On the plus side, “Assassin’s Creed” looks a little less
terrible comparatively.
The fortuitous timing of several high profile adaptations
hitting within the span of the summer season allowed me to indulge in discussions
of the cinematic worth and value of video games regarding their “controversial”
history of film adaptations. Little did I realize that mere days after ending
this series I would come face to silver screen with a microcosm of everything
wrong with the video game industry approaching their own material for movies
without the buffer of veterans dealing in the craft of cinema.
Set in the world of Eos, The kingdoms of Lucis and Niflheim
open up negotiations for peace after years of armed conflict, built upon the
political marriage of royal heirs Prince Noctis and Princess Lunafreya.
Unfortunately, Niflheim’s agenda to seize power via the
Lucis king’s Ring of Lucii leads to a betrayal of this peace, placing the life
of the princess in danger. The only person that can stop the conspiracy is Nyx
Ulric, a member of the Kingsglaive, an elite military unit granted magical abilities
by the Lucian king.
If any of that sounded like gibberish, rest assured, you’re
not alone; it’s just as stupid as it sounds in the film itself.
To be fair, one of the biggest consistent flaws of the “Final
Fantasy” games has been the tendency for its almost “Dune-esque” lores to wind
up with their heads up their asses but unlike those games, which focus on relatable
outsiders learning about new aspects of their world, feature length and
diverting interactive experiences to make the knowledge of foreign cultures
more digestible, contain in-universe dictionaries and codexes for the
ficitional terminology, or some combination of the three, this film lacks those
benefits of media formatting.
“Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV” will occasionally offer a
single line of explanation for less than half of its nonsensical flailing of
magical mechanics and deity worship that is never decently laid out beyond a
dull opening exposition dump that makes 5-10 minutes feel like an entire act of
the nearly 2 hour feature.
This general disregard for defining its own critical concepts
is symptomatic of a larger problem; “Kingsglaive ” is more in love with its own
mythology than the basics of storytelling, which would have been problematic in
a videogame but renders a non-interactive film a chore to sit through.
Tons of lavish visual detail is put into creatures, battle
techniques, and settings clearly designed to drive action sequences rather than
feed into plot complexities or bolster character drama. This was clearly
intended to push the release of the upcoming “Final Fnatasy XV” and its more
action oriented approach to combat, as, ignoring the awkward pacing of the film
between action sequences, the battles all offer an admittedly visceral appeal
when thinking to yourself “I might be able to do that with a controller.” As a
movie however, the result comes off as watching thinly defined card board cut
outs resembling human beings that you don’t care about punch and blow things up
for vaguely defined reasons.
“Kingsglaive” was clearly conceived of and executed by people
used to storytelling through a medium intended to emphasize payoff through
means of interactivity. The film was clearly meant to be a marketing tool to
promote the upcoming game but its vague presentation of a visually inconsistent
world through a story that’s simultaneously paper thin yet highly convoluted,
it’s not doing the brand any favors.
Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of all of this is that within
the movie, you can see several plot threads that could have made a worthwhile
feature alone had they been beefed up and added focus.
“Kingsglaive” could have been the story of a forsaken
soldier driven to the edge of treason before chasing redemption after seeing
what his actions have wrought. It could have been about a strictly procedural
man whose code brings him to fight for his nation despite being destined to be
viewed as a monster for it. It could have been about a Princess whose entire
world is collapsing around her for reasons she wants to discover but must set
aside for the moment merely to survive.
Less would have been more but the final result of game
designers and cutscene directors making a movie amounts to a cutscene roughly 2
hours in length for a game that is still nearly a year off from release; the
worst case scenario of video game adaptations occurring in the opposite
direction from what Hollywood tends to provide.
Maybe it will satisfy those willing to overlook its flaws
for a glimpse of the new set of toys they can look forward to playing with on
their Next Generation consoles, but to anybody else, “Kingsglaive” should stand
as a testament that the key to making a good video game movie will not be from
shirking the film industry entirely but through an equal cooperation of parties
with some eye set towards an artistic achievement in mind.
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