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Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, Part One
Oct. 14th, 2016 08:45 amI am feeling super attention deficit this morning, so I'm going to have to make multiple posts about Kingsglaive over the course of the day. To be honest, I also felt super attention deficit with Kingsglaive itself, which I had to watch over multiple evenings this past week. The fault lies primarily with me and not the movie, which is not a shining triumph of cinema but thankfully not as bad as I thought it would be. Still, it has issues.
The plot is compli... you know what, I'll write about the plot later.
I tried to watch Kingsglaive in Japanese, but the lip syncing was terrible. Even though the director and staff are Japanese, the voice actors, motion capture actors, and 3D models are all American and European, so after about half an hour I gave up on the Japanese track and switched to English. This was the right choice.
Aaron Paul (playing the hero, or "Disposable Soldier Bishie") does a fantastic job with the material, as does Sean Bean (who plays the old king, or "Now I Have Daddy Issues"). The real standout is Lena Headey, who voices Lunafreya, the kidnapped princess who is being set up as the love interest of Noctis. Headey's acting is sensitive and emotionally resonant...
...which is uncanny, because the animated character has very little affect. I think this is supposed to have something to do with the fact that she's been a prisoner for all of her adult life, but Lunafreya's lack of facial expression is taken to a ridiculous extreme. To give an example, she is a passenger during two dangerous car chases, and throughout both she literally never breaks a sweat or gets a hair out of place. In one scene the car she's riding in has flipped and is skidding precariously along the roof of a building as it bursts into flames, but her face is completely blank and peaceful, like she's drinking tea and watching the sun rise. I'm no expert on human psychology, but it stands to reason that even the most perfect of princesses would express anxiety in this situation – or pain, given the crazy angle her neck bends when her head hits the roof of the car.
I think my problem with Lunafreya is that I watched her way more closely than I was supposed to. I wanted the story to be about her, but Kingsglaive wanted me to pay attention to the male characters instead. My own tendency to identify with female characters aside, Headey's performance really is excellent, and she stole every scene she was in. I would settle down into a mindset of "maybe this movie is going to be good after all," but then the focus would jerk back to the dudes and their explosions, and I would get up and go do something else.
Speaking of getting up and doing something else, more on this later.
The plot is compli... you know what, I'll write about the plot later.
I tried to watch Kingsglaive in Japanese, but the lip syncing was terrible. Even though the director and staff are Japanese, the voice actors, motion capture actors, and 3D models are all American and European, so after about half an hour I gave up on the Japanese track and switched to English. This was the right choice.
Aaron Paul (playing the hero, or "Disposable Soldier Bishie") does a fantastic job with the material, as does Sean Bean (who plays the old king, or "Now I Have Daddy Issues"). The real standout is Lena Headey, who voices Lunafreya, the kidnapped princess who is being set up as the love interest of Noctis. Headey's acting is sensitive and emotionally resonant...
...which is uncanny, because the animated character has very little affect. I think this is supposed to have something to do with the fact that she's been a prisoner for all of her adult life, but Lunafreya's lack of facial expression is taken to a ridiculous extreme. To give an example, she is a passenger during two dangerous car chases, and throughout both she literally never breaks a sweat or gets a hair out of place. In one scene the car she's riding in has flipped and is skidding precariously along the roof of a building as it bursts into flames, but her face is completely blank and peaceful, like she's drinking tea and watching the sun rise. I'm no expert on human psychology, but it stands to reason that even the most perfect of princesses would express anxiety in this situation – or pain, given the crazy angle her neck bends when her head hits the roof of the car.
I think my problem with Lunafreya is that I watched her way more closely than I was supposed to. I wanted the story to be about her, but Kingsglaive wanted me to pay attention to the male characters instead. My own tendency to identify with female characters aside, Headey's performance really is excellent, and she stole every scene she was in. I would settle down into a mindset of "maybe this movie is going to be good after all," but then the focus would jerk back to the dudes and their explosions, and I would get up and go do something else.
Speaking of getting up and doing something else, more on this later.
