and zero motivation for anyone's actions other than to invoke a navel-gazing sense of nostalgia.

I put more than 100 hours in to the game back in 1997, and Advent Children is a struggle for me to watch. It is exclusively focused on being "cool" and "epic" leaving everything else to fall by the wayside.

This 2005 CGI animated movie is somewhat of a mixed blessing.

First of all, I must comment on how fantastic the CGI was back in 2005, and it actually still works well enough even now in 2019. There is an abundance of details and lots of really nice textures throughout the course of the movie.

Speaking of course of the movie, man this was a long and slow-paced movie. And it didn't really help that the movie was driven by a god awful storyline which simply had no appeal to me.

I've seen the movie once before, around the time it was initially released, then decided to revisit it now late in 2019. I managed to get through 1 hour of the ordeal, then I simply called it quits, because the storyline was just an atrocious heap of rubbish.

In comparison to the 2001 "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", then this 2005 CGI animated movie was just a swing and a miss in every department.

Somehow "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" (aka "Fainaru fantajî sebun adobento chirudoren") just felt like a glorified collection of video segments from a game.

I am sure that there is a solid fan base out there loving this particular CGI animated movie. I, however, am not one of them. I am rating this movie a mediocre five out of ten stars, solely because of the CGI and the music.

I'm bound to be disliked by the legion of of Final Fantasy fans who have rated this film highly but I have to disagree and say that the film, for anyone other than some one familiar with the games, is going to be a long dull haul.

Let me go on record as saying that this is one of those eye popping jaw dropping visual experiences that makes me realize just how special movies are. There are sights in this movie that will impress even the most jaded of movie goers. Wow.

If one is telling a story one generally needs more than pure visuals. Sure great visuals can cover plot holes but at the end of the day you need something, characters people can relate to and a plot that has a beginning, middle and end. Here the story is a continuation of a video game. There is some attempt at bringing viewers up to speed, but for the most part the film assumes you know whats gone before and what the previous relationships are, if you don't its too bad for you. Or Me. I never played the game and was ultimately lost fifteen minutes in. I had no idea why anything was happening since all motivation happened prior to the movie I was watching. I went from "Oh Wow" about the visuals to yawning because I became so lost I didn't care. Sure the visuals occasionally carried the day, but most of the time they ended up wasted on a film that will only mean something to a small select group of game fans. I was so disappointed because with out a plot even the visuals began to lose their appeal (or at least look like the video game that they sprang from).

Can I recommend this visually impressive film thats short on plot? That depends. If you want to see some sparkling visuals and don't mind the lack of plot, do see this since it will knock your socks off (Try for the best possible conditions- big TV and great sound). If you are a fan of the game see this film since it will mean something to you. If you need a plot, if you need more than visuals, then the choice is yours as to whether you see it since odds are you'll be snoozing.

4 out of 10.