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What went wrong with Back Cover?



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Grono

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What Went Wrong with Back Cover?

Hello everybody, Grono here with another lengthy analysis comin' at ya! WHAP-OW! WHOOSH!! ZAPPO!!!

Rewatching certain scenes of back cover recently made me question a part of my fan complex: what is it that I hate about this damn movie so much?

Watching it again, I have to give it credit that, for the most part, its voice acting ranges from serviceable to fantastic, its character building for faceless characters is surprisingly well directed, and the entire movie looks absolutely stunning. So, what is it about this movie that turns me off so much?

Sins of the Father

Both of Kingdom Hearts' movies up to this point had similar criticisms directed towards them. Disregarding the plot, as the plot from both was practically identical to their original games, the main thing that did not draw an audience in was their primary engagement with the people in the seats watching.

For the Days movie, part of the issue that many fans had was that their experience was frequently interrupted by large blocks of text that they had to read, ruining the flow of the experience as well as taking out some key scenes that many fans cherished, such as a scene in Agrabah that apparently brought many people to tears. However, another huge issue with it that led to many people calling the experience a chore was how they made up for a lack of gameplay. They did this by inserting "action scenes" where you would have fought that character, which is fine and all, except that most of the action scenes cut to the next scene before any action had occurred.

Days tried to fix its problem by lengthening the ending by several minutes and patching in a more detailed fight between Roxas and Xion at the end of the film, which came off as being too little too late and not being impressive for action scenes. Square tried the same thing with Re:Coded, but the experience came off as especially bloated and samey towards the end with the same combat issue as the Days movie. It had more action scenes, sure, and one with Jiminy's Journal fighting Sora was particularly good, but, aside from that? Nothing.

Case of The Foretellers

Like the cheeky subtitle there? Ah well, who cares if you didn't like my little in-joke, because it's time to get into some character study!

The main criticisms of the Foretellers is that they follow the Master blindly, and I won't pretend that this isn't the case. While this is a very valid criticism, and should count against them, I am instead going to treat that as a given and instead observe how they interact with each other, assessing each other's goals as the film goes on.

Many people cite Ava as the weakest character represented here, as she turns from a confident, self-starting leader to a pawn of a black coat, but I would have to disagree. While she is certainly diminished here, she definitely holds her own principles in this story. Ava is someone who hates conflict and tries to avoid it at all costs, being a compulsive placater and very protective of others, shown when she hides Gula after Aced's attack and prevents Ira from seeing him.

Ira is not well known in this story, but we can assume that he is quite a closeted personality that is very much in his own head, constantly spending his time researching and pouring over the book of prophecies instead of leading his group like he is supposed to be doing. His tendency to abruptly end conflict and make rash decisions cost him their loyalty in the long run, and the choice to make Aced a second-in-command was one made almost as if the Master knew what the outcome would be.

Invi is pretty bland, but, much like the snake, she rats people out and certainly has her own motives to tearing people down. The only time during the story that she notices what she's done wrong is when Ava calls her out on her failure to realize that Ava may have been doing what she was told to do, and we realize that she does have some semblance of camaraderie with her former classmates.

Gula is very sophisticated and on top of things, having his own agenda at all times. He's the only one to immediately be able to discern what he's supposed to do for the Master, why one would be a traitor, and what he can do to fulfill his task, but he fails to realize that his own agenda informs his investigation, the opposite of a scientific method. He's shown to be nonchalant but with high standards, and doesn't seem to show any concern for the future until he realizes that he may have caused the future to happen when Skuld and the player confront him.

Rage of the Bear

Aced is a very well written character, and here's why. He is given the task to support Ira in what he does and help him carry out his goals, but early on he feels that Ira isn't doing anything and takes initiative to protect his friends that he had sworn to keep the world for. Aced's fall is written in good intentions, which is a surprisingly deep way for Kingdom Hearts to look at future villain characters. Xehanort's fall to darkness seemed very calculated at his bequeathing, much like Voldemort's, but Aced's clearly falls in like with the idea that no one is the bad guy of their own story.

Aced, throughout the story, tries to form an alliance to be able to do something about the world ending. Gula, initially reluctant, eventually caves into Aced's plan and agrees to ally with him to gather Lux to protect the world. When Gula betrays him, Aced is heartbroken. Not only did he misjudge Gula's character, but he realizes that Gula never cared for what Aced believed in or worked to achieve. The only thing that Gula wanted was revenge, revenge against someone who he mis-characterized from the start, and him tearing down Aced was more than enough for him to be satisfied.

There's another great scene with Aced that I want to discuss, one that isn't talked about a lot. Aced finally meets Ira after a very long interlude where he does not interact with him, and Ira finds him wounded on the street. Usually, a Kingdom Hearts character would begin to spout one-liners about "darkness has corrupted you!" or something like this, but Ira instead meets him with pity and understanding. Aced initially spouts that he wants Ira to "finish him off", but Ira instead treats Aced as if he's still worth something. He says that, while he disagrees with Aced and believes that they can't change the future, that he still needs him to protect what's left after.

Ira calling Aced a light here is really the heart of this movie, and one of the reasons why I love parts of it so much. Aced then reveals that his hatred for Ira was really a deep respect for him, and, honestly, I completely see that. Aced's outing of Gula is initially sinister, but after all that Gula did to him I can very easily justify it. Gula realizes this mistake as well, shown when he talks to player and Skuld in X, revealing that his grave error may have caused the bells to ring.

Master-ful Deception

Good pun, huh?! Yeah, I know, deal with it.

Luxu, first off, is the blandest character in Back Cover. Yes, he is absolutely worse than Ava. He is shown to be grossed out once, but otherwise he is a kicked puppy that follows the Master because he knows nothing else. His keyblade and his appearance in X suggest that he is a darker character, but none of that is repeated in Back Cover, and he instead seems like an average John Doe that just wants to do good and is forced to take a dumb box into the Desert and wait. His character is not expanded on, and he is rather used as a device to how the Master will live on.

The Master himself does not make much sense. He seems to be good and evil at different points, where at times he is seemingly setting everyone up for failure and enjoying it while in his talk with Ava he seems to actually care about the well-being of the future of the world. Whether or not either personality is the true one is what makes him so intriguing, and his animated personality confuses us as well as the other characters as to what his true intentions are and why he acts like this. One thing is sure, though; he certainly did not leave them with anything good to go on.

Conclusion

So, why doesn't Back Cover work? I think, at points, it really, really does. The main connective tissue that does not inform the story is the inclusion of Luxu, which is not expanded or explored enough, and the combat, which really and truly sucks. It has the same issues of cutting away from big fights and only keeping slow fights, and generally doing a poor job of making things flow smoothly. I do think that Aced, at the very least, was a great takeaway from this story, and was a benefit to watching this movie.

What do you guys think of Back Cover? Did you ever think about Aced that way? Whatever it is, comment below and let me know TWT Thanks for tuning in, KHInsider!
 
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no skuld that's what went wrong
 
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alexis.anagram

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Answer: its entire premise is flawed and it fails at all of its discernible goals as an entry in the series. The title goes and gives it away-- as a "Back Cover" to the Ux saga it plays out like an extended trailer or commercial, something the marketing team stitched together out of selections from a story which might be good or might be bad but hasn't been fully realized: yet it's paradoxically positioned as a proper installment in the series, with its most misguided of intentions being to consecrate a new set of characters within the context of a narrative which is constantly being synopsized into the most threadbare of scenarios and storylines. Almost its whole strategy is to engage in plot setup for ideas with no internal payoff in the hope that the mere notion of the KH series advancing in any direction is thrilling in and of itself, and that strain of presumptuousness is unhappily the categorical justification for its existence absent anything resembling a convincing thematic purpose.

Let's start with something basic: where is the audience's point of entry into this story? Smart stories use hooks and identify relatable character and world-building elements to their audience in order to engage them with a confidence that they and the material are "speaking the same language" (hence the "everyman" hero type), with the idea being that the artistic journey is collaborative: the author is responsible for piquing the audience's interest, and the audience is responsible for being open to the narrative suggestions the author puts forth. Back Cover doesn't offer anything of substance for the average viewer to grab onto in its jilted progression from one encapsulated character arc to another; instead, it presumes all kinds of things: that the viewer has a vested interest in what's happening in each scene, even though it provides no grounding for most of its narrative movements, up to and including its flashback mechanics; that the central "mysteries" of the story are compelling, even though they are not only weak and unsubstantiated by any real sense of conflict or drama derived from them, but on top of that they are all left unanswered by the end of the entry, like a promise left unfulfilled; and chief among these is the presumption that the viewer de facto cares about any of the characters, when it's precisely the role of the story as it is written to make that case for itself.

Instead, Back Cover tries to rectify wafer thin characterization with exposition and plot jargon, resulting in dialogue which is used to fill the vacuum with rote articulation of concepts the audience is either way ahead of from the jump, or has no way of easily following to their conclusions (seriously, try breaking the Bangle conversation down into its disparate parts). Almost all scenes between the Foretellers follow a formula: someone introduces an idea or a point of concern, i.e. "You guys, I've realized you can add 1 and 1 together!"; another character follows with a statement of the obvious implications to absolutely nobody's benefit, i.e. "So you're saying...1 + 1 = 2?!"; a third character will usually question that observation while offering nothing of value in turn, "I think you are all jumping to conclusions about this 1 + 1 business"; occasionally one of them will offer a total non sequitur to give the appearance that the plot has thickened, "You're just trying to make us all doubt each other somehow."

These kinds of scenes seek to juxtapose the Foretellers against each other, but each of them just serves to reveal how superficial their characterization really is. Gula will form an alliance with Aced in one scene, and in just as short a time he'll break it off. We'll be told something happened in between that caused him to do so, but the viewer isn't expected to interrogate the process because they aren't party to it: the collaboration between author and audience has broken down. The Foretellers are all 100% aware of the fact that each of them was given a specific task by the Master, and yet they all behave as if they don't know that: every time someone acts in accordance with their assignment, they're treated as suspect by the others, and that's sold to the viewer as a believable source of conflict (even though the movie basically consists of a series of tracking shots of the Foreteller's gowns clipping over their heels as they unhurriedly wander from CGI set piece to CGI set piece). We're told "the world is in grave danger" and yet there's hardly ever a sense of urgency, as each time the stakes are purportedly raised by the possibility that someone is the ~traitor~, they're summarily absolved through a flashback which reveals, again, that they were just acting according to the Master's orders: by the third or fourth time it becomes simply routine. So there's no element of suspense, which is another cinematic basic.

This isn't helped by the fact that the Master himself acts as a narrative troll, and I don't mean that as a compliment: his sole purpose is to lessen the burden on each scene he appears in to actually convey something meaningful, as he consistently undercuts opportunities to draw out something emotionally or narratively concrete using the guise of "humor," which is supposed to get the audience's instantaneous approval-- it's peak postmodernism, deconstructed villain trope ahyuck. The problem is I'm not here to watch Nomura try his hand at bad camp: you've got an hour to tell a story and it isn't going anywhere, so every second wasted on the Master's fallacious posturing signals another reminder of how disingenuous the writers are being. It also serves to highlight just how dry the rest of the material is given how discordant a note these veritable reaches for humor strike: nothing coheres in Back Cover, it's just a series of ideas slotted into a film editor and set to randomize.

At the end of the hour, the KH universe hasn't been expanded upon, and nothing actually helpful or substantive has been learned. People who have played KH will come away knowing things they already knew: that there were Keyblade wielders in the past, that there was a war at some point, and that the world was split apart because of it. We've known that since KH1. No new or innovative groundwork has been laid for future installments: we already knew after the Coded movie that Maleficent was out looking for the Book of Prophecies and that tied the Ux saga to the main plot, so was it necessary to add the Black Box to the list of whatever-stuff that will be maybe-important? The Master sending his Keyblade into the future with Luxu is, uh, something that happens, but once again there's no sense of the narrative intent behind that in terms of consequences for other characters: it occurs in empty space, like Luxu's whole plot, so it is going to have to be filled in by the relevant future title anyway.

So, goals:
Introduce characters - F
Introduce plot points - F
Answer questions - F-
Make me want to play Unchained - Actually had the opposite effect

There's another great scene with Aced that I want to discuss, one that isn't talked about a lot. Aced finally meets Ira after a very long interlude where he does not interact with him, and Ira finds him wounded on the street. Usually, a Kingdom Hearts character would begin to spout one-liners about "darkness has corrupted you!" or something like this, but Ira instead meets him with pity and understanding. Aced initially spouts that he wants Ira to "finish him off", but Ira instead treats Aced as if he's still worth something. He says that, while he disagrees with Aced and believes that they can't change the future, that he still needs him to protect what's left after.
This is actually a perfect example of the way characterization is short-circuited in Back Cover in order to give the impression that an exchange of value has just occurred, when in reality the audience is once again being cheated. This scene is either a direct reference or an unwitting re-appropriation of the Sora/Riku dynamic following the Xemnas fight in KH2.

"The truth is, I was jealous of you."

But consider: that moment comes after three games of character material to draw from, in which Sora and Riku's relationship was pretty fully fleshed out and a single line could be expected to carry that kind of reverberation through their shared history as it has been explored in the story. The moment itself involves a heightened theme of reunion, demanding that sort of vulnerable gesture of real honesty: it leans towards closure. Aced and Ira simply don't have the rapport to support that material: for them to exchange words like, "I guess that's why I respect you," when they haven't had an interaction in the game which could even be described as cordial is a cop-out, not because two characters who appear to be at odds can't have ulterior motives and unspoken feelings, but because the movie expects the audience to reach for that conclusion without providing any grounds for it. So maybe you can accept the proposal at face-value, and that's fine: it still doesn't help Aced's characterization because even afterwards we still only understand his character in bullet points: prone to anger - values loyalty - sexy voice actor - etc. etc. There's no basis for the attempt to qualify Ira and Aced's friendship in terms of redemption, because their friendship itself has never been adequately established. None of the Foretellers are properly characterized in terms of their relationships with one another: we don't know if they're apprentices who have trained together over time, or if they're in some sort of competition with one another for the Master's favor, or why the Master even chose them to wield the Keyblade. We don't even know if they like each other. Yet Back Cover still attempts to capitalize on their internal dynamics in the most confusing ways. We're shown early on that the Foretellers all gather together to strategize on how to defeat the darkness, yet almost immediately after that we're told "alliances between unions" are forbidden. Later, Invi is alarmed that Ira and Gula are trying to gather Lux for themselves?

Back Cover feigns that these inconsistencies add complexity and depth to an undercooked plot, but they're never explored or followed to an actual conclusion which would permit the audience to glean a reasonable understanding of why anything happens. Instead, the film structures its entire premise around narrative shortcuts and bald contrivance in order to position the characters wherever they need to be. So Invi just "doesn't consider" that Ava is gathering the Dandelions because that's the Master's assignment. Gula decides to trust Aced, then just decides not to. Aced thinks Ava should do what she thinks is right, but when Gula does the same thing he's a ~traitor~. The list goes on.

Also, there is neither Disney nor Final Fantasy in this film. I rest my case.
 
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So I rewatched it and I thought it holds up until Gula and Aced confront each other. After they have their final confrontation the movie starts to loose energy with the Ava reveal and the Ira/Aced scene. The tearful scene where Gula wants to summon kH is fine but the last scene with Luxu feels lacking.

Aced is probably the strongest written foreteller.
 

Grono

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Answer: its entire premise is flawed and it fails at all of its discernible goals as an entry in the series. The title goes and gives it away-- as a "Back Cover" to the Ux saga it plays out like an extended trailer or commercial, something the marketing team stitched together out of selections from a story which might be good or might be bad but hasn't been fully realized: yet it's paradoxically positioned as a proper installment in the series, with its most misguided of intentions being to consecrate a new set of characters within the context of a narrative which is constantly being synopsized into the most threadbare of scenarios and storylines.

I don't think the idea of it being a main title was where they mismarketed it; that never seemed to be the case. They were truthful about the length and the importance. I think the main sin here was rather what it was about, instead completely ignoring the part where they have to - you know - recap any of the plot with the player. But, it's not like they told us that Back Cover would tell us basically what happened in X or anything then completely didn't give us that at all, because that would be silly!

Almost its whole strategy is to engage in plot setup for ideas with no internal payoff in the hope that the mere notion of the KH series advancing in any direction is thrilling in and of itself, and that strain of presumptuousness is unhappily the categorical justification for its existence absent anything resembling a convincing thematic purpose.

Real question, not trying to be sarcastic, but are you a writing major? Because dayum that sounds like a fantastic and biting analysis of why the plot fundamentally does not work.

Let's start with something basic: where is the audience's point of entry into this story? Smart stories use hooks and identify relatable character and world-building elements to their audience in order to engage them with a confidence that they and the material are "speaking the same language" (hence the "everyman" hero type), with the idea being that the artistic journey is collaborative: the author is responsible for piquing the audience's interest, and the audience is responsible for being open to the narrative suggestions the author puts forth. Back Cover doesn't offer anything of substance for the average viewer to grab onto in its jilted progression from one encapsulated character arc to another; instead, it presumes all kinds of things: that the viewer has a vested interest in what's happening in each scene, even though it provides no grounding for most of its narrative movements, up to and including its flashback mechanics; that the central "mysteries" of the story are compelling, even though they are not only weak and unsubstantiated by any real sense of conflict or drama derived from them, but on top of that they are all left unanswered by the end of the entry, like a promise left unfulfilled; and chief among these is the presumption that the viewer de facto cares about any of the characters, when it's precisely the role of the story as it is written to make that case for itself.

Look, I'll put it this way: while I understand why you might think that the film might be presuming importance upon certain things, it's kind of hard to not do that with the format this is presented in. Again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't criticize something because "you knew what they were going for", but at the same time I think this is a tad bit harsh, as this entry is our first and last times seeing these characters and we should suspect at least a little bit of narrative shortcuts. There is way too many to make it engaging for me, though.

Personally, as someone who sees this entry as a method of lore dump taken by Nomura when he finds himself these days finding increasingly goofy ways to do this such as revealing these things as god damn orchestra concerts for crying out loud, the main point of the movie is to convey information to the audience, not to necessarily make characters you care about. So, while in the main series I would criticize this heavily, here it is not implied that these guys are going to stick around, especially since in X we've already seen where all of them ended up after this and how they dealt with these conflicts, so the emotional baggage of what they're carrying around is something that I end up ignoring anyways.

However, as a method of lore dump, this is absolutely diddlying abysmal. What did we diddlying learn except that MX's keyblade can see the future and Luxu has a diddlying box?! And worse yet, WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE BOX IS, IF IT'S BAD OR GOOD, AND WHAT THE diddly IT COULD POSSIBLY BE USED FOR?! How would Maleficent ever get to knowing about the box? Why would she be interested in having it? And WHY THE diddly SHOULD WE GIVE A SHIT HOLY CRAP!

Instead, Back Cover tries to rectify wafer thin characterization with exposition and plot jargon, resulting in dialogue which is used to fill the vacuum with rote articulation of concepts the audience is either way ahead of from the jump, or has no way of easily following to their conclusions (seriously, try breaking the Bangle conversation down into its disparate parts). Almost all scenes between the Foretellers follow a formula: someone introduces an idea or a point of concern, i.e. "You guys, I've realized you can add 1 and 1 together!"; another character follows with a statement of the obvious implications to absolutely nobody's benefit, i.e. "So you're saying...1 + 1 = 2?!"; a third character will usually question that observation while offering nothing of value in turn, "I think you are all jumping to conclusions about this 1 + 1 business"; occasionally one of them will offer a total non sequitur to give the appearance that the plot has thickened, "You're just trying to make us all doubt each other somehow."

Great point to make about Back Cover that's infuriating, and the bangle scene is a fantastic example of that. The writing is either stilted and awkward or completely predictable. The only thing I somewhat didn't see coming was Ira's trust in Aced, but also Ira was in like 0.1% of the movie so it's not like we knew his character anyways.

These kinds of scenes seek to juxtapose the Foretellers against each other, but each of them just serves to reveal how superficial their characterization really is. Gula will form an alliance with Aced in one scene, and in just as short a time he'll break it off. We'll be told something happened in between that caused him to do so, but the viewer isn't expected to interrogate the process because they aren't party to it: the collaboration between author and audience has broken down. The Foretellers are all 100% aware of the fact that each of them was given a specific task by the Master, and yet they all behave as if they don't know that: every time someone acts in accordance with their assignment, they're treated as suspect by the others, and that's sold to the viewer as a believable source of conflict (even though the movie basically consists of a series of tracking shots of the Foreteller's gowns clipping over their heels as they unhurriedly wander from CGI set piece to CGI set piece). We're told "the world is in grave danger" and yet there's hardly ever a sense of urgency, as each time the stakes are purportedly raised by the possibility that someone is the ~traitor~, they're summarily absolved through a flashback which reveals, again, that they were just acting according to the Master's orders: by the third or fourth time it becomes simply routine. So there's no element of suspense, which is another cinematic basic.

I think you're right about the lack of surprise, but it's kind of a weird complaint to make about the third or fourth time being unsurprising since the idea of going foreteller to foreteller revealing what they're meant to do is the entire format of the movie. Don't mean to judge you here, but do you mean to just say that the presentation is dumb? Because that's a totally reasonable argument, even if I don't really mind it.

My main issue was that during each "case study" they didn't actually feel like they had much to do with just one of the foretellers, as each one seemed to focus on everybody anyways. It almost felt useless in that way.

This isn't helped by the fact that the Master himself acts as a narrative troll, and I don't mean that as a compliment: his sole purpose is to lessen the burden on each scene he appears in to actually convey something meaningful, as he consistently undercuts opportunities to draw out something emotionally or narratively concrete using the guise of "humor," which is supposed to get the audience's instantaneous approval-- it's peak postmodernism, deconstructed villain trope ahyuck. The problem is I'm not here to watch Nomura try his hand at bad camp: you've got an hour to tell a story and it isn't going anywhere, so every second wasted on the Master's fallacious posturing signals another reminder of how disingenuous the writers are being. It also serves to highlight just how dry the rest of the material is given how discordant a note these veritable reaches for humor strike: nothing coheres in Back Cover, it's just a series of ideas slotted into a film editor and set to randomize.

P R E A C H

At the end of the hour, the KH universe hasn't been expanded upon, and nothing actually helpful or substantive has been learned. People who have played KH will come away knowing things they already knew: that there were Keyblade wielders in the past, that there was a war at some point, and that the world was split apart because of it. We've known that since KH1. No new or innovative groundwork has been laid for future installments: we already knew after the Coded movie that Maleficent was out looking for the Book of Prophecies and that tied the Ux saga to the main plot, so was it necessary to add the Black Box to the list of whatever-stuff that will be maybe-important?

Wrong argument to make here. It's valid to say that the black box is unnecessary as a plot device, but to say that we already knew from the Coded movie that Maleficent was after that book ignores the fact that this movie's goal was to send a few basic elements of the X universe to fans who weren't in access to the game. While many of the elements were hardly touched upon in this movie, you can't make the argument that fans didn't walk away at least having that cleared up in this movie. I'm sorry, I just have to completely disagree with that part of this argument.

Make me want to play Unchained - Actually had the opposite effect

I can get how that would affect people, though I like the plot of Unchained honestly. Way more than this at least.

This is actually a perfect example of the way characterization is short-circuited in Back Cover in order to give the impression that an exchange of value has just occurred, when in reality the audience is once again being cheated. This scene is either a direct reference or an unwitting re-appropriation of the Sora/Riku dynamic following the Xemnas fight in KH2.

Eeeeehhhhh, you're stretching it here. I doubt that was a reference at all. And for your next point here you have to realize that there is going to be some narrative shorthand in the writing. There weren't many games to foreshadow this, but that's also because there's going to be some things implied in the way. If anything, the main issue is that we never got to see them as apprentices or see any huge conflict before this, not that they didn't give it much time. It's pretty unfair to ask for there to be as much character development as Sora and Riku when they're not as relevant and clearly aren't built up to be anything on that scale.

And yes, they absolutely were former apprentices under the Master with each other. There's absolutely no other way to look at that, this title doesn't even have to really express that. Sorry if I sound rude when I'm this blunt, btw; I am just trying to be concise, but I can come across as rude from time to time, and I apologize. I think it's quite valid to say that the film does a poor job at conveying a history between the characters, though.

And yeah, the "work together but not across unions" thing is really stupid.

Sexy Aced? Uuuuuuhhhhh, if people are into dopey firemen voice actors then I guess so? He sounds like a giant stocky bodyguard or an animated bull dog, not so much an Adonis lol.

Back Cover
feigns that these inconsistencies add complexity and depth to an undercooked plot, but they're never explored or followed to an actual conclusion which would permit the audience to glean a reasonable understanding of why anything happens. Instead, the film structures its entire premise around narrative shortcuts and bald contrivance in order to position the characters wherever they need to be. So Invi just "doesn't consider" that Ava is gathering the Dandelions because that's the Master's assignment. Gula decides to trust Aced, then just decides not to. Aced thinks Ava should do what she thinks is right, but when Gula does the same thing he's a ~traitor~. The list goes on.

You know, with Invi's thinking, it got me to thinking that maybe she doesn't know that everyone else has roles for some reason. Maybe only a few people got the memo that that was the case? After all, Gula's really the only one that I can think of that actively talks about other's roles in this whole thing, and the only thing to know about Ira is that he's the leader.

But great synopsis of how it doesn't work, honestly. This film was all narrative shortcut and no narrative substance.

Also, there is neither Disney nor Final Fantasy in this film. I rest my case.

Sorry, but I can't take anyone seriously that still finds a whole lot of value in a KH game based on what Disney or FF things are in it. Not that seeing Big Hero 6 won't be great or anything, just that if you're putting all of your eggs in the "can't wait to play through this iconic Disney plot!" basket you should be ready to be mighty disappointed because of the writing of these games.

So I rewatched it and I thought it holds up until Gula and Aced confront each other. After they have their final confrontation the movie starts to loose energy with the Ava reveal and the Ira/Aced scene. The tearful scene where Gula wants to summon kH is fine but the last scene with Luxu feels lacking.

I feel that, this whole movie lacks momentum. Ending with Luxu seemed especially confusing, as from a perspective of those who hadn't seen X the question of who he is and what he's doing there is even more confusing. I think he was the only one when I walked away from this knowing less about him.

Aced is probably the strongest written foreteller.

Agreed.
 

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Hm, so I had fun watching it, but yea I realize it had a lot of problems. I liked getting character for all of the Foretellers even though yeah, some of it wasn't what I wanted.I actually thought the dialogue was pretty well written? Same with in 0.2. Sometimes it really isn't lol, so I hope this stays with KH3. Some of the stuff in Kh2 still makes me cringe to hear, to this day.

I don't necessarily like the Foreteller's penchant for blind devotion to the Master, but I guess that was their purpose...I feel like I would like Back Cover more if one day we can get a bigger pay off from it, other than the Black Box mattering lol. I realize KH is bad for bringing characters back, but I like the Fortellers designs a LOT and would like their characters to just have more. Same goes for all the X characters tbh, they all have great designs but are bogged down by the way X has been told....doubly so in this new season of UX lol. If you can even call it that so far.

I kind of hated Aced at first, but yea I have warmed up to him. I like Invi too tbh, but yea she really has the least character...she literally only shows up in X if you are in the Anguis union right? Its lame. Like, we finally get a group with more than one woman and one of them barely does anything.
 

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Hm, so I had fun watching it, but yea I realize it had a lot of problems. I liked getting character for all of the Foretellers even though yeah, some of it wasn't what I wanted.I actually thought the dialogue was pretty well written? Same with in 0.2. Sometimes it really isn't lol, so I hope this stays with KH3. Some of the stuff in Kh2 still makes me cringe to hear, to this day.

I don't necessarily like the Foreteller's penchant for blind devotion to the Master, but I guess that was their purpose...I feel like I would like Back Cover more if one day we can get a bigger pay off from it, other than the Black Box mattering lol. I realize KH is bad for bringing characters back, but I like the Fortellers designs a LOT and would like their characters to just have more. Same goes for all the X characters tbh, they all have great designs but are bogged down by the way X has been told....doubly so in this new season of UX lol. If you can even call it that so far.

I kind of hated Aced at first, but yea I have warmed up to him. I like Invi too tbh, but yea she really has the least character...she literally only shows up in X if you are in the Anguis union right? Its lame. Like, we finally get a group with more than one woman and one of them barely does anything.

Yeah, she does so little in Union X that she only shows up in cutscenes with every other foreteller (silent), if you're anguis, or in the literal keyblade war battle lol.

I can barely call it a season myself, so little has happened. Let's see... we found out who the five are, two of them are people we've never seen before and one of them is still a mystery as to why he's there in the first place, oh yeah and they made spirits. That's fucking it. WHERE'S THE STORY SO FAR?! WE'VE LITERALLY GOT MORE INFORMATION ON MOG THE KEYBLADE WIELDER THAN WE DO ON THE FUCKING UNION LEADERS SO FAR!

But seriously have you seen Mog's wikipedia page? It's fucking enormous lol, someone reeeaaallllllyyyy likes his character.
 

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I can barely call it a season myself, so little has happened. Let's see... we found out who the five are, two of them are people we've never seen before and one of them is still a mystery as to why he's there in the first place, oh yeah and they made spirits. That's diddlying it. WHERE'S THE STORY SO FAR?! WE'VE LITERALLY GOT MORE INFORMATION ON MOG THE KEYBLADE WIELDER THAN WE DO ON THE diddlyING UNION LEADERS SO FAR!

It's like you have a "season" of a TV series with 26+ episodes planned and on the table (what is constantly advertised about UX season 2 and how supposedly hugely important, Ephemer, Skuld, Ventus and the other new leaders are and how they're the key for the story developing into a totally different direction) yet you decide to air the first two episodes and then go onto a six months or more long vacation right after that.
 

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It's like you have a "season" of a TV series with 26+ episodes planned and on the table (what is constantly advertised about UX season 2 and how supposedly hugely important, Ephemer, Skuld, Ventus and the other new leaders are and how they're the key for the story developing into a totally different direction) yet you decide to air the first two episodes and then go onto a six months or more long vacation right after that.

That's exactly what they've done so far, it's infuriating! I was really excited when Ventus was announced to be part of this world, too, but it's been so long that I'm not even sure if anything is actually going to happen.
 
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I don't think Luxu's role is hard to figure out if you're a savvy viewer. I do think he should have been given more interactions with the foretellers tho. It would allow the viewer a greater sense of his character and the dynamic of the foretellers. I'd even show him in proper foreteller garb before he switches to the familiar black coat.

Aced is what i wished terra was like during bbs. He's probably the closest thing to film has to an antagonist which is why the film looses momentum after his confrontation with gula.

Rather than the hologram of the future nonsense, the Disney worlds would have been more interedting if they were set in the past as well. Showing us Agrabah 1000 or so years before the events might have been a cool hook for Unchained.
 

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I don't think Luxu's role is hard to figure out if you're a savvy viewer. I do think he should have been given more interactions with the foretellers tho. It would allow the viewer a greater sense of his character and the dynamic of the foretellers. I'd even show him in proper foreteller garb before he switches to the familiar black coat.

Aced is what i wished terra was like during bbs. He's probably the closest thing to film has to an antagonist which is why the film looses momentum after his confrontation with gula.

Rather than the hologram of the future nonsense, the Disney worlds would have been more interedting if they were set in the past as well. Showing us Agrabah 1000 or so years before the events might have been a cool hook for Unchained.

I completely agree with the notion about the Disney worlds, that would have been great.

As for Terra and Aced being similar? Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate. Aced as an antagonist doesn't really make sense in this story; he most certainly does turn into one during X, but here he's not really more than a fallen hero at most. Again, I think that that's pretty harsh considering the reasons why he wanted to protect everybody being very valid.

It's not Luxu's role that's confusing, it's just the fact that his role is fucking pointless for the story. The issue is that it's very much foreshadowing something that's happening much later, and that's infuriating coming from a place that's supposed to give us more answers than questions, something that the film very much did not do.

Come to think of it, X doesn't have much of an antagonist either other than maybe Aced and the Nightmare Chirithy. Huh.
 

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That's exactly what they've done so far, it's infuriating! I was really excited when Ventus was announced to be part of this world, too, but it's been so long that I'm not even sure if anything is actually going to happen.

I know, but I am no more ranting about it in X[chi]-threads because it can't be changed by us either way.
Eh, it's exactly because we've seen so little of Ventus so far that I am still on the fence about his inclusion. The first snippets shown portray him as a cute, friendly kid who's rather shy and apparently highly insecure of himself, yet there seems to be a setup for him to befriend both Ephemer and Skuld.
That's a somewhat promising premise, but BBS also had a promising premise and in the end didn't deliver so it's a sort of 50-50 issue if Unchained is actually a boon for Ven as a character and expands on him in a satisfying manner of if he's ruined by participating in it.

Come to think of it, X doesn't have much of an antagonist either other than maybe Aced and the Nightmare Chirithy. Huh.

I remember that at the very beginning during the tutorial sections of Browser-Chi there was a mention of "Seekers of Darkness" that hide among the members of the different unions and there's a still unexplained scene where Ephemer met a Black Coat but there was no follow up on either setup yet.
 
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I completely agree with the notion about the Disney worlds, that would have been great.

As for Terra and Aced being similar? Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate. Aced as an antagonist doesn't really make sense in this story; he most certainly does turn into one during X, but here he's not really more than a fallen hero at most. Again, I think that that's pretty harsh considering the reasons why he wanted to protect everybody being very valid.

It's not Luxu's role that's confusing, it's just the fact that his role is diddlying pointless for the story. The issue is that it's very much foreshadowing something that's happening much later, and that's infuriating coming from a place that's supposed to give us more answers than questions, something that the film very much did not do.

Come to think of it, X doesn't have much of an antagonist either other than maybe Aced and the Nightmare Chirithy. Huh.

Antagonist doesn't really mean villain or even a character whose evil. It's just a character who oppose the protagonist and serve as an obstacle.

Aced basically instigates the conflict over the traitor as his attempts to form alliances makes him suspicious. Ultimately he unwillingly becomes the traitor everybody was warned about, a self-fullfilling prophecy.
 
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Aced basically instigates the conflict over the traitor as his attempts to form alliances makes him suspicious. Ultimately he unwillingly becomes the traitor everybody was warned about, a self-fullfilling prophecy.

I think you completely missed the point of the movie. The whole point is that Gula was in the wrong for doing that, not Aced. It's not that Aced wasn't the villain, just that he wasn't the traitor. Gula betrayed Ira's and Aced's trust, and as such inadvertently caused the keyblade war. It's his fault in the end of it, and he seems to realize this in X when Skuld and the Player seek him out. Aced was the scapegoat, but Gula was the one doing real damage. Come to think of it, Invi doesn't seem to have much of a fondness for Gula, either. Aced was ruined by Gula more than anything, and Gula through the Master's orders was set up to destroy the group from the inside. The Master played them like a fucking fiddle.

You know what? The Master is definitely somewhat of a villain, moreso than Gula. I was crazy for saying that the good side could have easily been him earlier, he was clearly playing Ava.
 

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I don't think the idea of it being a main title was where they mismarketed it; that never seemed to be the case. They were truthful about the length and the importance. I think the main sin here was rather what it was about, instead completely ignoring the part where they have to - you know - recap any of the plot with the player. But, it's not like they told us that Back Cover would tell us basically what happened in X or anything then completely didn't give us that at all, because that would be silly!
I wouldn't say they were "truthful" so much as sufficiently vague; a lot of words were minced by Nomura over how much to expect from Back Cover, but I think ultimately the end product speaks for itself. The problem is Nomura's insistence that the plot of X is essential to KH3 and the future of the franchise: it was generally understood that Back Cover would reflect that and would therefore constitute a full entry, especially given its focus on the Foretellers, who at the time were seen as the agents of that story's central mysteries. Nomura did nothing to dissuade this line of thinking, capitalizing on the notion that BC would reveal the events of X through the perspective of the Foretellers-- the obvious implication being that it would utilize that premise as a method of resolving unanswered questions.

Nomura said:
As for the traitor, that is the keyword which the plot of KHχBC revolves around, so I think this too will be revealed in KHχBC.

I believe this is what Stephen Colbert would have referred to in a previous incarnation of his TV personality as, "Truthiness."

Personally, as someone who sees this entry as a method of lore dump taken by Nomura when he finds himself these days finding increasingly goofy ways to do this such as revealing these things as god damn orchestra concerts for crying out loud, the main point of the movie is to convey information to the audience, not to necessarily make characters you care about. So, while in the main series I would criticize this heavily, here it is not implied that these guys are going to stick around, especially since in X we've already seen where all of them ended up after this and how they dealt with these conflicts, so the emotional baggage of what they're carrying around is something that I end up ignoring anyways.
The fact that the film lacks the sort of closure you reference here is one of its key structural flaws. Every "chapter" of the story's disjointed framework is clearly character-defined: Case of Luxu, Case of Gula, Case of Ava, etc. The idea is that as the story unfolds, each of these characters' motivations (their "arguments") will be revealed: it's a very systematic, procedural approach to storytelling which is almost philosophical in its orientation, but good philosophy is grounded in thesis, and BC doesn't have one. Its overt intention to convey its core ideas through the characterization of its protagonists isn't compelling because its protagonists are merely skeletal: they are, at their best, a function of the plot rather than its custodians; and at their worst they are actually antithetical to any discernible narrative purpose, hijacked by contradictory communications about who they are-- as a collective and as individuals. Again, we can directly reference Nomura's stated objectives:

Nomura said:
For most of the main cast, it is their debut appearance where it's also the first time you'll be hearing their voices, so even though it's such a small window of time, we wanted players to be able to empathize with them.

Nomura said:
As for the Foretellers, more will be unveiled in future installments of the main series and in Kingdom Hearts Unchained X.

The argument that BC deliberately eschews character development in preference for plot mechanics is, in the first place, not an especially favorable position to take, but it also doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The Foretellers are meant to feel like fully realized protagonists who are going to have a lasting presence within the ongoing story: whether we agree that this was a smart approach or see it as egregiously undersold, it's consistent with the film's set up.

However, as a method of lore dump, this is absolutely diddlying abysmal. What did we diddlying learn except that MX's keyblade can see the future and Luxu has a diddlying box?! And worse yet, WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE BOX IS, IF IT'S BAD OR GOOD, AND WHAT THE diddly IT COULD POSSIBLY BE USED FOR?! How would Maleficent ever get to knowing about the box? Why would she be interested in having it? And WHY THE diddly SHOULD WE GIVE A SHIT HOLY CRAP!
Quite.

Great point to make about Back Cover that's infuriating, and the bangle scene is a fantastic example of that. The writing is either stilted and awkward or completely predictable. The only thing I somewhat didn't see coming was Ira's trust in Aced, but also Ira was in like 0.1% of the movie so it's not like we knew his character anyways.
The dialogue is abysmal, but I could get past that if the ideas underscoring it were represented with finesse or at least competence. Instead it's like the characters have been written into a locked room and made as inaccessible in their motivations and logic as possible. I was playing Unchained X at the time BC was released and was up-to-date on the specifics of the lore, and I still find the conversations and arguments that take place in the film frequently impenetrable. It's why I take issue with the film's amateurish lack of investment in the audience's perspective, which is as easy to accommodate as giving us a character through which we can both see and understand the events of the film as they unfold. I would have preferred Luxu, who can be freely positioned anywhere within the story without disrupting the established storyline, but given Ux's stable of underutilized characters it's really a "take your pick" situation for Nomura. Instead the whole movie chugs along without any context provided, using characters as window dressing to a plot that doesn't feel centered and fails to resonate emotionally or intellectually. It's too simple to pretend at subtlety, and too methodical to tug at the heart strings.

I think you're right about the lack of surprise, but it's kind of a weird complaint to make about the third or fourth time being unsurprising since the idea of going foreteller to foreteller revealing what they're meant to do is the entire format of the movie. Don't mean to judge you here, but do you mean to just say that the presentation is dumb?
Not "dumb," but certainly ineffective in its presentation and execution, as I've argued previously. The film never justifies its format: it just assumes that the audience is uncritically invested enough to go along with it. There are periods in the film where its own internal mechanisms outright play against a coherent reading of it, like the scene where Ava tells Invi about how Ira approached her looking for Gula and his "eyes were scary", and then we inexplicably flash back to that exact event sans any visual reference to his eyes (scary or otherwise), rendering the whole conversation moot through this unhinged sequencing that doesn't even bother to clarify time or place. We have absolutely no idea where they are when Ava accuses Invi of revealing Gula's hiding place (as if we're meant to understand that he's being hidden), but we're told that "only Invi" would have known about it. Compare this to the "Secret Place" in KH1, which is not only clearly defined in relation to the rest of the Island with recognizable location markers like the waterfall, but actually feels a bit clandestine...unlike Ava's random alleyway hideout. A couple of crates is sure to keep Ira off their trail!

My main issue was that during each "case study" they didn't actually feel like they had much to do with just one of the foretellers, as each one seemed to focus on everybody anyways. It almost felt useless in that way.
Just another failure to deliver. :D

Wrong argument to make here. It's valid to say that the black box is unnecessary as a plot device, but to say that we already knew from the Coded movie that Maleficent was after that book ignores the fact that this movie's goal was to send a few basic elements of the X universe to fans who weren't in access to the game. While many of the elements were hardly touched upon in this movie, you can't make the argument that fans didn't walk away at least having that cleared up in this movie. I'm sorry, I just have to completely disagree with that part of this argument.
Um, I don't disagree that the fact that X exists is basically all that is affirmed through this film's existence. The same is true of any advertisement for a product. But, despite the fact that an advertisement is all BC amounts to, I think we've established that it's intended to go much further. Even without Nomura going on record to say as much, it's built into the fabric of the film: the hamfisted efforts at character drama is meant to heighten our interest in the Foretellers as characters relevant to the development of the series, and the constant use of conjecture about the "future" is intended to move the audience's attention away from the specifics of how the world looks in the "Time of Fairy Tales" (we learn nothing about this in BC) and towards a concern for the implications that holds for the period of time we've witnessed up until now with Sora and friends. The audience is supposed to be looking for the connective tissue between "then" and "now": that's why Luxu gets the Goatblade and the Black Box, as a weak attempt to retroactively justify BC's existence through its "introduction of key plot points" when later installments pick up the bill and pay them off. In and of itself, BC tells us nothing we don't know or won't find out down the line.

Eeeeehhhhh, you're stretching it here. I doubt that was a reference at all. And for your next point here you have to realize that there is going to be some narrative shorthand in the writing. There weren't many games to foreshadow this, but that's also because there's going to be some things implied in the way. If anything, the main issue is that we never got to see them as apprentices or see any huge conflict before this, not that they didn't give it much time. It's pretty unfair to ask for there to be as much character development as Sora and Riku when they're not as relevant and clearly aren't built up to be anything on that scale.
I wouldn't have expected the characterization to have as much build up as Sora and Riku: my point is that the scene fails because it isn't positioned properly within the narrative given its intended impact, and I used the Sora/Riku dynamic as a comparative example. It's another miscalculation with framing, where the audience is expected, per your argument, to "just accept" narrative shortcuts which are taken and run with it. That's a poor excuse for flimsy writing when an hour is more than enough time to tell an effective story if the writer is careful and competent: the burden here is on the author to use their time efficiently. How many jargontastic conversations could have been cut to provide normal, humanizing, or even philosophically sound interactions between the Foretellers? Or some foundation in terms of their relationships with one another? The film could have sidelined the MoM entirely following his disappearance, giving us genuine plot development in which we see the gradual disintigration of the Foretellers' respect and empathy for one another, starting with their collective anxiety about what it means to be without his unifying leadership. The point is not that Aced and Ira's relationship couldn't, through some categorical fact of the universe, worked: it's that the story doesn't accommodate its own attempts to theme their arc as one of breakdown and redemption. It's not a question of implication; that would require that their relationship encompass elements of both explicit and understated qualifications beyond the trivial gestures afforded in BC as-is; instead, the scene rests upon conjecture without basis, overextending its narrative means to reach for a statement of value it hasn't properly earned.

And yes, they absolutely were former apprentices under the Master with each other. There's absolutely no other way to look at that, this title doesn't even have to really express that. Sorry if I sound rude when I'm this blunt, btw; I am just trying to be concise, but I can come across as rude from time to time, and I apologize. I think it's quite valid to say that the film does a poor job at conveying a history between the characters, though.
Not rude at all. I tend to prefer honest conversation like this and appreciate your willingness to engage. :)
And yeah, the latter point is all I'm getting at: yes, it's fair to assume certain aspects of these characters' histories, but on the other hand, is it? Wouldn't the film be that much stronger if they had taken time to clarify why all of these characters are in a room together arguing about how much darkness is too much darkness? The point of critique is to identify potential for improvement. The best thing I can say about BC is it has a lot of potential.

Sexy Aced? Uuuuuuhhhhh, if people are into dopey firemen voice actors then I guess so? He sounds like a giant stocky bodyguard or an animated bull dog, not so much an Adonis lol.
I meant that more in the sense that his voice actor is well-known in the U.S. dub scene. He has a "marketability" to him, particularly for anime fans. :p
I mean I'm not saying I'm not into the strrrrong, burly type who can arrest my whole body with a single, growling syllable buuut that's neither here nor there.

You know, with Invi's thinking, it got me to thinking that maybe she doesn't know that everyone else has roles for some reason. Maybe only a few people got the memo that that was the case? After all, Gula's really the only one that I can think of that actively talks about other's roles in this whole thing, and the only thing to know about Ira is that he's the leader.
I've considered this but not only does it seem unlikely, it doesn't hold water, because in order to engage with this notion seriously, we have to consider not just what Invi doesn't know, but also what she does know. She knows that she, herself, has been given a special assignment. She also knows that Ira has been assigned a role by the Master. So she's aware that 2/5 of the Foretellers have been assigned a role, and we're meant to believe that she hasn't even considered that the same might be true of the other 3 Foretellers? And that she's one of the most intelligent and reliable of the group? "Nah, not possible."

Sorry, but I can't take anyone seriously that still finds a whole lot of value in a KH game based on what Disney or FF things are in it. Not that seeing Big Hero 6 won't be great or anything, just that if you're putting all of your eggs in the "can't wait to play through this iconic Disney plot!" basket you should be ready to be mighty disappointed because of the writing of these games.
That was purely disparaging, I'm barely invested in Disney on the best of days: I'm really only interested in the challenge of getting to cohere with the rest of KH tonally, and within the narrative. It's fun and ever so slightly experimental as an approach. FF is literally nothing to KH anymore, though, which is kind of unfortunate but not unforeseeable as KH has continued to capture more and more elements of FF within its original architecture.
 

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Chiming in for a sec (I'd love to get into these threads more, but life's busy).

I generally agree with everything alexis has said about Back Cover so far-- flawed due to its premise, unfulfilled promises, execution, stacking mysteries on top of other mysteries and still acting like it was a proper main KH entry.
I was supportive of Back Cover at the beginning, trying to find the good in it (and it does have godd points as everything does), but as time went on it did not fare well.

I occasionally put this or that cutscene to absorb a good HD model, but in the bigger picture Back Cover is the new low standard Square's marketing and Nomura's confusing administration will go to.
 

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but in the bigger picture Back Cover is the new low standard Square's marketing and Nomura's confusing administration will go to.
Well said. Nomura talking out of both sides of his mouth is not especially new, though I find it less cute and more trite as time goes on, but with X in particular I don't feel like SE has worked with the fandom in good faith. From its relatively innocuous conception as a whimsical spinoff to this albatross of endless demands for patience as it continues to ensconce itself in the rudiments of KH's mythology (never mind the deeply cynical basis of the pay to play platform), to the rote foot note that is Back Cover and its bald attempt to extend the questionable value of the Final Chapter Prologue...like, at least there was a kind of kitchen-sink theory of utility behind the console spread: to try everything and see what works. I'm pretty sure SE just thinks (or maybe knows) KH fans will fall for anything now. :p
 

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First off, Alexis' last post was great and I just don't have time to reply to all of it right now haha.

Chiming in for a sec (I'd love to get into these threads more, but life's busy).

I generally agree with everything alexis has said about Back Cover so far-- flawed due to its premise, unfulfilled promises, execution, stacking mysteries on top of other mysteries and still acting like it was a proper main KH entry.
I was supportive of Back Cover at the beginning, trying to find the good in it (and it does have good points as everything does), but as time went on it did not fare well.

I occasionally put this or that cutscene to absorb a good HD model, but in the bigger picture Back Cover is the new low standard Square's marketing and Nomura's confusing administration will go to.

Yeah, I'll skip to Aced's scenes then just skip the rest of the movie usually.

I think the only lower marketing decision so far is making part of a god damn concert series canon not once, but TWICE.
 
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I don't think Back Cover is this huge dissapointment everybody is making it to be. But i'm coming in from a layman's perspective without playing the MMO. I also don't have high expectations for KH's storytelling after DDD so I wasn't expecting anything that good.

It's a passable movie worth watching once. The performances are pretty good but the material itself is lackluster. I felt like the movie needed another half-hour but there is no guarantee the movie would have used its extra time well.
 
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