Cid's was the most improved character model

Another Flickr set up. This one is pretty cool (in my unbiased opinion of course).

Jason (Opus) just put up a nice review of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. If you want to know my reaction, read that page. He beat me to the punch, but I will add a little thought I had.

It's actually where I got the title of the blog the other day (The Will Expressed). The action in Advent Children is completely stylized and totally overblown, but it was when I saw Yuffie run straight up a wall for about 20 or 30 feet that I started to formulate my new theory about that movie and began applying it to real life as well.

What we are seeing here is not flesh and blood people fighting using muscles, bone, and sinew. They are people endowed with the pure expression of their will. Or I suppose a better way to put it is that their body is a tool that is utilized by their will. Is it possible to fly through the air, run up walls, survive massive explosions, and repeated crushings? This movie logic says that as long as your spirit is willing, your flesh will be empowered.

Of course it's not really realistic (it's not supposed to be) but I think there is some truth to the strength of will argument that can translate into what we do. I learned it at basic training. During the run it's not whether you're tired or at muscle failure, it's whether you have the will to keep running. If you discipline your mind, you can will yourself to keep going a whole lot longer than you seem to be muscularly capable.

Applying this to the free runners of the forementioned post, they seem to be able to accomplish the impossible merely because they want to. You couldn't convince most people to do what they do because, logically, you do something like that and you're going to break all kinds of bones. Not for these people. They have the will to try these stunts, and that same will seems to be about the only thing that sees them through in one piece. It's not quite right, but I almost see it as the strength of their will being expressed into pure motion.

So the way this argument goes (which I don't buy, but I think it's an interesting insight into the film) is that our will empowers our body beyond its means. Whether this is grinding out mile 5 after mile 4 hurt so bad, leaping from building to building, or surviving massive explosions and mid-air sword battles, it's the same basic concept. The will expressed.