I…don’t entirely understand why or how a lot of things happened in this movie. I thought I was an idiot for asking “Wait…what just happened?” as the credits rolled. But after thinking about it, I think the movie’s more at fault than I initially believed.

Let’s start with Sakura. She continues to be the most complicating factor of these movies. She has a confrontation with Rin that’s impactful because that dialogue reminds you of all of the trauma she went through that would lead her to this point. I use “reminds” because I don’t think the movies properly highlight those crippling 11 years of Sakura’s life. Obviously you already know her life was messed up even before booting up Heaven's Feel. But for it to apparently be a driving plot device, I think it should’ve had a lot of time devoted to it. Unlimited Blade Works did a better job at showing it and she isn’t even relevant in that timeline! It really just felt like she was simply being possessed by the shadow, which didn’t make for an interesting antagonist (especially when considering the alternative of having Sakura’s insanity be entirely her own).

Maybe it was my expectations, but Saber Alter didn’t feel realized at all. I was hoping in this movie we’d get some character out of her, but she continued to be nothing more than Sakura's threatening bodyguard. I think it’s a big missed opportunity to not explore how a noble character like Saber acts when corrupted.

Rider also didn’t entirely meet my expectations, but she got close. I’m glad she had more of a presence and role in this final movie. The last fight she was in made her sick as hell on top of that. But I think she didn’t have a ton of screentime despite having such a big connection to Sakura (compare with Saber and Archer in Unlimited Blade Works). Plus, exploring her thoughts as Sakura got corrupted more would’ve been nice.

In the previous movie I praised Shirou for doing things without a Servant. It was more about him using brains over brawn most of the time. But this time Shirou’s all about brawn, and I don’t think I was a fan. I don’t want to spoil too much, but he certainly feels weirdly overpowered in this one. He was weirdly overpowered come the end of Unlimited Blade Works too, but I think that one felt more earned thanks to the overall plot of the second half.

There are a lot of other moments that either felt inconsistent or felt like they came out of nowhere. However, I don’t want to specifically list them for spoiler reasons. I’d be surprised if I was alone with wondering how some stuff happened (even after reading a synopsis once this review was written).

To be fair, I can’t help but feel that all of these issues I have with the movie don't exist in the visual novel thanks to it having more time to flesh things out. Unfortunately I haven’t read the visual novel, but I cannot shake the idea that watching only the movies doesn’t do this plotline justice.

Granted, as this trilogy went on, I was thinking about just how crazy it was getting. I never expected an “alt path” to diverge so much from the original. It’s impressive that it makes its own story after the first ~20 minutes of Movie 1. I definitely respect that capacity for creativity.

However, I think Unlimited Blade Works is the better story. The characters and events there felt more whole than Heaven’s Feel while also not having Sakura’s confusing motives muddying everything up. I would go so far as to say that, in retrospect, I don’t think I should’ve watched Heaven’s Feel. At the same time, I feel like I’m writing a great visual novel story off here, so maybe one day I’ll try that.