When they announced the remake of Final Fantasy VII, we all trembled thinking about what they would change, undoubtedly, with demonic arts. Were they going to ruin the first RPG of a whole generation or, on the contrary, were they going to treat it with the necessary love? Would it have extra scenes or would it become a mere aimless wandering, repeating over and over again what we already experienced in the 90s? Now we already know the solution, and before congratulating Naoki Hamaguchi, we should first do the same with… Disney.
Kingdom Fantasy
You might be thinking “But this is not ‘Kingdom Hearts‘”. And you’re right. But the truth is that ‘Final Fantasy VII’ was actually inspired by ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Not the original version with Lumière and animated company in two dimensions, but the remake starring Emma Watson. Hamaguchi himself claims that the movie “impressed him a lot” because it was more or less what they had in mind.
So, taking a mythical “untouchable” product and giving it a twist to “work it in a much more realistic style”. The truth is that personally, the remake of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ seems unnecessary and a bit too dirty, but the one of ‘Final Fantasy VII’ is much more accurate, with new scenes that bring depth to the plot (and a good handful of side missions that… well, you know).
Hamaguchi, upon seeing ‘Beauty and the Beast’, was surprised to see that it was basically the same, “but the characters were shown in much more detail”. Thus, they decided to be respectful to the original, drawing on top of it and never really deviating from the path set 25 years ago. It was the only way for it to turn out well. Hey, who would have thought that seeing Cloud again would depend on Lumiere, Cogsworth, and Chip?
