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aestivalis) wrote2026-03-27 01:48 pm
aestivalis) wrote2026-03-27 01:48 pm
oh shit it's king king
do do do do do dodo do do, it's FIE NUL FAN TAH SEEEEE
I have done two Final Fantasy related things in short order, so now you get to hear about it. One thing I have done is begin playing Final Fantasy XVI, having finally obtained a PS5 not too long ago. Perhaps I will make a journal update about that at some point!
The other thing, though? I watched Kingsglaive. NO, REALLY. I ACTUALLY DID IT. I actually watched the Final Fantasy XV movie thing! I consumed it with my eyes and mind!necrophilia your time is nigh! I met Nyx Ulric! I pushed him in a gutter!
I did not push him in a gutter. But I will share my thoughts about Kingsglaive for your reading pleasure! Although I will be honest, it has been years since I even played FFXV and I can't imagine that helped my viewing experience. I AM NOT HERE TO BE A HATER THIS FINE MARCH AFTERNOON, but the hater blood runs deep in my veins no matter the purity of my intentions. I will probably spend one paragraph talking about things I liked and then fifty paragraphs talking about things I did not like. I do not do these things intentionally from a place of cruelty. I am just That Bitch.
Let's talk about the fighty fighty magic war movie! Assume full spoilers below the cut!
Tell you what, I really did not expect the xenophobia through-line when I put this movie on. I barely even remembered that there were places other than Insomnia and The Empire in FFXV! But turns out people in Insomnia are kind of dicks to people from elsewhere? Regardless of why they've come to live where they do? Which, I mean... that's pretty true to reality I suppose.
Anyway, turns out Kingsglaive are a cool magic elite super-squad who receive power from King Regis to, like, kick ass and fight baddies and whatever. And a disproportionate number of them are refugees, or have otherwise been forced to flee their homes? I actually just tried to verify exactly what the Kingsglaive are officially and discovered that the Final Fantasy fandom wiki does not even have a page for this organisation, which. I feel kind of exemplifies my confusion as to EXACTLY who these guys are and what their mission is. How many of them are there? Are they ALL gifted with the same royal magic like we see with Nyx? I don't remember seeing other members doing anything anywhere near as snazzy as what we see Nyx getting up to but he's also The Main Character so that's to be expected to a certain degree I suppose.
My god I am all over the place LOCK IN AND WRITE THIS POST SELF.
So the Kingsglaive! There's Nyx Ulric, who is our main character. There is his best friend, who I do not remember the name of at all, but is probably called something like Traitoriius Regretsus or something let's be real. There is also Girl, who is probably called Girl. Sure hope nothing happens to her! These guys are perhaps set up like they're going to be our main trio of characters, alongside our deuteragonist Lunafreya (MISS LUNAFREYA HERSELF!!!), but realistically this story is about Nyx, a bit about Luna, a tiny bit about Traitoriius, and I think we all know not to waste time getting attached to Girl. (She's like a little sister to them! I sure hope nothing happens to her you guys.)
It is also a bit about King Regis, who kind of gets more character here than the rest of XV combined but I'm okay with that! Makes sense! If you're going to have what's effectively a prologue movie to accompany your game, it seems like the obvious place to flesh out a character who dies off-screen in the first few hours of said game. And Regis... is pretty okay here! I actually quite liked him! A bit taken aback by him suddenly being fucking Sean Bean in this film instead of having his VA from the game, but it was a decent vocal performance so I'm not gonna stress it too much. Some actors don't transition well between screen acting and providing a vocal performance, but he was good here.
Regis and Iedolus (or whatever the Emperor is called) having their veiled conversation about Lunafreya being kidnapped and whatever was probably the best scene and best written moment in the film? I was very ready to spend the next fifty minutes in the council room watching old men cattily negotiate a peace treaty both sides already knew the other had no intention of fulfilling. I would have been down for that! Just add Ardyn to proceedings and it would have been a perfect movie! I mean, not a very successful movie, but I would have been happy. AND WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT.
The first time General Glaucus spoke I almost shat myself LMFAO, what the fuck was that vocal choice! I mean, it later became obvious why they did it that way, they were disguising his true identity by giving him an absolute nonsense hyper-deep gravelly voice, but damn did it take me the hell out every time he spoke. And speaking of him, and that whole reveal... I had a very VERY hard time visually keeping the characters straight in this movie. So many of them are just Men In Dark Clothing. When Glaucus was revealed to be, idk, Kingsglaive Leader Man (Mentorius Judas or whatever HIS name actually was) it still took me a solid minute to piece together who I was looking at and what it meant. Thank god for the whole "hearth and home" thing or I think I would have been lost altogether. (FFXVI has a similarly drab character design style that has me struggling to keep NPCs straight, for what it's worth, though the main characters are generally distinct enough at least).
I'm really sorry this post is all over the place. I do not want to delete it and start again but is this a recap? A review? A gripes list? A series of clumsy jokes? NO IT IS ALL OF THE ABOVE IN A BLENDER and im sorry im so sorry let us continue
SO the basic set-up is that the Empire are suing for peace by going "look we could destroy you SO easily, but if you cede all territory outside Insomnia to us AND you marry Noctis to Lunafreya we'll do a nice peace with you :)" and it is obviously NOT a peace deal so much as terms for surrender but what you gonna do, right? Regis agrees to this despite really not wanting to, but is immensely suspicious and fully prepared to spring into action at what he presumes is some manner of trick. He sends a member of the Kingsglaive to meet and protect Lunafreya. It is Girl! He sends Girl to protect Lunafreya!
BUT FUCK, GIRL GETS KILLED ABOUT FIVE SECONDS AFTER PARTING COMPANY WITH NYX AND TRAITORIIUS REGRETSUS, HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN
Fortunately, this isn't a pattern in the film. Like, if she was just one of the fridged women driving this narrative that would be kind of awkward, but thankfully--OH WAIT, no, never mind, Nyx is motivated by failing to see his dead sister (and maybe mother as well, was unclear on that part). And Ravus saw the Empire cut down his mother so that's why he hates... King Regis, lmfao. OKAY BUDDY. FUCKING SURE. WHATEVER. So, like, actually? The only original female character properly introduced for this film dies in fairly short order, and the only other significant women are dead on arrival or else they're Lunafreya.
And, like. Yeah. We, uh. We all know how that works out. FFXV you have good qualities I swear to god but you are such an embarrassing piece of shit.
How is Lunafreya in this film, though? She is... okay! She's pretty good at some points! I enjoyed seeing more of her! Another film I could have enjoyed more than this one would have been seeing her life growing up in occupied Tenebrae, perhaps with the first thirty minutes or so covering the time directly before the invasion where Noctis and Regis were staying there. I don't have any problems with Nyx, incidentally! He could have been reworked into existing somewhere in this hypothetical other movie! But Lunafreya, man. Give Lunafreya content 2026. (that ship has long since sailed, but you know.)
I did enjoy Lunafreya here, though. Watching her "blend in" with the other refugees fleeing Insomnia at the end was a bit hilarious because girl you could not be more fucking obvious and they are actively looking for you, but I guess they needed to establish the status quo of the beginning of the game which meant she couldn't be hanging out with Traitoriius or whatever. The way they wrote the two of them splitting up was clunky, but his actual dialogue to her and her subdued but moved reaction was genuinely nice? Easily the closest I came to having an emotional reaction to anything in the film, though I'll also give Nyx's last sunrise a nod because that was frankly a moment so nice they should have lingered in it a while longer.
Ardyn was in this movie for about five minutes total, which obviously was not enough for me but I knew that going in and so will not hold that against the movie. He DID retain his game VA which is vital because Darin de Paul is a fucking icon and I would not stand for it otherwise. (I guess Lunafreya was voiced by Cersei Lannister, which. shrug. Would have liked the VA to match the game, but w/e. Got my Ardyn, I'm good.)
Just to swing back around to him for a second, I really thought for a moment that this film was finally going to make me get Ravus. He was a complete Non-Entity for me when I played FFXV. He was fun in Episode Ignis, but let's be honest there were other things about Episode Ignis occupying my attention. But here we get a glimpse into his backstory, something to contextualise him, anddd... then he's just the same fucking boring irritating lump he always is! Lunafreya evidently inherited ALL the brain cells in that family because damn.
There's probably lots you can do with Ravus if you read between the lines. The fact his mother was cut down in front of him by an Imperial General and he blames Regis for this is a whole thing that feels wildly under-explored. Like, he now works directly alongside the same man who murdered his mother in front of him? Absolutely explicitly in no uncertain terms killed her with a fuck-off big sword and splattered her blood across Ravus's face? And Ravus is like "fuck Regis for fleeing from this scene, THAT'S the guy I hate more than anything"? Like, it feels like there should be something there. Some interesting cognitive dissonance, a tale of a young man forced to work under the Imperial heel that crushed his home and lashing out at a safe target because he feels powerless to do anything else?
But you just have to extrapolate that stuff because it never really makes it on page. It isn't there. And Lunafreya being right there like "niisan stop being a dumbdumb" makes it harder again to buy into the potential narrative of Ravus being beaten or manipulated into this perspective. He is evidently a Poor Traumatised Baby but neither him nor his narrative do anything to endear him to me or make me want to respect or explore that. RAVUS UR A DUMBDUMB go away from me and do not return.
SO ANYWAY KINGSGLAIVE, rocks fall everyone dies, that's pretty much how it ultimately goes. Did I enjoy it? I guess so! I had fun watching it, which seems like the important thing. Do I feel like it enriched my understanding and enjoyment of Final Fantasy XV? No! If anything, I was astonished that Lunafreya and Noctis have apparently been engaged for, like, TWO FUCKING DAYS OR SOMETHING? And since the peace treaty was very VERY much null and void, why the heck are they still getting married anyway? Like, what? This is now LESS clear than it was before I watched the film! Like, again, I haven't played FFXV in a long while now so it's probably perfectly explicit in the text that this engagement is an extremely new development. I just remember playing the game with a sense that they'd been engaged since they were children, hence why they had their long distance magic diary correspondence. But I guess they were actually doing that because... they were legitimately friends or something?! DEAR GOD. how is this possible
But I think that's enough wild rambling for now. DID YOU ENJOY KINGSGLAIVE? LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW AND MAKE SURE TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE SO I KNOW YOU ENJOY THIS KIND OF CONTENT XOXOXO
For now, I am going to go and walk in the -6 degree winter sunshine with my wife! Who has shingles! But I love her even when she is diseased :(
(As of posting this, I have made a journal update for each month of the year. This is an ASTONISHING rate for me! Can I maintain this breakneck pace?! Hold on tight folks this could get WILD)
I have done two Final Fantasy related things in short order, so now you get to hear about it. One thing I have done is begin playing Final Fantasy XVI, having finally obtained a PS5 not too long ago. Perhaps I will make a journal update about that at some point!
The other thing, though? I watched Kingsglaive. NO, REALLY. I ACTUALLY DID IT. I actually watched the Final Fantasy XV movie thing! I consumed it with my eyes and mind!
necrophilia your time is nigh! I met Nyx Ulric! I pushed him in a gutter!I did not push him in a gutter. But I will share my thoughts about Kingsglaive for your reading pleasure! Although I will be honest, it has been years since I even played FFXV and I can't imagine that helped my viewing experience. I AM NOT HERE TO BE A HATER THIS FINE MARCH AFTERNOON, but the hater blood runs deep in my veins no matter the purity of my intentions. I will probably spend one paragraph talking about things I liked and then fifty paragraphs talking about things I did not like. I do not do these things intentionally from a place of cruelty. I am just That Bitch.
Let's talk about the fighty fighty magic war movie! Assume full spoilers below the cut!
Tell you what, I really did not expect the xenophobia through-line when I put this movie on. I barely even remembered that there were places other than Insomnia and The Empire in FFXV! But turns out people in Insomnia are kind of dicks to people from elsewhere? Regardless of why they've come to live where they do? Which, I mean... that's pretty true to reality I suppose.
Anyway, turns out Kingsglaive are a cool magic elite super-squad who receive power from King Regis to, like, kick ass and fight baddies and whatever. And a disproportionate number of them are refugees, or have otherwise been forced to flee their homes? I actually just tried to verify exactly what the Kingsglaive are officially and discovered that the Final Fantasy fandom wiki does not even have a page for this organisation, which. I feel kind of exemplifies my confusion as to EXACTLY who these guys are and what their mission is. How many of them are there? Are they ALL gifted with the same royal magic like we see with Nyx? I don't remember seeing other members doing anything anywhere near as snazzy as what we see Nyx getting up to but he's also The Main Character so that's to be expected to a certain degree I suppose.
My god I am all over the place LOCK IN AND WRITE THIS POST SELF.
So the Kingsglaive! There's Nyx Ulric, who is our main character. There is his best friend, who I do not remember the name of at all, but is probably called something like Traitoriius Regretsus or something let's be real. There is also Girl, who is probably called Girl. Sure hope nothing happens to her! These guys are perhaps set up like they're going to be our main trio of characters, alongside our deuteragonist Lunafreya (MISS LUNAFREYA HERSELF!!!), but realistically this story is about Nyx, a bit about Luna, a tiny bit about Traitoriius, and I think we all know not to waste time getting attached to Girl. (She's like a little sister to them! I sure hope nothing happens to her you guys.)
It is also a bit about King Regis, who kind of gets more character here than the rest of XV combined but I'm okay with that! Makes sense! If you're going to have what's effectively a prologue movie to accompany your game, it seems like the obvious place to flesh out a character who dies off-screen in the first few hours of said game. And Regis... is pretty okay here! I actually quite liked him! A bit taken aback by him suddenly being fucking Sean Bean in this film instead of having his VA from the game, but it was a decent vocal performance so I'm not gonna stress it too much. Some actors don't transition well between screen acting and providing a vocal performance, but he was good here.
Regis and Iedolus (or whatever the Emperor is called) having their veiled conversation about Lunafreya being kidnapped and whatever was probably the best scene and best written moment in the film? I was very ready to spend the next fifty minutes in the council room watching old men cattily negotiate a peace treaty both sides already knew the other had no intention of fulfilling. I would have been down for that! Just add Ardyn to proceedings and it would have been a perfect movie! I mean, not a very successful movie, but I would have been happy. AND WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT.
The first time General Glaucus spoke I almost shat myself LMFAO, what the fuck was that vocal choice! I mean, it later became obvious why they did it that way, they were disguising his true identity by giving him an absolute nonsense hyper-deep gravelly voice, but damn did it take me the hell out every time he spoke. And speaking of him, and that whole reveal... I had a very VERY hard time visually keeping the characters straight in this movie. So many of them are just Men In Dark Clothing. When Glaucus was revealed to be, idk, Kingsglaive Leader Man (Mentorius Judas or whatever HIS name actually was) it still took me a solid minute to piece together who I was looking at and what it meant. Thank god for the whole "hearth and home" thing or I think I would have been lost altogether. (FFXVI has a similarly drab character design style that has me struggling to keep NPCs straight, for what it's worth, though the main characters are generally distinct enough at least).
I'm really sorry this post is all over the place. I do not want to delete it and start again but is this a recap? A review? A gripes list? A series of clumsy jokes? NO IT IS ALL OF THE ABOVE IN A BLENDER and im sorry im so sorry let us continue
SO the basic set-up is that the Empire are suing for peace by going "look we could destroy you SO easily, but if you cede all territory outside Insomnia to us AND you marry Noctis to Lunafreya we'll do a nice peace with you :)" and it is obviously NOT a peace deal so much as terms for surrender but what you gonna do, right? Regis agrees to this despite really not wanting to, but is immensely suspicious and fully prepared to spring into action at what he presumes is some manner of trick. He sends a member of the Kingsglaive to meet and protect Lunafreya. It is Girl! He sends Girl to protect Lunafreya!
BUT FUCK, GIRL GETS KILLED ABOUT FIVE SECONDS AFTER PARTING COMPANY WITH NYX AND TRAITORIIUS REGRETSUS, HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN
Fortunately, this isn't a pattern in the film. Like, if she was just one of the fridged women driving this narrative that would be kind of awkward, but thankfully--OH WAIT, no, never mind, Nyx is motivated by failing to see his dead sister (and maybe mother as well, was unclear on that part). And Ravus saw the Empire cut down his mother so that's why he hates... King Regis, lmfao. OKAY BUDDY. FUCKING SURE. WHATEVER. So, like, actually? The only original female character properly introduced for this film dies in fairly short order, and the only other significant women are dead on arrival or else they're Lunafreya.
And, like. Yeah. We, uh. We all know how that works out. FFXV you have good qualities I swear to god but you are such an embarrassing piece of shit.
How is Lunafreya in this film, though? She is... okay! She's pretty good at some points! I enjoyed seeing more of her! Another film I could have enjoyed more than this one would have been seeing her life growing up in occupied Tenebrae, perhaps with the first thirty minutes or so covering the time directly before the invasion where Noctis and Regis were staying there. I don't have any problems with Nyx, incidentally! He could have been reworked into existing somewhere in this hypothetical other movie! But Lunafreya, man. Give Lunafreya content 2026. (that ship has long since sailed, but you know.)
I did enjoy Lunafreya here, though. Watching her "blend in" with the other refugees fleeing Insomnia at the end was a bit hilarious because girl you could not be more fucking obvious and they are actively looking for you, but I guess they needed to establish the status quo of the beginning of the game which meant she couldn't be hanging out with Traitoriius or whatever. The way they wrote the two of them splitting up was clunky, but his actual dialogue to her and her subdued but moved reaction was genuinely nice? Easily the closest I came to having an emotional reaction to anything in the film, though I'll also give Nyx's last sunrise a nod because that was frankly a moment so nice they should have lingered in it a while longer.
Ardyn was in this movie for about five minutes total, which obviously was not enough for me but I knew that going in and so will not hold that against the movie. He DID retain his game VA which is vital because Darin de Paul is a fucking icon and I would not stand for it otherwise. (I guess Lunafreya was voiced by Cersei Lannister, which. shrug. Would have liked the VA to match the game, but w/e. Got my Ardyn, I'm good.)
Just to swing back around to him for a second, I really thought for a moment that this film was finally going to make me get Ravus. He was a complete Non-Entity for me when I played FFXV. He was fun in Episode Ignis, but let's be honest there were other things about Episode Ignis occupying my attention. But here we get a glimpse into his backstory, something to contextualise him, anddd... then he's just the same fucking boring irritating lump he always is! Lunafreya evidently inherited ALL the brain cells in that family because damn.
There's probably lots you can do with Ravus if you read between the lines. The fact his mother was cut down in front of him by an Imperial General and he blames Regis for this is a whole thing that feels wildly under-explored. Like, he now works directly alongside the same man who murdered his mother in front of him? Absolutely explicitly in no uncertain terms killed her with a fuck-off big sword and splattered her blood across Ravus's face? And Ravus is like "fuck Regis for fleeing from this scene, THAT'S the guy I hate more than anything"? Like, it feels like there should be something there. Some interesting cognitive dissonance, a tale of a young man forced to work under the Imperial heel that crushed his home and lashing out at a safe target because he feels powerless to do anything else?
But you just have to extrapolate that stuff because it never really makes it on page. It isn't there. And Lunafreya being right there like "niisan stop being a dumbdumb" makes it harder again to buy into the potential narrative of Ravus being beaten or manipulated into this perspective. He is evidently a Poor Traumatised Baby but neither him nor his narrative do anything to endear him to me or make me want to respect or explore that. RAVUS UR A DUMBDUMB go away from me and do not return.
SO ANYWAY KINGSGLAIVE, rocks fall everyone dies, that's pretty much how it ultimately goes. Did I enjoy it? I guess so! I had fun watching it, which seems like the important thing. Do I feel like it enriched my understanding and enjoyment of Final Fantasy XV? No! If anything, I was astonished that Lunafreya and Noctis have apparently been engaged for, like, TWO FUCKING DAYS OR SOMETHING? And since the peace treaty was very VERY much null and void, why the heck are they still getting married anyway? Like, what? This is now LESS clear than it was before I watched the film! Like, again, I haven't played FFXV in a long while now so it's probably perfectly explicit in the text that this engagement is an extremely new development. I just remember playing the game with a sense that they'd been engaged since they were children, hence why they had their long distance magic diary correspondence. But I guess they were actually doing that because... they were legitimately friends or something?! DEAR GOD. how is this possible
But I think that's enough wild rambling for now. DID YOU ENJOY KINGSGLAIVE? LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW AND MAKE SURE TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE SO I KNOW YOU ENJOY THIS KIND OF CONTENT XOXOXO
For now, I am going to go and walk in the -6 degree winter sunshine with my wife! Who has shingles! But I love her even when she is diseased :(
(As of posting this, I have made a journal update for each month of the year. This is an ASTONISHING rate for me! Can I maintain this breakneck pace?! Hold on tight folks this could get WILD)
no subject
I fucking doubled over laughing, holy shit. (It's Libertus.)
There is also Girl, who is probably called Girl.
Yes. Exactly. Also, did you enjoy the way she shouted all of her lines?
FFXV you have good qualities I swear to god but you are such an embarrassing piece of shit.
Fucking co-signed. I feel like the post-XV FF era have given it such a hindsight glow up, but I also routinely feel the need to be like, "I love this mess of a game despite the utter incompetence of its pacing and world building." It delivers on emotionality and pathos, which is more than I can say for XVI.
I do agree that, tonally, this movie and the game that follows it are very mismatched. in KG, you get a real look into how economically, socially, and politically broken the setting is... and then the game has no interest in pursuing this? But I've long since accepted you have to set aside a lot and MST3K Mantra the shit out of your life in order to enjoy XV the way it is meant to be enjoyed.
I will say that the engagement never ever makes sense. My friend and I have been working on a Nyx/Luna fic for ages and we still cannot, like, figure out the political reasoning behind it. Why does the Niflheim empire want this? We never find out.
Re: Ravus, I made this ages ago, and I still think it holds up.
I appreciated the fuck out of this entry, thank you for writing it. And for finally watching! I am glad you had fun watching it. ♥