Alright, I finally got to see Kingsglaive too!
This film is a trainwreck...albeit a beautiful trainwreck.
Following are some spoiler-free thoughts of mine about the film:
Positives first :
- The visuals were amazing and the action sequences were some of the most impressive that I've ever seen on screen.
- Shimomura's music is in a league of it's own. To me she's one of the best composers right now, in any media.
- I really liked the overall lore, locations, creatures and designs. This pretty much promises that the game is going to be pretty interesting, fantastical and epic as well. I know some people (including me) were worried about that, thinking FFXV seemed a little too down to earth. Nope, it is definitely going to be a legit Final Fantasy and it's everything but down to earth.
Now to neither positive nor negative impressions, I guess:
- The film is really dark and grim at times. (Tabata also mentioned the game being similar.) There were scenes that really shocked me. I didn't expect those in a Final Fantasy product. We've seen some dramatic and sad stuff in other FFs as well but...I don't know...some good people faced really gruesome, undignified fates. The overall body count is pretty high...
-There's lots of relevant social commentary going on in the movie. The world of Eos seems to be a shitty place, full of prejudice, hate and war...oh, just like our world.
- The bad guys in this film are really bad guys. Absolutely vile and evil. I want my revenge in the game. I guess that is actually a positive thing.
Alright, now on to several negatives, which unfortunately are in the overwhelming majority:
- The editing of the film felt rough and disjointed. I usually don't care about stuff like that too much and I'm not much of an expert either but it was really noticable here.
- The story/plot felt really messy and convoluted. I sometimes couldn't quite follow what was happening and I often thought: Wait, what? That doesn't make sense.
- The voice acting wasn't very good. Even Lena Headey and Aaron Paul didn't really give any life and oomph to their characters. Sean Bean was good however. Oh, Ardyn stood out here as well. The rest of the cast ranked from mediocre to outright terrible.
-Most of the characters were uninteresting and flat. They wanted to introduce too many characters, all with their own backstories and thus didn't manage to flesh out the few characters that actually mattered.
-I was completely disconnected to Luna. I was really looking forward to get to know her...but she felt just so strange to me. There were a lot of discussions about her being strong or not and after seeing the film, I don't think you can really call her strong but rather very focused and fearless. Fearless already to absurd lengths. Are we sure that she isn't a robot of some kind?
-Some have mentioned this too (
@Aerospark) but women are treated rather poorly in this film. There are just two women of any significance in this film and both were just used, abused and pushed around the entire film, never having the chance to ever defend themselves. I won't say much about Crowe at this point, better watch the film for yourself, but I had always hoped Luna would drop the princess act, as focused and fearless as she was, to actually fight back or do something smart. There was just one scene towards the end, when she was cornered and a precious something was to be taken from her, when I thought: Okay, that was clever and ruthless at the same time of her. Chapeau! O: But that was all. I was literally shaking my head at her reactions and actions throughout the whole film.
All in all I am still excited for the game. The lore of FFXV is really interesting to me and even though this film was poorly executed, the game story can still be good.