YMMV / Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV

• Awesome Music: John R. Graham's score for the film is often described as "Shimomura meets Hollywood", as it incorporates several orchestral tracks worthy of a modern action score along with a few quiet pieces that capture the drama conveyed in the related scenes.
  • "Prologue", featuring two successive One Woman Wails, sets the movie's somber tone as Luna recounts the war between Lucis and Niflheim, as well as the fall of Tenebrae.
  • "Calling for Rain". Unlike the rest of the soundtrack, this is an upbeat song, cited by many fans as their number one track for driving around in the main game. It's only canonically heard in the barkeeper's radio, as well as the short clip featuring said barkeeper kicking an Ultros's ass.
  • "The General and the King", Glauca's militaristic Leitmotif, quickly followed by the tragic movement that plays when he executes Regis.
  • "The Battle for the Crown City", played during the first part of the climax's fight between Nyx and Glauca. A frantic orchestral piece that's accompanied by Ominous Latin Chanting once Nyx summons the previous kings of Lucis to aid him against Niflheim's fleet.
  • "At Struggle's End", played during the final part of Nyx's duel against Glauca. Representing hope against overwhelming power, it ends on a high note with a One-Woman Wail as the victorious Nyx stares into the horizon awaiting for his death, content with the knowledge that he made a difference in the war.
• Base-Breaking Character: Luna, as she is in the main game. A particular criticism is that she is primarily a Pinball Protagonist in the movie due to her taking backseat to other characters, such as Nyx. Her jumping out of an airship has also received a mixed response. However, see Rescued from the Scrappy Heap below...
• Broken Base: Since it was first announced, the movie was polarizing. Some where fine with a movie, while others weren't sure having a movie prequel to the game was a good idea. When the movie was released, it broke the base further. Those who liked it commonly cite amazing visuals and art, strong action and soundtrack, along with Nyx and Regis being well performed and interesting. Those who hated it commonly bring up how rushed and overcomplicated the plot is, weird edits and fade to blacks in the middle of scenes are common, character motivations are confusing and that voice acting for most of the characters is weak or flat out terrible, Libertus being a stand out example of this.
• Critical Dissonance: Kingsglaive has a score of 13% and 35 at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively. Fan reception, on the other hand, has been a bit more fair, scoring an 7.2 on IMDb. That said, it's commonly agreed on that visually, Kingsglaive is a fantastic achievement with CG animated movies, while story-wise the movie isn't in the same category.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Crowe is one of the more popular characters of the movie, even though she died rather early in the movie and overall not much is known about her.
• Evil Is Cool: General Glauca, for being a Four-Star Badass and a hero-killing Tin Tyrant who wears a very cool alien-esque armor.
• Fan Nickname: Ravus - Jaime Lannister
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Although Lunafreya and Nyx are probably supposed to be a platonic duo in this film, a lot of viewers ship them anyway, believing they had a lot of natural romantic chemistry, more than Lunafreya ended up having with Noctis himself in the game, along with more screen time together, whether it was supposed to be intentional or not.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The movie ends with a hopeful Libertus inviting Luna and Noctis to come visit him in his hometown one day. The events of Final Fantasy XV ensure she won't be able to take him up on that offer, giving Libertus another person to wait for in vain.
  • As Ardyn enters the throne room and Regis recognizes him, Ardyn replies "it is an honor to be recognized" by the King, yet he still insists on introducing himself. In the actual game, players learn that Ardyn was the brother of the Founder King and a distant ancestor of Regis and Noctis, who was made an Unperson by the Royal Family and stricken from history, with Ardyn casting aside his original name in turn. In his own way, Ardyn was being a Troll to Regis, same as he is to Noctis.
    • Crosses over into Hilarious in Hindsight with the release of Episode Ardyn. The first time Ardyn steps into Insomnia, he tries to burn the whole city to the ground during a celebration of Founder's Day, culminating in two boss fights years before the treaty negotiations take place. The first boss fight was against Regis, who recognized him immediately as the Adagium. He knows exactly who this Troll of a chancellor is.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Even when Kingsglaive made it clear that Nyx will uphold his end of the bargain with the past kings of Lucis and forfeit his life by dawn, some fans still hold on to the belief that his death is not final and are quick to point out that the final scene pans out before anything explicit happens, though this also leads to a popular theory that he might have been transformed into Ifrit, the Astral seen in XV's prologue. It's not helped by Tabata stating during a Famitsu interview that while he will not appear in the game, players will be able to "feel his presence" - and then it turned out that Nyx does appear in XV... with Ardyn using an illusion of his corpse to decorate the Lucis throne room as he waits for Noctis to finally confront him.
  • The same sentiment also holds true for King Regis after many warmed up to him - some are holding out hope that he can be revived in some way out of sympathy of Noctis losing both his parents.
• I Knew It!: In September 2015, a poster on GameFAQs posted a link to a Chinese website claiming that a CGI movie called Kingsglaive was in the works. The information was laughed out of town and declared a hoax. In March 2016, Kingsglaive was officially revealed to the public. Considering that the movie had been in development for 3 years already, it now becomes clear that that Chinese website was definitely working with insider information.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Even its fans generally agree the story and characters are not particularly good; the main draw is the incredible CGI, music, and fight scenes.
• Love to Hate: General Glauca, for all the betrayal and murders he committed, though at the same time Evil Is Cool.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • In response to Regis being played by Sean Bean: "Nice knowing ya, Noctis's dad!"^note And yes, he does die halfway through the movie.
  • Likewise, to Lena Headey's playing Luna: "Let's hope Luna doesn't have a brother."^note And hilariously enough, Luna does have a brother: Ravus. He◊ even resembles Jaime Lannister!◊
• Moral Event Horizon: Glauca crossed it within the first minute with his murder of Sylva, and keeps going with his slaughtering of Clarus and Regis. Then, Nyx finds out about his true identity, and the treachery that entails, making it hard for fans to call Glauca as anything but ruthless.
• One-Scene Wonder: Ardyn only has one important scene in the movie which is when he goes to meet with Regis to make the peace treaty. Yet this one scene is the best narrative scene in the movie and all of it has to do with Ardyn eating the scenery, all of which is made even better once you beat the game and realize all the subtext and tension carried here between the two characters.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: The reason for why many fans prefer to ship Nyx and Luna may come from this trope. As the film takes a lot of the scrapped original plans for what was originally supposed to be game content, it ended up giving them Noctis and Stella's natural chemistry that had been showcased in those early trailers. Nowhere is this more apparent than the redone party scene, as it is basically the same situation, just with different characters and context to it. In the scene, Nyx and Luna are simply meant to be bodyguard and princess, Bodyguard Crush or no, yet the ease with which they talk with each other is some of the most natural, chemistry oozing interactions within the film. Other interactions between the two throughout follow this pattern, making it seem like they're already an old married couple, despite the possible intention of them being purely platonic. Either way, the film's creators never confirmed it one way or the other.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While not a true, full on scrappy, Luna in this film was not very well liked by a large amount of viewers for numerous reasons, the biggest being that they thought she had paper-thin characterization and a lack of agency within the narrative. However, the mishandling of her character in the game proper has caused many to look back on her film incarnation and at least admit that her portrayal in the movie actually gives her both a character arc and initiative to achieve her goals, clearly attempting to pull her own weight as much as she can and be useful in spite of her lack of magic, and thus look kinder on her as a result.
• Retroactive Recognition: Go Ayano and Tsutomu Isobe (Nyx and Regis's Japanese voice actors) previously appeared in Tokusatsu as Aki Sawada/Spider Orphnoch and Wolzard/Isamu Ozu respectively.
• The Scrappy: Libertus's characterization is almost universally cited to be one the movie's greatest weaknesses given he's supposed to do the emotional heavy-lifting for the movie's first half, and fails to deliver it. His character arc about deserting the Glaives and joining a resistance movement is also criticized for being poorly thought out and making the plot unnecessarily tangled. The weak voice acting for the character didn't help either.
• Shocking Moments: High, being the action movie that sets up Final Fantasy XV's plot. The crowning moment goes to Nyx using the Ring of the Lucii's power as the statues of the Old Wall awaken and the soundtrack's chorus rises, upping the scale of the climax's battle.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Crowe dies very early on with no real contribution to the plot, other than to make Nyx and Libertus grieve and set up Libertus' plotline, itself being a fairly weak point that's hardly followed up through the movie.
  • Libertus too. The only major character to make it to the end of the movie besides Luna, yet he is never referenced in any way, shape, or form in Final Fantasy XV proper. It took until the Comrades multiplayer DLC, which came out almost a full year after the game's initial release, for him to make his return.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Nyx is forced to perform a Heroic Sacrifice before he can carry out Regis' final order to escort Lunafreya and the Ring to Noctis. If this had been the case and followed up on in the game it could have made for an interesting storyline, with Nyx perhaps becoming a Supporting Protagonist as Lunafreya's bodyguard, and further development between the three characters of Nyx, Lunafreya and Noctis, and change things up in the game itself. Doing so would have better connected the game and Kingsglaive, which doesn't ultimately factor much into the game's plot and characters otherwise.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The entirety of the film. In fact, when the trailer was first shown, many people thought Kingsglaive was a live-action film.
• Unexpected Character: In this rather serious film, nobody likely expected Ultros of all characters to appear. And particularly in the way he did appear in the film (as a giant nonsapient monster capable of tearing a large airship apart). In fact you would be forgiven for not realizing that it was meant to be Ultros since you don't get very many good looks at his head before his death and he lacks his trademark goofiness (much less ability to speak).