Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV

Just watched Kingsglaive. I have a lot of thoughts about this movie, which is never a good sign.

First, I should say that I haven't played the Final Fantasy series in a long time. The last one I played all the way through was FFX. So my first concern was whether there would be a barrier to entry--an unbreachable wall, if you would. To the film's credit, I more or less understood the status quo.

This movie serves as a prequel to the game. I know this because the main characters of the game do not appear until the very end. This was the equivalent of the Star Wars prequel trilogy--or Rogue One, if I'm being generous. The drawback is that none of the featured characters seem very interesting, nor do they seem to have much agency. Their character arc is to sacrifice themselves so that the (hopefully) more interesting main characters can do the job in the video game. It's like someone made an entire movie about Biggs Darklighter.

It felt very much like no characters in the movie made any real decisions. The movie was a series of cutscenes, tolerating no deviation. All momentum, no humanity. The Uncanny Valley didn't help either.

The characters are little more than archetypes with a bit of backstory. Our stalwart hero is interchangeable with any number of stalwart heroes. He is a soldier who talks of duty and lofty ideals. For that matter, the king and the princess do as well. There are almost no scenes that humanize these characters, save perhaps a few that occur very early in the movie and become buried by the subsequent action sequences. I mean, tell a fucking joke! It's hard to take seriousness seriously these days! You have to break it up with human moments!

The themes of the film seem almost irrelevant. They appear only in dialogue characters exchange when they are confronting one another. The villain can't break free from the past; the hero fights for the future. I'm not even sure why the protagonists and antagonists always talk to each other while they're trying to kill each other. When did that trope begin? "I'm trying to kill you, but first I must convince you that my perspective is correct."

The action sequences are flashy and extravagant. And also boring. As usual, the stakes are as high as they could possibly be, probably to match the budget. But it is folly to create such lengthy sequences without doing everything you can to make sure we care. Filmmakers seem to think that they need good action sequences to make us care about the story. In reality, they need good story to make us care about the action. Most of my favorite moments from Die Hard are the human moments. I barely remember the large action sequences. And the industry's inability to recognize that a good story should always come first is... exhausting.

And it's not like there wasn't room for a good story. There was clearly a lot of love and attention given to this movie's characters and lore. But as with the recent Fantastic Beasts film, none of that love and attention translated to a movie that told its story well.