This movie was a shitstorm; a complicated plot badly executed. The movie failed to make it clear whether it is trying to stick to original plot of Neon Genesis or not. The characters were SUPREMELY underdeveloped causing the audience to not know 90% of the time wtf was going on EVEN THOUGH I personally am a pretty big fan of the original series and I understand most of the lore behind the shit that happened in the original show. Also, the entire story concept is flawed. Basically, to put it into perspective, the equivalent of what happens in this 90 minute movie happens in a single 24 minute episode of the original show. The only reason anything bad happened in this plot is that everyone is an asshole and they don't explain shit to poor Shinji... Literally, if they had just spent 2 minutes explaining what happened to him, none of the bad things would have happened.
On the other hand, to counter the negatives, this movie, as the previous two, was visually simply stunning. The 3d and 2d are well mixed and everything looks clean and the high production values are apparent in the sound as well. The dub is well handled and the cast is as good as ever. The opening 10 and ending 5 minutes of this movie are really outstanding, doing an excellent job of initially hooking the audience into the action and, for the ending, setting up an actually really potentially interesting continuation for the last movie. Even though the middle was dodgy at best, it still showed some promise with the dark tones it tackled and represented extremely well with the visuals as Shinji fought his fears and demons while the world fell apart around him. The ending image was perfectly chosen to signify where the story can lead and leaves us with a sense of hope that the franchise has more to offer. While a majority of characters' intentions and motivations are still unclear, the grand plot is beginning to become apparent, similarly to the original show, though this plot seems much more convoluted and has far more twists (not all of which make sense). Sadly, I feel that this movie franchise just isn't spending enough time on backstory to make the final payoff at the end of the next movie as impactful as I hope it will be, but all we can do is hope that at least 1/4 of the next movie will give us background and explain what the hell is going on.
*EDIT*: Upon rewatching this movie after reading extensively on the evageeks wiki (http://wiki.evageeks.org/) this movie became FAR more enjoyable. This site provides concise explanations to the events of the Rebuild movies and having an understanding of the background of what occurs beyond the terrible in-movie exposition makes watching this movie an actual worthwhile addition to the Eva universe. Reflective overall score: 6.
That’s it, folks,
- Regul8ion signing off.
*PS. this rant is adapted from a private message to a friend of mine after I watched this movie*
