Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV opened in Japanese cinemas on the 9th of July 2016 to a striking piece of promotional theater: day-one fans received exclusive Lunafreya postcards at the door. The film itself was stranger still. It was a fully animated CGI feature produced by Square Enix's in-house studio Visual Works, voice-cast with Aaron Paul, Lena Headey, and Sean Bean, and designed to tell a story that the parent video game Final Fantasy XV could not fit inside itself. At its heart was a dying king, a doomed soldier, and a peace treaty everyone knew was a lie.

  Kingsglaive runs parallel to the opening of Final Fantasy XV rather than retelling the game's own plot. Regis Lucis Caelum CXIII, king of Lucis, accepts an armistice with the empire of Niflheim while his kingdom's magical barrier weakens with his advancing age. The treaty is a ruse. The film's protagonist, Nyx Ulric, is a Kingsglaive soldier who gets pulled into the collapse of a civilization in the space of a single night.

  What made Kingsglaive unusual was not its subject but its purpose. Production began in 2014 as part of a deliberate multimedia strategy, and the film was kept secret until 2016 when it was nearly finished. Around 50 companies contributed to its completion. It grossed over $6.4 million worldwide. Critics largely dismissed it. Audiences kept watching it anyway.

• 2. Why a Film Existed at All

  ›

  Final Fantasy XV began life as a spin-off title called Final Fantasy Versus XIII. By the time it became a mainline entry, its story had grown large enough to fill several games. The development team at Square Enix did not want to build several games. Instead, they built supplementary media.

  Kingsglaive and the anime series Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV formed the core of what the team called the "Final Fantasy XV Universe." This approach inverted the model used by the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, where tie-in media arrived after the game's release. Here, the film and anime preceded the game, acting as an on-ramp into its world and characters.

  Game director Hajime Tabata later described Kingsglaive and Brotherhood as granting players a better view of the game's world. He noted that those who played only the game might notice missing context. The film was designed, however, so that watching it was not required to understand Final Fantasy XV. Its connection to the game ran deeper on the story side: both the film and game shared the same core script, written by Saori Itamuro from a draft by Kazushige Nojima. The film's link to the broader Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos was deliberately downplayed in marketing, even though the world of XV still used its design elements and shared mythology.

• 3. Building the Film

  ›

  Takeshi Nozue directed Kingsglaive. His prior experience with feature-length CGI was Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in 2005, on which he had served as co-director. On Kingsglaive he was sole director, a shift he found overwhelming given the number of producers he had to answer to on a single project.

  Full development began in 2014 after an extended preparatory period. From that point, production lasted approximately two and a half years. To manage the timeline, development was divided into three phases, each run by a different unit director reporting to Nozue. The internal team numbered around 50 people. Without external help, Nozue estimated a staff of five hundred would have been needed to finish in time.

  Around 50 companies were brought in. Among the Western studios were Digic Pictures, which had worked on graphics for the Assassin's Creed series, and Image Engine, whose credits included Jurassic World in 2015 and Game of Thrones. Europe-based Puppetworks Animation Studio also contributed. The Third Floor, a previsualization specialist, handled around 40% of the previsualization work after the team decided against doing it entirely in-house. For procedural environmental elements such as falling rubble, the team used Houdini animation software.

  Two and a half months before its planned release, the film was only half-finished. A major push from every involved studio was needed to complete it. Nozue attributed the willingness of overseas studios to help partly to their shared enthusiasm for the Final Fantasy franchise.

• 4. Story, Characters, and Theme

  ›

  The plot of Kingsglaive was built from a scene originally planned for Final Fantasy XV's own opening: Niflheim's army invading the city of Insomnia. That sequence was cut from the game due to concerns about content volume. Rather than discard it, the team built it into the film's climax.

  Nyx Ulric was an original character with no connection to the events of the game. Nozue described him as a medium through which a broader audience could engage with the story, and noted that his storyline was designed to explore themes around immigration. The central theme of the XV universe as a whole was the bond between father and son. Kingsglaive approached that theme from Regis's point of view, examining how the world perceived his responsibilities and the emotional weight of his role.

  Professional screenwriter Takashi Hasegawa was hired to turn the existing script into a feature-length cinematic work. Nozue described most of Hasegawa's work as that of a script doctor, with Hasegawa spending around one and a half months refining the script the Final Fantasy team had produced. Los Angeles-based company Hydra Entertainment assisted with the screenplay alongside Hollywood writing staff.

  Lunafreya was identified by the production as the "keystone" connecting the film, the game, and the Brotherhood anime. Her role in Kingsglaive was not an active one in the conventional sense, but the team wanted to convey her strength through her single-minded commitment to her goals. Regis was extensively redesigned for the film, a change significant enough that it altered his appearance in the game itself. The team aged him considerably to give him a regal presence.

• 5. Visual Design and Technology

  ›

  A tech demo created in 2012, titled Agni's Philosophy, served as the foundation for both the character modeling techniques and the Luminous Studio engine that would later power Final Fantasy XV. The head-mounted facial capture rig used on Kingsglaive was first developed for that same 2012 demo.

  Character design and modeling were overseen by Kazuaki Iwasawa, the character model supervisor at Business Division 2. Hairstyles for Crowe and Lunafreya were first modeled on real mannequin wigs before being rendered digitally. Each of those wigs was composed of three thousand curves, a thousand more than originally estimated.

  The city of Insomnia was based broadly on international cities, with its core modeled on Tokyo. Western elements were added after fan criticism that the game's early version of Insomnia looked too similar to the Japanese capital. Square Enix collaborated with Audi on a custom version of their Audi R8 for use as the royal family's transport, and included references to real-world brands including Japan Airlines as part of the film's guiding concept: "a fantasy based on reality."

  Most individual props, including Nyx's daggers, the Niflheim mechs, and the Ring of the Lucii, were designed and rendered before main production began. Lighting and skin shading received particular attention, with substantial work going into making transparency and shading behave correctly relative to each scene's light source.

• 6. Voice Cast and Music

  ›

  Aaron Paul voiced Nyx Ulric in the English version. Nyx's physical likeness was based on French model Johan Akan, while Neil Newbon performed motion capture. Lena Headey voiced Lunafreya, whose appearance was modeled on Russian model Sonya Maltceva; Amanda Piery handled her motion capture. Sean Bean voiced King Regis; British actor Jon Campling performed motion capture for Regis and served as his physical model in both the film and in Final Fantasy XV.

  Casting was handled by Rui Kawada, who also served as general project manager. The lead actors were selected both for recognizability and acting ability. Japanese voice casting followed a similar approach, with well-known performers in the lead roles: Gō Ayano as Nyx, Shioli Kutsuna as Lunafreya, and Tsutomu Isobe as Regis. Lip syncing across all versions was matched to the English voice track. Plans for the film and game casts to share actors were dropped during production.

  The score was composed by John R. Graham. Yoko Shimomura, who composed the music for Final Fantasy XV, wrote the film's main theme. Nozue described the score as "Shimomura meets Hollywood." Graham wrote more than 100 minutes of music, combining live orchestra with electronic elements, and recorded with a symphonic orchestra in Nashville. The soundtrack was released as a two-disc album on the 7th of September 2016.

• 7. Release and Reception

  ›

  Kingsglaive was first announced in March 2016 at "Uncovered: Final Fantasy XV," a media event dedicated to the game. The film's theatrical run in Japan began on the 9th of July 2016 through Aniplex. In North America, Stage 6 Films handled a limited theatrical release starting on the 19th of August 2016. The French premiere was held at Le Grand Rex on the 15th of September 2016.

  In Japan, the film debuted in 10th place, selling 22,818 tickets and grossing the equivalent of $345,507 in its first two days. Over 70,000 tickets had been sold by the 20th of July, reaching a total gross equivalent to $907,524 in Japan. In the United States, the limited run brought in $269,980 total. The film entered the Chinese market in March 2017 at No. 4, as the highest-grossing new release of that week at $3.90 million. Its total worldwide gross reached over $6.4 million as of April 2017. The home video releases were among the top 20 best-selling DVD and Blu-ray releases in the United States for October 2016, with a combined gross of $4,549,411.

  On Rotten Tomatoes, Kingsglaive holds a 12% approval rating from 17 reviews, with an average rating of 4.79 out of 10. On Metacritic, it scored 35 out of 100 based on 10 critics. Critics repeatedly praised the visuals and the performances of the lead actors while faulting the plot as rushed, the supporting cast as weak, and the story as too densely tied to the game's setup. One reviewer at GamesRadar gave the film five stars, calling it "an expert blend of world building, humanity, and the magical strangeness of Final Fantasy." The home video release on Ultra HD Blu-ray arrived on the 30th of March 2021.