Sunday, September 11, 2016

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva - movie recap

This turned out to be a lot better than I was expecting...

It starts off showing Layton, Luke, and Flora just concluding a case and catching Don Paulo... Then Luke starts describing the story of when they were invited to a theatre by an opera singer... This woman's friend, Melina, has somehow returned but is now in the body of a little girl.. that girl says she was given the gift of eternal life...

Layton explains the legend of the "Ambrosia" people, who used to worship their queen and her beautiful singing voice.. but then one day that queen got sick and died... Shortly after she died, they invented an eternal life elixer. so they all started taking the elixer and waiting for their queen to revive...

At the end of the performance, some unknown person takes over the stage and tells everyone they are about to play a game where the winner gets granted eternal life, and the losers will lose their lives... Inspector Grosky is there and he tries to arrest this person, but that person turns out to be a decoy balloon figure.. The whole theatre suddenly turns into a boat and they are now sailing through shark-infested waters, and being forced to play this game...

Puzzle 001: Find the oldest thing you can see. Layton realizes that doesn't specifically say it has to be on the ship, and he and a bunch of other people go to where they can see the stars in the sky...
Puzzle 002: Find the biggest crown on this ship. Luke thinks he has solved this puzzle and yells out that the solution is that big crown at the entrance... but Layton has other ideas... he takes Luke and Janice out to the dock, where a bunch of other passengers had the same idea as him... one of the passengers is treating everyone else as enemies and wanted to trick people into going to the wrong solution... They all get onto lifeboats and start rowing away from the theatre ship, until eventually they see that the ship itself is in the shape of a giant crown.

Layton, Luke, and Janice are all on the same boat as the orchestra player and Melinda... The orchestra player is the original Melinda's father, and he says that he adopted this girl because she reminded him of her... He doesn't seem to be on the same side as the villain, but this Melina girl does. She doesn't want Layton to win this game, and earlier she pushed Inspector Grosky off of the ship. Grosky just now managed to swim back onto the ship after Puzzle 2 was solved. And then the ship suddenly starts exploding, and he has to jump back into the shark-infested waters.

Emmy is investigating elsewhere, when she gets the news of the theatre ship having washed up on shore.. meanwhile, the survivors of the theatre game have washed up on some island, and one of them who is a historian who has studied Ambrosia, finds a rock with the Ambrosian seal on it and determines that they are now on Ambrosia. They start exploring the island, and then they see a black castle off in the distance...

Puzzle 003: Find a way to cross the river and get to the castle.
Suddenly they get attacked by wolves, and there are animal traps nearby... Layton gets the idea to trap themselves in these traps to hide from the wolves and cross the river... everyone else manages to do it but Layton trips and causes the trap to fall upside down, so they have to run away from the wolves into a nearby cabin... Layton then uses the materials in the cabin to build a little helicopter they can use to get across the river...

Layton, Luke, and Janice get to the castle after everyone else is already there...
Puzzle 004: There are 4 doors leading to 4 different towers, and some letters on the ground. Figure out the right way to go to win the prize of eternal life.
Luke figures out that the letters don't quite spell out KING, but you can put "IN" between the K and G to spell out KING, and also to mean "go IN this door"... Layton tells Luke to go with Janice without him. He wants to go a different way and find out what this game is all about... Some other people who have caught onto how smart Layton is, just decide to follow him instead of solving the puzzle. Layton tries to stop them but they ignore him and fall into a trap.

Meanwhile, Emmy is flying around over the ocean trying to find Layton/Luke.. she finds Grosky waving to her and picks him up... Grosky mentions that he saw two submarines leaving the ship that exploded...

Layton finds a room with a piano and photos of Janice and the older Melina... he learns about the Song of the Sea... just when Layton is on the balcony staring at the view, Melina sneaks in and tries to push him off... Layton notices her presence and talks to her... he starts playing the Song of the Sea on the piano to calm her down and get her to trust him... She explains that she was sick, and her father took her to this place to make her better... then she gets confused and thinks maybe she was dead and was reborn.. she starts arguing with herself in a weird voice.. at one point says "I'm not Melina... no, I want to go home... stop it, stop it!"

Meanwhile, Luke and the others were confronted by Descole, who is about to conclude his "game". His henchmen are now taking them through some dungeon corridor... Luke and Janice manage to start fighting back... then they get saved by Emmy and Grosky. Layton and Melina also show up.. Emmy calls Melina "Nina", and tells her she'll be able to go back home to her parents now.. I think I get what's going on with her now..

But I'm not sure what Descole wants with Amelia, that random chessmaster girl... She was just another passenger and participant in the game, I didn't expect her to be important. She gets taken to a room where the opera composer and a giant machine instrument is... he says this machine is what will give her eternal life.. The composer sees one of the flames going out, and he rushes Amelia onto the machine... She says she doesn't want eternal life, she wanted it for her grandfather... She thought there would be an elixer like in the legends... Emmy and the others show up just in time to stop him.

Layton explains that this machine doesn't actually grant eternal life, it steals life... He used it to transfer Melina's personality and memories into another person, but Nina managed to fight it off and her own memories started to come back to her... The guy gets desperate, as the machine can't hold Melina's memories for that much longer, so he grabs Luke and tries to use the machine on him.

But it doesn't work. Someone took the key out of the machine... Layton says he knows who took it. It's someone who knows all about what this machine is doing and wanted to stop it.. that person is... "You, Janice! Or should I say, Melina!"

"You're right... I am Melina... He thought that putting my memories into Janice had failed, but it hadn't."
Janice voluntarily allowed Melina to borrow her body... it shows a bunch of scenes from earlier except with Janice's body swapped with Melina's... Melina tries to convince her father to stop using this machine, and says she will give Janice back her body after that... Suddenly Descole grabs Melina and goes to the machine to execute his true plans... he wants to bring the legendary queen Ambrosia back to life.

He explains what he discovered about the Ambrosian seal... the lines on the outside of the seal are a musical score.. that music is the first key to reviving Ambrosia. A song of the stars... The second key is the Song of the Sea... that's why he needed Melina. Descole unleashes wolves on the others and forces Melina to sing to unlock Ambrosia's seal... but it doesn't work, so instead he activates his "kill everything" plan by playing a song that causes the castle to transform into a giant mech. Layton and Luke get back in their helicopter to try to save Melina.. Then there's some crazy unreal action sequences...

Layton confronts Descole, and tells him that he only solved half of the Ambrosian seal's puzzle. There's actually a 3rd key... If you turn the seal upside down, there's a song of the sun. Then for some reason, Layton starts playing Descole's piano and tells Melina to sing, and they successfully make Ambrisia rise up out of the ocean. Descole falls off the mech and disappears... After that there's a sad farewell scene where Melinda gives Janice back her body, and Whisper asks Grosky if he could play one last song before he is arrested... Janice goes and sings along with him...


Screenshots:

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