Ranking Every Final Fantasy Composer
22. John R. Graham
Works: Kingsglaive
Given that a box office bomb bankrupted Squaresoft (forcing their merger with Enix) and led to Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi being booted from the company, it was certainly eyebrow raising when they announced the release of another film to accompany XV. Kingsglaive is almost unwatchable dross, but annoyingly it needs to be experienced to understand certain plot developments in the game itself.
Rather than efficiently tie the music of the two properties together, Square-Enix hired an American composer, John R. Graham, solely for the film. This resulted in a huge disconnect between his work and the music put together by Yoko Shimomura for XV, with her music used only in a few scenes.
Graham’s tracks are far from bad. Many, like ‘Our Hope Goes With You’ go through the dramatic and emotional range that would be expected of a Hollywood production, though others just feel off, such as the barely comprehensible ‘Calling For Rain’
With 39 tracks in total, far more than a two-hour film requires, the soundtrack was ultimately overstuffed, with many tracks only hearable on a CD release that few would’ve purchased given the poor reception to the film.