Remember the famous Clerks argument about how the rebels in Star Wars were actually the bad guys? The idea is that the 2nd time the rebels destroyed the Death Star it was under construction and thus required a large number of non-military personnel to build it due to it's massive size. This mass killing of innocents, regular citizens of the Empire, added a lot of new ideas to conversations and debate about the Star Wars universe. I remember immediately thinking about Final Fantasy 7 after watching that Clerks argument for the first time, and how Barret's terrorist group AVALANCHE dealt a blow to Shinra by dropping a section of the multi-level city of Midgar onto the citizens below. The game moves on, and it is rarely spoken of again, but that plate fell onto an entire sector of Midgar. There are 8 sectors, meaning that Barret, Cloud, and the rest of the group at the time pre-meditated the mass extermination of 1/8 the population of the largest metropolitan city on the entire planet. Is even Shinra responsible for THAT many deaths?
I suppose that is impossible to know, because we don't know the population of Midgar. I do however, think it is safe to say that it was a number high enough to make you cringe, and definitely large enough to lose the support of every surviving citizen of the city. This is a major problem that I have with Final Fantasy 7 because it causes me not to root for anybody. Shinra is draining the life out of the planet and must be stopped of course, but simply killing more people than they kill is a really stupid way of doing it. If you put yourself in the shoes of the average Midgar-ian I doubt you could find any reason to support AVALANCHE.
If Barret really wanted to help the planet and stop Shinra, then address the issues that allow Shinra to have so much power in the first place. He killed 1/8 of Midgar's population, thus becoming a Lex Luthor level villain within that city, and seeing how easily Barret came to terms with what he had done makes me suspect that he doesn't really need the support of the common person to accomplish his goals. Is this because Midgar-ians can't vote? The city has a mayor, who directly reports to President Shinra and has no problems admitting that his position has no real power. So do average citizens have no voice?
Wutai has an army, and a government, but what about Nibelheim or Rocket Town? Is the entire FF7 world just a collection of independent city-states? In the Final Fantasy 7 universe, the world is deep into a life changing industrial revolution. The tech is getting advanced, automobiles, motorcycles, airships, power plants, and the population is allowing a corporation to amass power and take over governmental responsibilities. This is what needs to be addressed. Barret and Cloud know firsthand how powerful a group of just a few can be, especially with high-level materia in such abundance. Stopping Sephiroth was obviously the most pressing matter but they didn't know that at the time of the first reactor sabotage. Have elections, fight for the right to vote, use your technology to create a global community, and use these new fangled gadgets of yours to keep every city aware of each other's statuses. The mining population of Bone Village should hear about protests happening in Junon, or the hurricane that devastated Costa Del Sol. If I was a citizen of Midgar, I would applaud the destruction of Sephiroth, I would vote to establish a system of elected officials completely independent of Shinra, and then, angrily, I would hope for the imprisonment of every single evil motherfucker responsible for that collapse in Sector 8.
Positive change needs to come about in a positive way gentlemen. You fucked up.
No comments:
Post a Comment