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AC Apologist
Eh, there've been several entries on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ff7 whining about how AC wasn't their vision of awesomeness. Dude, it was a brainfart that went out of control. What did you expect? Just STFU and enjoy the pretty. Regardless, since this current complaint is the most tl;dr of them, we here at Sketch and Destroy have decided to answer the queries to the best to our ability. And of course not on the comm because I'm a wuss. I'm going to stay away from the asthetic complaints because they're asthetic blah-blah our own opinions on beauty blah-blah Chofi actually liked Cloud's new 'do blah-blah.
Which brings me to another irk of the movie which is the slapstick comedy fightscenes, in particular, the fight between the trio and the Turks.
The Turks are not as useless as they seem in AC. Rude threw a knife into Don Corneo's back from thirty feet away. Tseng and Elena mastered the Temple of the Ancients puzzles in half the time it took AVALANCHE to. Reno is about as bumbling, but he handles it way better in the game. The scene with the church flowerbed comes to mind.
And the other bits of the game where you run into them they're out drinking (Junon and Wutai), discussing their current crushes (Gongaga), leaking company info (Mythril Mines), and barreling down snowboard slopes (Icicle). Dude, the Turks are the loveably incompetent goons. Their whole schtick is that they're supposed to be these total baddasses and instead you see them as human.
Besides, I think the movie made Elena look more competent than the game or Before Crisis does. Of course, that might be because she doesn't speak, and that's identified as one of her major problems.
In the movie, the Turks start out being as cool as before (didn't Tseng die at the Temple of the Ancients?) at Healin, it was pretty accurate, as well as Rufus' attempted speech and Cloud's impatience. That was a nice scene. But as soon as the fighting begins, the motion capturing is OBVIOUSLY on fast foward as Reno climbs a tower in three seconds, and they get their asses kicked by Loz and Yazoo, who, let's face it, aren't nearly as challenging as the monsters in the Gelnika, who they had no trouble getting by.
Didn't Loz kick Tifa's ass in the church? And didn't Tifa also have little to no trouble on the Gelnika? (At least she didn't in my game, as she's an instrument of death. Anyway...) Yeah, she got him, but he managed to get up from the pwning and then give her the smack-down. Cloud had problems with the trio in the Ancient Capital and had to rely on Vincent's cape-fu to save him, that is, escape. ("You really can't save anyone, can you?") Besides, the Turks get a bit of a last laugh during the motorcycle chase, don't they?
And when Bahamut shows up (I'm guessing this is a new form of the dragon king, as he doesn't come close to resembling any of the ones from the game *headdesk*) Reno smacks Rude in the head with his Electro-Mag rod.
Excuse me? They're partners, they have been working together for years, that just wouldn't happen!
This Bahamut is being called Bahamut-Sin. New form.
Anyway, I thought that you've already established that they're the comic relief. So, what's so shocking about a prat fall? In most of your battles with the Turks, you beat on them and then they run away. Given their proximity, yeah, something like that'll happen. I'll give you that they're supposed to be rather black-ops, especially when it comes to Company secrets, so it's a little out of chracter in that respect, sure. But for the drinkers who let you off because they're on holiday? Seems just about right.
And now we get to the PCs. I'll leave Cloud for last and start with Yuffie. Yuffie Kisaragi, the only character who had a plan for what to do when they beat Sephiroth. The deal was, once Sephiroth was destroyed, and The Planet saved, she would steal their materia, and you were okay knowing that, because hey, who needs Materia once the Planet is rid of all evil (the sequel in and of itself answers the question of 'are we naturally evil' which was the whole point of the ending, and the games popularity, which was why I was opposed to the compilation in the first place, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that we are inherantly good and humanity survives).
So what happens to Yuffie? She goes back to Wutai. That's it.
Hold on, Wutai is one of the only towns where things don't get resolved! North Corel and Fort Condor are either destroyed or saved, Nibelheim is a Shinra puppet show, probably disbanded after the company's fall. We're assuming that all of Shinra's regime is crumbled, and that the good and righteous peasants create new kingdoms etc.
...but there is resolution. After Yuffie defeats her father in the Pagoda, he basically says that he's been sitting in a stink for nothing. He can't do anything because he had the will but not the strength. He knows that Avalanche can because they have both will and strength. Yeah, Wutai was under Shinra's control, but it was also the only place where the original power structure was kept around, even if it was ineffective. Yeah, the resolution's defeatist, but sometimes knowing when to quit keeps you alive.
Now we get to Wutai, which wasn't controlled by Shinra at all, but instead was left in the wake of the Mako war, as the only city left on the island. Turned into a resort, a circus. As the wide-range knowledge and use of Materia spread, Wutai's supply ran short, and the people in it were sitting there, dishonored.
This is why we forgive Yuffie and almost want to give her our Materia, once we're done with it. So why then, doesn't that happen? Why is all of the Materia in a box and not evenly distributed among the Wutaians? Why does Yuffie travel around with Cid in the Shera, ready to parachute down when her friends need her the most?
Some of me wants to have had exprience in geopolitical machinations in order to express what I'm about to say in better terms. Since that won't happen, I'll say it like this: Shinra didn't have to take over because of said defeatist tendencies. They totally screwed with morale and patriotism and now the best way to make things better seems to be to pay homage to the almighty gil. Sure, there's still some idea of tradition, but what's tradition going to do when you're not using it as a vanguard to preserve yourself and lift yourself up?
And why not simply return the materia to the Planet? It's condensed mako, which is in turn condensed Lifestream. So, wouldn't it be best to simply return the stuff back to the Planet so that it can heal itself that much faster?
Yuffie knows what's going on in Wutai. She mentions kids disappearing during her phone message to Cloud. She may be with Avalanche, but she knows what's up. And they may even keep in touch over phones regardless. Vincent calls everyone to get them together, Cid picks everyone up.
Cid Highwind married Shera, which I was very happy about, and he even named the new ship after her (this is the same ship that exploded out of the Highwind in the final FMV, I'm assuming?). Not much is wrong about Cid, aside from the fact that he had no character at all. He didn't fall asleep during the explainations, he didn't swear, he wasn't as warmhearted, nor was he brash and cynical. But these things I can overlook, because he was barely in the movie, and that part bugs me the most, as he is, in my opinion, the alpha and omega of Cids.
...Cid was in there for all of five mintues. There are no swear words in Japanese. You just address yourself and others in varying degrees of rudeness. That's why Squeenix makes it such a big deal to place the different forms of address the charcters use in the Ultimaina Omega. He couldn't fall asleep because he was piloting the damn ship. Part of Cid's cynicism comes from his inability to fly. He thought Shera fucked up the Shinra 26 launch, the Highwind was taken from him, and then the Tiny Bronco was shot. He starts getting better after you regain the Highwind, and then after realizing that Shera didn't fuck up the launch.
Barret Wallace. First of all, the cornrows. Why?
Secondly, why wasn't he with Marlene? This is one of the two character rapings that just made me cringe.
The WHOLE POINT OF BARRET IS THAT HE IS DOING EVERYTHING FOR MARLENE! So why, then, after he doesn't have to fight anymore, does he leave her in an orphanage and go off doing oil mining? Oil is ALSO the lifeblood of the planet! Barret is a coal miner, it's in his blood, it was always in his blood, it harms no one and is a proven source of energy! Why then, does he go bananas over oil fields and forget all about his daughter?!
If Barret is doing everything for Marlene, then why did he (reluctantly) entrust her to a woman he only met minutes before (Aerith), who then hands her off to a total stranger (Mrs. Gainsborough)? And he leaves her there, even after leaving Midgar. She was taken hostage afterwards so that Reeve could have a bargaining chip. Yes, everything turns out all right, but since Barret should have taken Marlene to mine oil (which is also rather dangerous), he should have taken her with them on the trip to defeat Sephiroth.
Coal "harms no one"? No matter what you're burning, it's still going to screw up the air if you burn too much. Yeah, that even goes for wood. It's still mining, which, to reiterate, is dangerous. Yeah, so why not go towards the windmills in use in Cosmo Canyon or some such? I don't know. He does mention Marlene in the message. Yeah, it might have been somewhat off-handedly, but she was still there. He mentions concern over her during the Bahamut Sin fight, too. That particular time is also the first sound bite we get from him during the development of the movie. "Marlene's safe, right?"
Okay, must calm down. AC Barret just makes me really mad. Let's move on to someone who hasn't changed much.
Cait Sith. Still a coward, still pretty much useless, and still annoying. Reeve didn't make an appearance, but the movie can't be perfect.
Phew, much better.
Tifa Lockheart now. Tifa has rebuilt Seventh Heaven on the fringes of Midgar. This I understand, she is strong and resiliant. She is also consumed by her love for Cloud, still unreturned even after their intimate mind-melding in the Lifestream and that steamy night on the rocks at the end of Disc II. I guess she's accepted it, because the Chocobo head obsessed over Aeris even until the final moments of the game and two years later, well that takes a number on someone.
But taking care of orphans? Just because she has giant mammories, doesn't mean she's the motherly type. In fact, in the game it proves she has little skill in taking care of the young ("Marlene, watch the bar while we're gone..."). Running an orphanage isn't what I imagined she'd be doing.
She did take care of Cloud, though. That's how she was motherly in the game. She tried to take care of Cloud in the best way possible. Yes, for part of the game this means that she fed into his delusions and kept quiet about her idea of the truth. But this also means that she protected him in Mideel and helped him literally pull himself together.
She had enough sense to know that Aerith would trust Marlene. She tried to console Red XIII when he was worried about being a Sephiroth clone. She. Gives. A. Damn. That's probably why she started the orphanage. Too many kids around with no where to go. Something like Cloud at the Sector Seven station, if you think about it. She's probably just trying to grasp for the affection that she thinks she needs. She wanted Cloud, which is why she acted like his tinhat for the Reunion. He still went, but he wasn't like the Black Capes. She can be a smothering mother, I suppose.
Vincent has been up to more adventures, so once DoC comes out maybe there's an explaination about his change of character. The main thing about Vincent is, his entire quest was the atone for his sins. For the first half of his adventure in FFVII, he just wanted to go back to sleep, but he realized, as they continued, that perhaps sins can be forgiven, and not just punished. Then, he kills Hojo and Sephiroth, and feels the warm glowy-glow of redemption (right before the human race is wiped clean off the face of the Earth, but that's just a theory).
So why, then, when he is asked if sins can be forgiven, he responds with "I've never tried it."
I'm sorry, I thought he was the expert on that sort of thing.
He's still got issues. I'm still not throwing anything down until Dirge of Cerberus, but just killing off your tormentor is not going to wipe the slate. He's still got to deal with portions of himself that are inhuman. I think he's more about flagelation ("I'm doing this penance so that my sins can be forgiven."), rather than straight out absolution. That's where the "I've never tried it" comes in. Vincent's still got hang-ups, and Cloud still has hang-ups. Vincent's moved on past to the point where the sin has to have penance attached to it, and then absolution starts.
There is a moment on the Shinra No. 26, and in that moment it completely summed up Cloud's change in the game. If you recall, at the beginning of the game he has a real chip on his shoulder. But here, in space, Cid is stuck underneath Oxygen Tank 8, the metal piercing through his leg and attaching him to the grated walkway. Cloud and [other party member] try to lift it, and Cid tells them to leave before it's too late.
Cloud, in a text box that is frequently overlooked, says "I'm not leaving without my friends."
Two years later, has anything stayed that way? Or has he gone back to the days of "Don't get me wrong, I don't care about AVALANCHE or the Planet, either!"
Let's talk about storytelling for a moment. What is the hero's journey? What was the point of having Cloud as a main character? Now that we know that he is simply going to go back to normal, do we really care about what happens to him in the meanwhile?
The point of a good story is that the character doesn't go back to normal. Every character has a classic flaw that he/she must overcome in order to face the trials and challenges set out for them by the story (something else the movie lacked was a story).
In Advent Children, the basic message I got from the character of Cloud was "Okay, he did all that stuff with the Planet, and walked the world on foot and made friends of enemies and discovered the meaning of friendship and overcame the Jenova inside of him and his hatred for Sephiroth, as well as his guilt about summoning Meteor and for allowing Aeris to die. (If I recall, by the end of the game he understood why Aeris had to die and that was to save the planet, even if Holy "had the opposite effect" and instead wiped out humanity, but if that were the case the sequel itself would not exist.) The entire point of having Cloud Strife as the hero is that he is the one that changes the most, and for the better."
And now, where is he? He's a lone wolf, with new shoulder armor to visually represent that. He seems more like Squall at the beginning of Final Fantasy VIII, as the quiet, unfriendly emo kid who says "Whatever" all the time. In AC, Cloud blames himself even MORE for Aeris' death, because Sephiroth is no longer around to blame. He is suffering from GeoStigma, which is sort of the aftermath of the Jenova inside of him (which explains why Rufus has it) despite the fact that they killed Jenova.
This part of the movie I really liked, because it explained why the Ancients only sealed Jenova and didn't kill her, because now she's in the Lifstream and fucking up all the kids. It doesn't really matter that the kids are older than two, because let's face it, the plot doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't hold water. And I'm not even approaching the subject of Jenova's fight to stay alive in the first place, because in reality, she can't do shit as a part of the Lifestream, only as an invader of such, while still being a living entity, albeit an alien from outer space. She didn't want to be killed, because when she is dead, she is useless. This is why the plot of AC sucks. Jenova is dead and she has no power.
If I recall, the Reunion already happened. All of the Jenova cells, including the ones inside Hojo and Cloud, came together in the Crater and summoned Meteor. After that, Jenova's parts synthesized and became the final Jenova that you fight, which I'm assuming is her true form. There are some plot holes in the game as well, Lucrecia, for instance, and the fact that Jenova cells stayed with Hojo but not with Cloud, as he was able to overcome her power and defeat Sephiroth's final form, a battle that takes place inside Cloud's mind.
And it was because of the reunion and the extraction of Jenova that Cloud was finally able to win the battle over his body with Sephiroth, and prevent Sephiroth from returning EVER again.
And then he returns, for NO GOOD REASON. We saw it coming, because Sephiroth was one of, if not the coolest and scariest villain(s) of all time. And seeing Sephiroth and Cloud fight atop Shinra HQ was actually something I was hoping for even as I played the game all those years ago. That made me quite happy, but while it was happening, the whole fact that it was horribly, horribly wrong prevented me from enjoying the fights to their fullest
The whole point is that happily ever after didn't happen. Yes, the hero's journey is so that the hero does not continue to be what he is in the beginning. Cloud isn't. Cloud had a chip on his shoulder. Cloud thought that he was Zack. Not entirely, but just enough that Tifa needed to keep an eye on him. At this point, the suffering is Cloud's alone, not the Cloud-Zack amalgam. Cloud pulled himself together, but didn't pull himself out. That's the problem that he needs to resolve: that he's human and that mistakes happen.
The Geostigma I see as Jenova and Sephiroth giving him the finger as they exit. I mean, he was trying to get out, and then he's sucked back in again. If that happened to anyone, there would be feelings of helplessness and resentment. If you keep on going and going and keep on meeting failure, you learn helplessness.
It's not Jenova pulling the strings. It's Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's will caused the Reunion to happen in the North Cave, where he was, rather than at Midgar, where Jenova's body was. It was so that he could gain enough energy for Meteor and for his godhood. So long as Cloud's got guilt/resentment/anger towards Aerith, Zack, Nibelheim, and the rest, he still has some part of Sephiroth within him. ("Stay there, trapped within my memories." "I will not become a memory.") The connection is within the cells. Cloud still has them, hence the Geostigma and the Trio calling him "brother". He overcame what was still a liability in his body. Cloud had to learn to rely on others on top of himself all over again.
ff7 whining about how AC wasn't their vision of awesomeness. Dude, it was a brainfart that went out of control. What did you expect? Just STFU and enjoy the pretty. Regardless, since this current complaint is the most tl;dr of them, we here at Sketch and Destroy have decided to answer the queries to the best to our ability. Which brings me to another irk of the movie which is the slapstick comedy fightscenes, in particular, the fight between the trio and the Turks.
The Turks are not as useless as they seem in AC. Rude threw a knife into Don Corneo's back from thirty feet away. Tseng and Elena mastered the Temple of the Ancients puzzles in half the time it took AVALANCHE to. Reno is about as bumbling, but he handles it way better in the game. The scene with the church flowerbed comes to mind.
And the other bits of the game where you run into them they're out drinking (Junon and Wutai), discussing their current crushes (Gongaga), leaking company info (Mythril Mines), and barreling down snowboard slopes (Icicle). Dude, the Turks are the loveably incompetent goons. Their whole schtick is that they're supposed to be these total baddasses and instead you see them as human.
Besides, I think the movie made Elena look more competent than the game or Before Crisis does. Of course, that might be because she doesn't speak, and that's identified as one of her major problems.
In the movie, the Turks start out being as cool as before (didn't Tseng die at the Temple of the Ancients?) at Healin, it was pretty accurate, as well as Rufus' attempted speech and Cloud's impatience. That was a nice scene. But as soon as the fighting begins, the motion capturing is OBVIOUSLY on fast foward as Reno climbs a tower in three seconds, and they get their asses kicked by Loz and Yazoo, who, let's face it, aren't nearly as challenging as the monsters in the Gelnika, who they had no trouble getting by.
Didn't Loz kick Tifa's ass in the church? And didn't Tifa also have little to no trouble on the Gelnika? (At least she didn't in my game, as she's an instrument of death. Anyway...) Yeah, she got him, but he managed to get up from the pwning and then give her the smack-down. Cloud had problems with the trio in the Ancient Capital and had to rely on Vincent's cape-fu to save him, that is, escape. ("You really can't save anyone, can you?") Besides, the Turks get a bit of a last laugh during the motorcycle chase, don't they?
And when Bahamut shows up (I'm guessing this is a new form of the dragon king, as he doesn't come close to resembling any of the ones from the game *headdesk*) Reno smacks Rude in the head with his Electro-Mag rod.
Excuse me? They're partners, they have been working together for years, that just wouldn't happen!
This Bahamut is being called Bahamut-Sin. New form.
Anyway, I thought that you've already established that they're the comic relief. So, what's so shocking about a prat fall? In most of your battles with the Turks, you beat on them and then they run away. Given their proximity, yeah, something like that'll happen. I'll give you that they're supposed to be rather black-ops, especially when it comes to Company secrets, so it's a little out of chracter in that respect, sure. But for the drinkers who let you off because they're on holiday? Seems just about right.
And now we get to the PCs. I'll leave Cloud for last and start with Yuffie. Yuffie Kisaragi, the only character who had a plan for what to do when they beat Sephiroth. The deal was, once Sephiroth was destroyed, and The Planet saved, she would steal their materia, and you were okay knowing that, because hey, who needs Materia once the Planet is rid of all evil (the sequel in and of itself answers the question of 'are we naturally evil' which was the whole point of the ending, and the games popularity, which was why I was opposed to the compilation in the first place, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that we are inherantly good and humanity survives).
So what happens to Yuffie? She goes back to Wutai. That's it.
Hold on, Wutai is one of the only towns where things don't get resolved! North Corel and Fort Condor are either destroyed or saved, Nibelheim is a Shinra puppet show, probably disbanded after the company's fall. We're assuming that all of Shinra's regime is crumbled, and that the good and righteous peasants create new kingdoms etc.
...but there is resolution. After Yuffie defeats her father in the Pagoda, he basically says that he's been sitting in a stink for nothing. He can't do anything because he had the will but not the strength. He knows that Avalanche can because they have both will and strength. Yeah, Wutai was under Shinra's control, but it was also the only place where the original power structure was kept around, even if it was ineffective. Yeah, the resolution's defeatist, but sometimes knowing when to quit keeps you alive.
Now we get to Wutai, which wasn't controlled by Shinra at all, but instead was left in the wake of the Mako war, as the only city left on the island. Turned into a resort, a circus. As the wide-range knowledge and use of Materia spread, Wutai's supply ran short, and the people in it were sitting there, dishonored.
This is why we forgive Yuffie and almost want to give her our Materia, once we're done with it. So why then, doesn't that happen? Why is all of the Materia in a box and not evenly distributed among the Wutaians? Why does Yuffie travel around with Cid in the Shera, ready to parachute down when her friends need her the most?
Some of me wants to have had exprience in geopolitical machinations in order to express what I'm about to say in better terms. Since that won't happen, I'll say it like this: Shinra didn't have to take over because of said defeatist tendencies. They totally screwed with morale and patriotism and now the best way to make things better seems to be to pay homage to the almighty gil. Sure, there's still some idea of tradition, but what's tradition going to do when you're not using it as a vanguard to preserve yourself and lift yourself up?
And why not simply return the materia to the Planet? It's condensed mako, which is in turn condensed Lifestream. So, wouldn't it be best to simply return the stuff back to the Planet so that it can heal itself that much faster?
Yuffie knows what's going on in Wutai. She mentions kids disappearing during her phone message to Cloud. She may be with Avalanche, but she knows what's up. And they may even keep in touch over phones regardless. Vincent calls everyone to get them together, Cid picks everyone up.
Cid Highwind married Shera, which I was very happy about, and he even named the new ship after her (this is the same ship that exploded out of the Highwind in the final FMV, I'm assuming?). Not much is wrong about Cid, aside from the fact that he had no character at all. He didn't fall asleep during the explainations, he didn't swear, he wasn't as warmhearted, nor was he brash and cynical. But these things I can overlook, because he was barely in the movie, and that part bugs me the most, as he is, in my opinion, the alpha and omega of Cids.
...Cid was in there for all of five mintues. There are no swear words in Japanese. You just address yourself and others in varying degrees of rudeness. That's why Squeenix makes it such a big deal to place the different forms of address the charcters use in the Ultimaina Omega. He couldn't fall asleep because he was piloting the damn ship. Part of Cid's cynicism comes from his inability to fly. He thought Shera fucked up the Shinra 26 launch, the Highwind was taken from him, and then the Tiny Bronco was shot. He starts getting better after you regain the Highwind, and then after realizing that Shera didn't fuck up the launch.
Barret Wallace. First of all, the cornrows. Why?
Secondly, why wasn't he with Marlene? This is one of the two character rapings that just made me cringe.
The WHOLE POINT OF BARRET IS THAT HE IS DOING EVERYTHING FOR MARLENE! So why, then, after he doesn't have to fight anymore, does he leave her in an orphanage and go off doing oil mining? Oil is ALSO the lifeblood of the planet! Barret is a coal miner, it's in his blood, it was always in his blood, it harms no one and is a proven source of energy! Why then, does he go bananas over oil fields and forget all about his daughter?!
If Barret is doing everything for Marlene, then why did he (reluctantly) entrust her to a woman he only met minutes before (Aerith), who then hands her off to a total stranger (Mrs. Gainsborough)? And he leaves her there, even after leaving Midgar. She was taken hostage afterwards so that Reeve could have a bargaining chip. Yes, everything turns out all right, but since Barret should have taken Marlene to mine oil (which is also rather dangerous), he should have taken her with them on the trip to defeat Sephiroth.
Coal "harms no one"? No matter what you're burning, it's still going to screw up the air if you burn too much. Yeah, that even goes for wood. It's still mining, which, to reiterate, is dangerous. Yeah, so why not go towards the windmills in use in Cosmo Canyon or some such? I don't know. He does mention Marlene in the message. Yeah, it might have been somewhat off-handedly, but she was still there. He mentions concern over her during the Bahamut Sin fight, too. That particular time is also the first sound bite we get from him during the development of the movie. "Marlene's safe, right?"
Okay, must calm down. AC Barret just makes me really mad. Let's move on to someone who hasn't changed much.
Cait Sith. Still a coward, still pretty much useless, and still annoying. Reeve didn't make an appearance, but the movie can't be perfect.
Phew, much better.
Tifa Lockheart now. Tifa has rebuilt Seventh Heaven on the fringes of Midgar. This I understand, she is strong and resiliant. She is also consumed by her love for Cloud, still unreturned even after their intimate mind-melding in the Lifestream and that steamy night on the rocks at the end of Disc II. I guess she's accepted it, because the Chocobo head obsessed over Aeris even until the final moments of the game and two years later, well that takes a number on someone.
But taking care of orphans? Just because she has giant mammories, doesn't mean she's the motherly type. In fact, in the game it proves she has little skill in taking care of the young ("Marlene, watch the bar while we're gone..."). Running an orphanage isn't what I imagined she'd be doing.
She did take care of Cloud, though. That's how she was motherly in the game. She tried to take care of Cloud in the best way possible. Yes, for part of the game this means that she fed into his delusions and kept quiet about her idea of the truth. But this also means that she protected him in Mideel and helped him literally pull himself together.
She had enough sense to know that Aerith would trust Marlene. She tried to console Red XIII when he was worried about being a Sephiroth clone. She. Gives. A. Damn. That's probably why she started the orphanage. Too many kids around with no where to go. Something like Cloud at the Sector Seven station, if you think about it. She's probably just trying to grasp for the affection that she thinks she needs. She wanted Cloud, which is why she acted like his tinhat for the Reunion. He still went, but he wasn't like the Black Capes. She can be a smothering mother, I suppose.
Vincent has been up to more adventures, so once DoC comes out maybe there's an explaination about his change of character. The main thing about Vincent is, his entire quest was the atone for his sins. For the first half of his adventure in FFVII, he just wanted to go back to sleep, but he realized, as they continued, that perhaps sins can be forgiven, and not just punished. Then, he kills Hojo and Sephiroth, and feels the warm glowy-glow of redemption (right before the human race is wiped clean off the face of the Earth, but that's just a theory).
So why, then, when he is asked if sins can be forgiven, he responds with "I've never tried it."
I'm sorry, I thought he was the expert on that sort of thing.
He's still got issues. I'm still not throwing anything down until Dirge of Cerberus, but just killing off your tormentor is not going to wipe the slate. He's still got to deal with portions of himself that are inhuman. I think he's more about flagelation ("I'm doing this penance so that my sins can be forgiven."), rather than straight out absolution. That's where the "I've never tried it" comes in. Vincent's still got hang-ups, and Cloud still has hang-ups. Vincent's moved on past to the point where the sin has to have penance attached to it, and then absolution starts.
There is a moment on the Shinra No. 26, and in that moment it completely summed up Cloud's change in the game. If you recall, at the beginning of the game he has a real chip on his shoulder. But here, in space, Cid is stuck underneath Oxygen Tank 8, the metal piercing through his leg and attaching him to the grated walkway. Cloud and [other party member] try to lift it, and Cid tells them to leave before it's too late.
Cloud, in a text box that is frequently overlooked, says "I'm not leaving without my friends."
Two years later, has anything stayed that way? Or has he gone back to the days of "Don't get me wrong, I don't care about AVALANCHE or the Planet, either!"
Let's talk about storytelling for a moment. What is the hero's journey? What was the point of having Cloud as a main character? Now that we know that he is simply going to go back to normal, do we really care about what happens to him in the meanwhile?
The point of a good story is that the character doesn't go back to normal. Every character has a classic flaw that he/she must overcome in order to face the trials and challenges set out for them by the story (something else the movie lacked was a story).
In Advent Children, the basic message I got from the character of Cloud was "Okay, he did all that stuff with the Planet, and walked the world on foot and made friends of enemies and discovered the meaning of friendship and overcame the Jenova inside of him and his hatred for Sephiroth, as well as his guilt about summoning Meteor and for allowing Aeris to die. (If I recall, by the end of the game he understood why Aeris had to die and that was to save the planet, even if Holy "had the opposite effect" and instead wiped out humanity, but if that were the case the sequel itself would not exist.) The entire point of having Cloud Strife as the hero is that he is the one that changes the most, and for the better."
And now, where is he? He's a lone wolf, with new shoulder armor to visually represent that. He seems more like Squall at the beginning of Final Fantasy VIII, as the quiet, unfriendly emo kid who says "Whatever" all the time. In AC, Cloud blames himself even MORE for Aeris' death, because Sephiroth is no longer around to blame. He is suffering from GeoStigma, which is sort of the aftermath of the Jenova inside of him (which explains why Rufus has it) despite the fact that they killed Jenova.
This part of the movie I really liked, because it explained why the Ancients only sealed Jenova and didn't kill her, because now she's in the Lifstream and fucking up all the kids. It doesn't really matter that the kids are older than two, because let's face it, the plot doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't hold water. And I'm not even approaching the subject of Jenova's fight to stay alive in the first place, because in reality, she can't do shit as a part of the Lifestream, only as an invader of such, while still being a living entity, albeit an alien from outer space. She didn't want to be killed, because when she is dead, she is useless. This is why the plot of AC sucks. Jenova is dead and she has no power.
If I recall, the Reunion already happened. All of the Jenova cells, including the ones inside Hojo and Cloud, came together in the Crater and summoned Meteor. After that, Jenova's parts synthesized and became the final Jenova that you fight, which I'm assuming is her true form. There are some plot holes in the game as well, Lucrecia, for instance, and the fact that Jenova cells stayed with Hojo but not with Cloud, as he was able to overcome her power and defeat Sephiroth's final form, a battle that takes place inside Cloud's mind.
And it was because of the reunion and the extraction of Jenova that Cloud was finally able to win the battle over his body with Sephiroth, and prevent Sephiroth from returning EVER again.
And then he returns, for NO GOOD REASON. We saw it coming, because Sephiroth was one of, if not the coolest and scariest villain(s) of all time. And seeing Sephiroth and Cloud fight atop Shinra HQ was actually something I was hoping for even as I played the game all those years ago. That made me quite happy, but while it was happening, the whole fact that it was horribly, horribly wrong prevented me from enjoying the fights to their fullest
The whole point is that happily ever after didn't happen. Yes, the hero's journey is so that the hero does not continue to be what he is in the beginning. Cloud isn't. Cloud had a chip on his shoulder. Cloud thought that he was Zack. Not entirely, but just enough that Tifa needed to keep an eye on him. At this point, the suffering is Cloud's alone, not the Cloud-Zack amalgam. Cloud pulled himself together, but didn't pull himself out. That's the problem that he needs to resolve: that he's human and that mistakes happen.
The Geostigma I see as Jenova and Sephiroth giving him the finger as they exit. I mean, he was trying to get out, and then he's sucked back in again. If that happened to anyone, there would be feelings of helplessness and resentment. If you keep on going and going and keep on meeting failure, you learn helplessness.
It's not Jenova pulling the strings. It's Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's will caused the Reunion to happen in the North Cave, where he was, rather than at Midgar, where Jenova's body was. It was so that he could gain enough energy for Meteor and for his godhood. So long as Cloud's got guilt/resentment/anger towards Aerith, Zack, Nibelheim, and the rest, he still has some part of Sephiroth within him. ("Stay there, trapped within my memories." "I will not become a memory.") The connection is within the cells. Cloud still has them, hence the Geostigma and the Trio calling him "brother". He overcame what was still a liability in his body. Cloud had to learn to rely on others on top of himself all over again.
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This looks very much like one of those "But this isn't the sequel that I wanted!" complaints.
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And this is coming from a guy who likes Jason X.
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