Advent Children Complete 10... — Final Fantasy Vii -
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete is a 2009 animated movie set two years after the events of the video game Final Fantasy VII. It is a director's cut and significant update to the original 2005 film, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete (often abbreviated AC Complete) is the extended cut and enhanced remaster of the 2005 CGI film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, itself a sequel to the 1997 video game Final Fantasy VII. Released in 2009, Advent Children Complete adds roughly 26 minutes of new or extended footage, improved visual effects, re-rendered scenes, enhanced cinematography, a reworked soundtrack mix, and minor narrative clarifications. The package was intended to present a more polished, director-approved version of the film and to align the movie’s visual tone more closely with later Square Enix cinematic developments. Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children Complete 10...
Absolutely. While you don't need to watch Advent Children to enjoy Rebirth, you will miss 40% of the emotional context. The Remake trilogy is building toward the resolution of Advent Children, not the original 1997 game. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete is a
Seeing Cloud reject Geostigma, seeing Tifa hold the family together, and seeing Denzel (the orphan introduced in the film) find a home explains why the characters in Remake are fighting so hard to defy fate. They know what happens after—and they want a better ending. Released in 2009, Advent Children Complete adds roughly
ACC deepens the original’s themes significantly:
Square Enix famously used Advent Children Complete as a technical showcase for the PlayStation 3 (included as a bonus disc with the Final Fantasy XIII demo). But more importantly, it served as the narrative and aesthetic blueprint for the Remake trilogy. The combat choreography—Cloud parrying bullets, the particle effects of magic, the seamless summoning of Bahamut—was directly lifted from Complete and iterated upon for the PS4/PS5. In essence, the 10th anniversary of Complete aligns perfectly with the development and release of Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) and Rebirth (2024). Watching Complete today feels less like watching a sequel and more like watching the conceptual animatic for the modern games.
Released on DVD, the original film was a landmark in direct-to-video CGI. However, it received criticism for: