Review of Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016) by Alex A — 31 Dec 2016

Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive is directed by Takeshi Nozue who was also the co-director of Advent Children, and it stars Aaron Paul, Lena Headey, and Sean Bean in a prequel to Final Fantasy XV about a king that protects Lucis from evil, and when there's a peace treaty if the king's son Noctis and Lady Lunafreya, it turned out to be a Trojan horse as Lucis is attacked, and the Kingsglaive has to rescue Lunafreya and protect Lucis.

I finally got to see it after the previous films, and I thought after watching the film, I'll get more of an understanding towards the game. I did understand about what happened to the city in the game thanks to the film, but other then that, it's pretty separate on its own, and I surprisingly liked it, although it's not quite as good as Advent Children.

The acting from the main characters is pretty good, and the CGI is just as terrific looking as the previous films. The action scenes look spectacular that it's more creative than Advent Children, but Advent Children has more action scenes, so they're both in the middle here.

The characters in here are a bit better than The Spirits Within, but I only know a bit about the main character and his buddy, and the closest character aspect that I got out of it, was feeling sorry for what he's going through, which even though it's not enough, it's at least something.

The plot in this is actually not generic, however, there's not much substance going on as it's really basic, a bit too basic for me to care, or that it's a bit hard to follow. The script at times is really dumb which the main actors says it fine because they're really good, but as for the supporting cast, they're not only not as good as the main cast, but it also makes the bad dialogue stand out more.

The score by John R. Graham is better than I thought from an American film composer doing a film like this. The rest of the characters in this however is just weak, and the villain, while fun to watch, is just there as basically a decoy for the more main villain of Final Fantasy XV.

In fact, at times it does feel like it's trying to introduce the game when really it should've been its own thing, and that the game could just do it itself. At times, the film also does product placement, and I find that really distracting because the previous Final Fantasy films never done that.

It is in there for a few seconds and people probably didn't mind it, but for me, I didn't want that in a Final Fantasy film. Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive is a good film that is more fun than The Spirits Within, but there's more flaws than Advent Children for me to think its consider to be as good as that.