Tales of Vesperia: First Strike
To list all the reasons why I cannot take this movie as canon would make a very long entry all on its own, but a moment ago one small, yet crucial point crystallized for me. Allow me to share.
Timeline problems aside -- and First Strike has many of them -- this story is meant to take place at the beginning of Yuri's career with the Imperial Knights and to demonstrate why he left them. We already know why in canon (Yuri explains that having to work inside the system meant having to be a part of and accept what was wrong with the system, which he couldn't bear), but this is a defining moment in Yuri's character arc.
Only, it's not really, because aside from not being in the Knights anymore at the end of the movie, Yuri doesn't develop at all.
At the beginning of the movie, we should have seen a Yuri who was wide-eyed and idealistic -- proud to be an Imperial Knight, proud to have fulfilled the dream he and Flynn shared as children. He was still a bit sloppy (Flynn fondly recalls in-game at one point that Yuri used to track muddy footprints into the room they shared as cadets), but one thing we say about Yuri over and over again during Tales of Vesperia is that he's nothing like an Imperial Knight. And Yuri protests, with some exasperation, "Is it really so hard for everyone to believe I used to be a knight?"
Thematically, the movie should have shown what Yuri was like back then, when he was younger and more innocent.
Now, I'm not saying that Yuri in the Imperial Knights should have necessarily been all that much more like Flynn -- but should he have been excited to be a Knight? Yes. Should he have had a lot of respect for people like Alexei and Niren, good knights? (Yeah, I know Alexei wasn't a good guy in the movie. That's another complaint I have.) Yes. There should have been something here for us to contrast with Yuri's later cynicism. Not because characters in prequels should always "grow into" their present-day selves, I don't even like that trope -- but because this was a time period when Yuri changed, a lot, according to game canon.
But First Strike doesn't do any of that. The Yuri we meet at the beginning of it is already belligerent, already incredibly uninspired by speeches on the purpose of the Knights, already not taking his duties even remotely seriously. (I mean, he starts a bar fight, what was that about. Seriously: what was it about? I've only seen the movie once.) He has so little respect for the uniform he's earned that Flynn demands to know why he's in the Knights at all. (Which is, like, a giant plot hole all by itself; but First Strike Flynn seems to suffer from intermittent amnesia, so oh well.)
The point is: Yuri is already cynical. He's already a big, cynical troll, sarcastic about his role as an Imperial Knight, dismissive of Flynn and everyone else. Leaving the Knights at the end of the movie doesn't happen as a result of character growth but because a captain he only met and grew attached to over the course of the movie died. And I mean, it could have been because of the corruption that led to the death -- because Alexei denied them the backup they needed, or because the whole incident they went to investigate had been caused by an arrogant noble (frankly, it should have been because of Alexei, he's full of wacky blastia experiments) -- but it wasn't. It was very plainly because Yuri just thought the Knights wouldn't be the same without Niren in their midst, and Yuri leaves them amiably, waving a cheerful goodbye to Flynn.
Which is another problem -- in the game, it seems very clear that Yuri leaving the Knights caused a schism between himself and Flynn. They grew apart, and it's really only over the course of the game that they come back together again. In the movie, it's more like Yuri leaving the Knights and the experiences they had together right before it created their friendship, and you're left wondering at what point they started ruining it.
I don't know why all of this happened, but I'm willing to bet it's at least partly because Yuri consistently ranks up there in Namco's character popularity polls. IIRC, he's the most popular protagonist they've ever had, and one of the most popular characters, period. So, when the time came to make a movie, no one really wanted to mess with that. No one wanted to try and write a different kind of Yuri, whom the audiences might not enjoy as much as they'd enjoyed the Yuri in the game. Unfortunately, the end result is a movie that isn't really about that guy; it's about a pale imitation of him with a similar character design and the same voice actor. That's what happens when you hire a writer to do your screenplay who was not involved with the original product in any way, and apparently has no real understanding of what makes the characters interesting, let alone beloved.
And really, the movie is barely about even the pale imitation of Yuri; it does much more for the stories of Repede and Flynn, albeit not necessarily good things. (Crazy question. Why does Flynn need a Freudian excuse for wanting to work within the system? Yuri's the anarchist, and anarchy is the thing that doesn't come naturally to people. If anyone needs a Freudian excuse, it's Yuri. Also, even assuming Flynn's excuse for the mind-boggling desire to uphold the law IS that his dad died disobeying orders, it seems like the movie wants him to have come to terms with that -- so why is he still so by the book in the game...?)
See, it's things like this that kept me from enjoying the movie: I don't hate it for being noncanon, it's just that the way in which it is noncanon was -- at best -- thoroughly uninteresting to me.
This entry was originally posted at here, via Dreamwidth. Feel totally free to comment there using OpenID!
Timeline problems aside -- and First Strike has many of them -- this story is meant to take place at the beginning of Yuri's career with the Imperial Knights and to demonstrate why he left them. We already know why in canon (Yuri explains that having to work inside the system meant having to be a part of and accept what was wrong with the system, which he couldn't bear), but this is a defining moment in Yuri's character arc.
Only, it's not really, because aside from not being in the Knights anymore at the end of the movie, Yuri doesn't develop at all.
At the beginning of the movie, we should have seen a Yuri who was wide-eyed and idealistic -- proud to be an Imperial Knight, proud to have fulfilled the dream he and Flynn shared as children. He was still a bit sloppy (Flynn fondly recalls in-game at one point that Yuri used to track muddy footprints into the room they shared as cadets), but one thing we say about Yuri over and over again during Tales of Vesperia is that he's nothing like an Imperial Knight. And Yuri protests, with some exasperation, "Is it really so hard for everyone to believe I used to be a knight?"
Thematically, the movie should have shown what Yuri was like back then, when he was younger and more innocent.
Now, I'm not saying that Yuri in the Imperial Knights should have necessarily been all that much more like Flynn -- but should he have been excited to be a Knight? Yes. Should he have had a lot of respect for people like Alexei and Niren, good knights? (Yeah, I know Alexei wasn't a good guy in the movie. That's another complaint I have.) Yes. There should have been something here for us to contrast with Yuri's later cynicism. Not because characters in prequels should always "grow into" their present-day selves, I don't even like that trope -- but because this was a time period when Yuri changed, a lot, according to game canon.
But First Strike doesn't do any of that. The Yuri we meet at the beginning of it is already belligerent, already incredibly uninspired by speeches on the purpose of the Knights, already not taking his duties even remotely seriously. (I mean, he starts a bar fight, what was that about. Seriously: what was it about? I've only seen the movie once.) He has so little respect for the uniform he's earned that Flynn demands to know why he's in the Knights at all. (Which is, like, a giant plot hole all by itself; but First Strike Flynn seems to suffer from intermittent amnesia, so oh well.)
The point is: Yuri is already cynical. He's already a big, cynical troll, sarcastic about his role as an Imperial Knight, dismissive of Flynn and everyone else. Leaving the Knights at the end of the movie doesn't happen as a result of character growth but because a captain he only met and grew attached to over the course of the movie died. And I mean, it could have been because of the corruption that led to the death -- because Alexei denied them the backup they needed, or because the whole incident they went to investigate had been caused by an arrogant noble (frankly, it should have been because of Alexei, he's full of wacky blastia experiments) -- but it wasn't. It was very plainly because Yuri just thought the Knights wouldn't be the same without Niren in their midst, and Yuri leaves them amiably, waving a cheerful goodbye to Flynn.
Which is another problem -- in the game, it seems very clear that Yuri leaving the Knights caused a schism between himself and Flynn. They grew apart, and it's really only over the course of the game that they come back together again. In the movie, it's more like Yuri leaving the Knights and the experiences they had together right before it created their friendship, and you're left wondering at what point they started ruining it.
I don't know why all of this happened, but I'm willing to bet it's at least partly because Yuri consistently ranks up there in Namco's character popularity polls. IIRC, he's the most popular protagonist they've ever had, and one of the most popular characters, period. So, when the time came to make a movie, no one really wanted to mess with that. No one wanted to try and write a different kind of Yuri, whom the audiences might not enjoy as much as they'd enjoyed the Yuri in the game. Unfortunately, the end result is a movie that isn't really about that guy; it's about a pale imitation of him with a similar character design and the same voice actor. That's what happens when you hire a writer to do your screenplay who was not involved with the original product in any way, and apparently has no real understanding of what makes the characters interesting, let alone beloved.
And really, the movie is barely about even the pale imitation of Yuri; it does much more for the stories of Repede and Flynn, albeit not necessarily good things. (Crazy question. Why does Flynn need a Freudian excuse for wanting to work within the system? Yuri's the anarchist, and anarchy is the thing that doesn't come naturally to people. If anyone needs a Freudian excuse, it's Yuri. Also, even assuming Flynn's excuse for the mind-boggling desire to uphold the law IS that his dad died disobeying orders, it seems like the movie wants him to have come to terms with that -- so why is he still so by the book in the game...?)
See, it's things like this that kept me from enjoying the movie: I don't hate it for being noncanon, it's just that the way in which it is noncanon was -- at best -- thoroughly uninteresting to me.
This entry was originally posted at here, via Dreamwidth. Feel totally free to comment there using OpenID!