Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

More variety, more content -- it's time to live-blog a bad movie! We begin Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children:

• 10 minutes in, I'm having a lot of "Where are we? Who is this? What's going on?" moments. And I remember the game pretty well.
• The real question is, will the movie be better than the game? The bar's not set very high! (LATER: No.)
• OK, the gang call Cloud "brother" and keep asking about their "mother." Gee, Cloud, d'ya think maybe they're talking about Jenova?
• These character models are well into the disturbing part of the "uncanny valley." (shudder)
• This fight between Tifa and what's-his-face is just dumb. "Make it like the Matrix, but more so" doesn't work out well.
• Am I wrong, or is Tifa significantly more modest than she used to be?
• OK, it made me laugh that the bad guy had the "victory" fanfare as his cell phone ring.
• Did the little girl just throw a Materia at the bad guy? Where'd that big box come from? Why did it cause him to leave Tifa alone? This scene continues to make progressively less sense.
• Can we just revive Aeris already? That's the only reason anyone's watching this.
• Cloud looks almost as confused as me.
• Hey Cloud, the children are gone! You don't care? Cloud: "I don't care about anything! I'm angsty!"
• Wow, the bad guy turns the water black. No Jenova blood for oil!
• This scene would work better without the silly heavy metal theme for the bad guys. They're bad!
• This fight in the Forgotten City is even sillier than the first. Wait, what's this red thing flying around? Is that someone's blood? Where's Cloud? It's over? What just happened? Oh, forget it.
• Oh, the red thing was Vincent in cloak-only form or something. OK.
• Huh? Now are we flashing back to before Cloud left? What, did this movie make too much sense told in chronological order?
• Philosophize blah blah Lifestream nightmare existence etc.
• It usually looks like there's no relationship between the voices and the people on-screen. That's not good. It doesn't help that most of the voice actors sound like they're on powerful medication.
• Yay, every single other main character shows up in the span of 10 seconds at just the right moment!
• We're fighting a summon? What is this, FFX? And if that's supposed to be Bahamut, he's awfully wimpy so far.
• So far the music has ranged from classical to choral to heavy metal, and not a bit of it has been either good or suited to the scene. Mr. Uematsu's phoning it in big-time.
• *tweet* Technical foul! Bahamut-or-whoever just fired a humongous energy blast straight down at Cloud with the city below him. Where'd it go?
• Something involving a motorcycle chase. I'll figure out the plot (snicker) implications later.
• First good music! It's Jenova's theme from the game, of course.
• Sephiroth: "I'm going to destroy this planet and make it into a spaceship and go find a new planet and create a shining future there." Cloud: "What about this planet?" Sephiroth: "That's up to you." Huh? That's nonsensical even by crazy villain standards!
• Cloud's falling through white light! Now he meets Aeris and she forgives him for not being able to save her.
• Well, half right.
• Yay for Cloud the Baptist! By the way, why is there a church if there's no religion?
• Translation of that final look from Tifa: "OK, are you finally over Aeris so we can get on with things?"
• Who was that guy who appeared with Aeris? Was that bad-guy-but-he's-better-now? (UPDATE: I guess it was Zack / Zachs / whatever. You don't remember him? Me neither.)
  
• What? The movie's over?
  
• I like the sequence of Cloud riding through countryside under the credits. Best part of the movie.

UPDATE: I have the "la la something Sephiroth" choral theme stuck in my head. I didn't like it the first time around. Help!