To many fans, Final Fantasy VII remains the greatest game in the RPG franchise. To some, it may even be the greatest game ever made. That may be because the game still holds up incredibly well to this day. The visuals are outdated, but the storytelling and gameplay are still top notch.
Final Fantasy VII enjoys a strong fan base to this very day. Those fans have created numerous projects from art, animation, films and stories. The ultimate fan fiction emerged in the form of Square Enix’s own spin-off games like Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus. The latest fan work – a live action film from Italian directors Gionata Medeot and Mattia Ferraro – deserves your attention.
Gut reaction: it’s pretty good. The actress playing Aeris captures the character fairly well. It’s hard to get past how cartoonish the costume looks though. The wrist bands looking like they’re made out of cardboard. The same goes for Barret’s handgun which looks out of place in the realistic atmosphere.
Overall, however, I like it a lot. I think Final Fantasy VII fans could really get behind a project like this as well. Advent Children wasn’t exactly the Final Fantasy VII movie many fans were hoping it would be. It had great fight choreography, but it did away with everything that made the original game’s characters and story so special.
Medeot and Ferraro intend to make their fan film into a full production that covers the entire plot of the game. You can follow the progress of the production over at the film’s Facebook page.