Production

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Advent Children began as a short film by Visual Works, a company used by Square to develop CGI scenes for their video games, based on Final Fantasy VII. Kazushige Nojima, who had written the script for the game, was brought on to write a 20-minute script. He decided to write "a story about Cloud and Tifa and the kids".^[1] The film was developed as a part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, a set of different media content intended to expand upon the world of Final Fantasy VII.^[2] Square's research and development department worked with Visual Works on the piece, and Tetsuya Nomura joined the crew after VII's director Yoshinori Kitase called him. Early in pre-production, the team thought about making Advent Children into a game. Still, Nomura decided against it, partially because Visual Works had no experience making a full game. The creators had no prior experience working on films, so they fell back on their knowledge of in-game movies.^[3]

The film was planned to focus on the characters of Cloud and Tifa in a similar way to how other titles from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII centered on certain characters; for example, Before Crisis focuses on the Turks, Crisis Core on Zack Fair, and Dirge of Cerberus on Vincent.^[2] Nomura says the film was, in its first manifestation, only going to be 20 minutes long. The original story featured someone requesting a message to be sent to Cloud; the message is relayed to Cloud through several children. When the message finally reaches Cloud, it is revealed who the messenger is. Nomura very much liked the original script, and it became the foundation of the final version. He decided to make the project longer and grander in scope when the early word of the film generated great interest among Final Fantasy VII fans, most of whom wanted something feature-length. The film's length was expanded to 100 minutes.^[4]

Takeshi Nozue and Nomura, who had first worked together on the video game Kingdom Hearts, split the role of directing, as Nomura felt this would add depth to the film. In designing the battle scenes, they first discussed the setting and layout. They then went to the staff with their ideas, deciding which were the best and developing them further. The battle between Cloud's group and Bahamut was the most difficult to design due to the size of the area and the number of objects the staff had to add to the scene to keep it realistic. The alternating positions of the characters, including Bahamut itself, took the staff a long time to complete to give the scene a sense of flow.^[5] Nomura said that the team decided not to worry about making the fight sequences realistic, as they felt this would restrict their ability to give the film a "cool look". Therefore, they worked by creating their "own rules". Motion capture was used for many of the film's battle scenes; maneuvers that were not physically possible for live actors to perform were constructed digitally.^[6]

While designing the characters, the staff discovered that it was impossible to translate the Final Fantasy VII designs into the film. Thus some identifying characteristics had to be discarded.^[7] Cloud's redesign was a combination of eight different designs, from his super deformed appearance in the game to his more realistic appearance in the film. The difficulties in making Sephiroth led the staff to reduce his appearances in the film. It took them two years to develop and refine his look.^[5] Nozue also had difficulty developing a framework for Tifa's body that was "balanced, yet showed off her feminine qualities".^[8] Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo were designed to be a manifestations of Sephiroth's spirit—his cruelty, strength, and allure respectively.^[9] In contrast to Sephiroth, the trio was meant to be younger than Cloud, to focus on the "next generation" theme.^[6] By October 2003, the film was 10% complete; while the script was written, not all the characters were designed.^[7]

Nomura felt that Advent Children differed from Hollywood films, where the meaning of most scenes tends to be explained. However, with Advent Children, the staff wanted viewers to interpret the scenes individually, allowing them to come to different conclusions.^[5] Nojima described the theme of the film as "survival".^[7] Other themes Nomura and Nojima were concerned to include Cloud's feelings of guilt and regret for failing to save his friends Zack and Aerith. These feelings are symbolized by a grey wolf that appears whenever Cloud thinks about them. The wolf disappears at the end of the film as Cloud comes to terms with his feelings.^[10] The word "children" was used in the title to refer to the film's children, as they represent the "next generation".^[6]

Music

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The music of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, Keiji Kawamori, Kenichiro Fukui, and Tsuyoshi Sekito, and arranged by Fukui, Sekito, Kawamori, Shirō Hamaguchi, and Kazuhiko Toyama. Nomura would make some changes and have the composers re-record the piece upon hearing each track.^[11] The end theme, "Calling", was written and performed by former Boøwy vocalist Kyosuke Himuro. The soundtrack includes both pieces original to the film and arrangements of works from Final Fantasy VII, originally composed by Uematsu. Some of the arrangements, including "Advent: One-Winged Angel", are performed by The Black Mages, a rock band formed by Uematsu, Fukui, and Sekito.^[12] Both the pieces are original to the film, and the film arrangements cover a variety of musical styles, including orchestral, choral, classical piano, and rock music; Variety noted that the styles vary between "sparse piano noodlings, pop-metal thrashings, and cloying power ballads".^[13] The 2005 soundtrack album Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Original Soundtrack collects 26 tracks of music from the film on two discs. Square Enix published it on September 28, 2005. In addition to the regular release, a limited edition was produced containing alternative cover art and a booklet of credits and lyrics.^[12] The soundtrack album reached position #15 on the Japanese Oricon music charts and stayed on the charts for ten weeks.^[14]

A mini-album entitled Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete Mini Album was released on April 10, 2009, to coincide with the release of the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete version of the film.^[15] This version of the film included a new ending theme, "Safe and Sound", by Kyosuke Himuro and My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way.^[16] "Water" was replaced with a new song—"Anxious Heart".^[15] Tracks on the album included new versions of "The Chase of Highway", "Fight On!", "Sign", "Advent: One-Winged Angel", and "On the Way to a Smile".^[17] A larger album, Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete: Reunion Tracks, was released with 21 tracks on September 16 the same year. This album contains the tracks from the mini-album and several lengthened pieces for the Complete film version but not rearranged.^[18] Reunion Tracks appeared on the Oricon charts for a single week at position #108.^[19]

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