Chris Carbine To the jaded film goer with no interest in playing a masterpiece story of the video game world, this film is probably worthless, confusing, and a waste of time. But for the wide eyed, imaginative, and profoundly curious, this movie is an adventure ripe with mystery and emotion.It begins with a fantastic and intriguing world enduring the aftermath of some world altering cosmic event only vaguely addressed in an opening monologue, delivered to uniquely beautiful music and iconic imagery that makes it clear what exactly such a horrible trend of opening monologues in cheap anime and terrible B-movies were going for, and it's pretty awesome to see it done right. And that's a great picture of the film-making throughout: It's beautiful, enticing, and ethereal. On sight and sound alone, this film is utterly astounding; but on a story front, it can be either or.For someone who has no idea about the events of the game, the opening is played masterfully as a mystery; and for those who know the game's events it serves as a charming callback. For some outside the know, this is an infuriating tease, especially in an age where information is a prized as it is. We live in an age where people feel entitled to know the answers to mysteries that, while often held up in nostalgic memory, are ultimately cast down as lazy writing and incoherent story-telling if not answered within the context of their own story. But for the rest of us, this serves as a hook - teasing us to find out what happened, letting us know there's more to be known. The coherent framing makes for apparent yet unclear meaning to everything we're shown.For me, seeing this movie was the beginning of a journey that would end where it began. It's like the first episode of a long running series that ends up being the last episode in the chronology. It's vague allusions become deeper meanings and satisfying conclusions to character arcs as you emerge from the other side to watch again; wholly engrossed as you were the first time, if not all the more so.After playing the game, this movie goes from a solid 7 to a sterling 10. Watching this movie with the game as context makes for an emotionally touching close to a fantastically inspiring story. Without that context, action sets are just spectacle, rather than the giant allegorical externalized inner demon wrestling they become with the full context. With it, mysteriously gripping scenes become a continuation of something sorely lacking at the end of the game... closure with the characters - a happily ever after.It's not the most accessible movie, but it is very much so as a gateway to a larger world. You can't watch this movie and just be done with it. You can easily enjoy this movie without the game if you have the imagination, but the intent of the movie is to get you to play the game and then come back and enjoy the feature as the masterpiece it is. It's difficult to feel satisfied after watching it when there's so much more behind it and through it that you aren't seeing.Recommended for people who are interested in playing the game. It will be a film that makes you feel tons of wonderful and difficult things. It's a great movie and a great marketing tool for the game, at least from a narrative setting standpoint. It's pretty impressive, if you aren't a cynical critic who judges everything they see on a first viewing basis.

throbert It took me a awhile to recognize this movie was a spoof. A spoof of almost every anime commonplace (and also hollywoodian commonplace) that there is. The invincible soldier (sorry SOLDIER) who lost his faith, orphans, evil who is evil for evils sake, flashy pop star hair on everybody (even freshly washed and dried hair on kids who live on the street), friendship surviving everything, crying bad boys, I can't even list all of them. All wrapped up in cheesy CG (say that many times), all shiny, glossy, glassy, gleamy, sparkles, sprinkles, chuckles. And of course no coherent story - nobody would need it. I mean: who needs story for a porn movie? Its just the visuals, a tour de force in CG. Yes we can (make the hair real), yes we can (make the water real), yes we can (make the skin real), etc. I liked the best when at two thirds of the movie heroes come out of the blue :) They just appear. They get introduced and start to fight :) WTF? Genius!So I had fun watching it :)

wolfen320 This movie was pretty cool. It had some really awesome action scenes, but they obviously did not have realistic physics in mind when making them. I mean, it looked nice when watching it, but people could practically fly with how long they stayed in the air after jumping. Also, everyone seems impervious to landing incredibly long distances. In that scene where everybody was launching Cloud up higher and higher to reach the monster (one of the worst physics scene in the movie), he defeated the monster and fell about a mile down and just landed silently on a platform like it was just a few feet.Also, where did the talking cat dude and the wolf come from? Where did that whole group come from? They kinda appeared out of nowhere. They weren't mentioned any time in the movie before the big monster fight... That cat dude did not receive enough screen time for how weird he was. He was a tiny cat guy riding a talking wolf, and they just have him like it's a normal thing.Other than that, it was an amazing movie. The animation was phenomenal. The acting...well, I don't really know. It's hard to know if Japanese actors are bad or not because they talk so differently. Anyway, I had no complaints about that. I recommend this movie to people who either like anime and/or like over-the-top action movies :D

Marcko9790 Let me start by saying that, yes, it seems like Square tries to milk the money out of all the FF7 fans by making a movie based on the very successful game. The story is set 2 years after the events of the game and some disease have struck many persons. Cloud (English voice by Steve Burton, excellent) and Tifa (English voice by Rachel Leigh Cook, also excellent)now runs a sort of delivery company, but as expected, they will have to get back into battle after some bad guys attack (English voices by Dave Wittenberg, Fred Tatasciore and Steve Staley, excellent). Sure, the lip-sync isn't the best but the voice acting in general is great and the animation is fantastic! The story doesn't always make sense at some points, but this movie is still amazing! I recommend this movie to anyone who loves either Final Fantasy, animated action movies or just wants a great movie in general. I give it my personal 10 out of 10!