4.
Sephiroth’s Goal – In the game, Sephiroth’s goal after he discovers that he is a genetic experiment freak is to search for what he thinks is his mother, Jenova. In reality, Sephiroth is son of the mad scientist Hojo and Lucretia, but he never realizes this. If I remember correctly Sephiroth finds Jenova and decides that his new goal is to become for all intents and purposes, a god. Sephiroth hopes to accomplish this by calling forth meteor to collide with the planet. The planet would then try to heal the wound with an enormous surge of the Lifestream and then Sephiroth would absorb all of that power into himself. That is glossing over a lot of detail, but is overall Sephiroth’s goal (for additional details, read the Sephiroth theory here again (
http://www.ffshrine.org/ff7/ff7_theory_sephiroth.php). In the movie, it would make sense for his goal to be the same, with the slight change of killing off Cloud and all of his friends before trying to summon Meteor. But this isn’t the case. In the movie Sephiroth says “What I hope for, Cloud, is to use the world as a ship to sail the darkness of space. As Mother did before me, you see. One day we will discover a new world. We will create our shining future on that ground.” Sounded rather ridiculous to me. Sephiroth does not supply any details as to how he plans to use the world as some sort of spaceship or what exactly his idea of a “shining future” is. Kind of difficult when all you can do is fly around like Neo and kick ass with a very, very long sword. But then I put it into context. Perhaps Sephiroth means that after he executes his original plan of absorbing all of the Lifestream, he would then become powerful enough to guide the lifeless hunk of rock that remained wherever he wanted. But to someone who just saw the movie, what Sephiroth says would sound absurd without previous knowledge from playing the game. So perhaps the goal is entirely separate from what we previously know about Sephiroth. Again, Sephiroth’s idea of a shining future has no previous reference in the game or movie, and is thus left to the viewer’s imagination. So to finalize this section:
Why does Sephiroth change his goals between game and movie? Or does he change them? Is Sephiroth’s stated goals in the movie a continuation of his original objectives? Any other possible speculation?