Review of Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016) by Jonet — 19 Aug 2016

It was a pretty okay movie. I am a fan of the series and anxiously awaiting the game for which this movie is a prequel to. That said, I enjoyed it. However my problems with the movie were the weird facial expressions for the characters. It looked very "stiff" for lack of a better term. I know they used motion capture and since they did, I expected it to be much better, but the character's faces are just off whenever they speak. I felt myself looking to the side of them, not directly at their face because it just felt too awkward. I think Advent Children's animations were more fluid, and facial expressions less awkward looking.

Another issue was the poor voice acting, although most of it was for side characters. The important people like Nyx, Luna, Regis, all sounded superb, but goddamn Libertus was the worst of the bunch. He constantly sounded as if he was speaking with food in his mouth, and seemed like he was a mouth breather. Every time he opened his mouth to speak, I was wishing he'd hurry up and close it.

Plot was pretty lame I guess. If you've been following the game you already know how the movie will end, generally speaking, in regards to what happens to Lucis/Insomnia. I also couldn't really understand the villain's motivations. It seemed to me that they had there loyalties mixed up and fighting on the wrong side, and this was constantly brought up by Nyx himself, but the villains' responses were still kind of vague, as if the scriptwriters themselves believed that the villains' reasons for fighting wasn't good enough. The villains' just babbled on about how they were right and Nyx was wrong, yada yada. I felt they gave poor explanations. Ravus' role was extremely disappointing and mediocre. Practically just cannon fodder.

The best part about the movie, of course, is the visuals. As I stated, I don't like the facial expressions of the cast, but everything else, the city buildings, cars and other vehicles, the castle. All the environments were beautiful and intimately detailed. The action scenes were also great but was also one of my qualms. It's hard to tell exactly what is going on in those fight scenes. It still looks really cool because you see sparks flying off swords, and magic being cast. But trying to tell who just got hit in that fight, or how did that guy get behind the other, is very difficult, and if you blink, you'll miss a lot. However, the final battle, the most important one, was very well executed and choreographed. It was much easier to tell what was happening, and was just epic. As for the fight itself, I give it an 8, although the entire movie gets a 6.

Overall, yeah I'd recommend it to fans of Final Fantasy and maybe action fans. It's just that due to its prequel nature, I think it can be hard to get into. The main character Nyx was quickly developed. Backstory quickly thrown in in the middle of a fight, and the movie is a bit hard to follow. Everybody else is pretty much insignificant. Most people who see this would probably wonder who the heck is Noctis, why is the crystal so important, why is this country (Nifleheim) taking over the other countries, etc, and only way to get answers is to play the game. But that's the point of the movie, to draw in people to play XV. So with Kingsglaive's vague storytelling and cliffhanger ending, it's definitely bound to reel some people in.

Also, small personal qualm I had. Tabata kept saying how Luna was a strong character. Imo, she played the typical FF role of heroine who needs people to keep saving her over and over. Luna is a grown woman, not a teenager like the other FF heroines. She has no excuse to act so helpless.