Mmmm, it's a no from me. The soundtrack is OK (even if the theme music is terrible). I enjoyed the world-building they did to fill in some things between this and "Char's Counterattack." (I have not seen "Victory Gundam".) There were also a few enjoyable, chaotic moments that marked the story as a Tomino joint. But, other than that?
...What else is there other than that? Not much.
The most obvious (I hesitate to say) "change" is the art style, which is modern and follows in the footsteps of "Gundam Unicorn" and "Narrative". I seriously don't think it should have. This should have been more of a throwback to the style of the original Gundam movies, or at least "Char's Counterattack" because the original purpose of this story was to end all of that. That world-building I praised doesn't even mention those other stories. Which, now that I think about it, is especially weird in Unicorn's case, because of what was in the Box. But I digress.
I never had any trouble following the action in those other modern Gundam shows. But, in this one, they're so fucking focused on showing the action from 360-view cockpits, at night, often in first-person that it became an impenetrable mess of beams and UIs. I cannot fathom the reason. This series has been running for like 50 years at this point. They should know how to depict battles between mobile suits, and this was pitiful.
Also pitiful? The one Newtype flash in this whole movie happens at the beginning and there's nothing interesting about it at all. Think "woman stands up and yells." Having come off of watching "Gundam III" the other day, with its oceans and spectral imagery, that was a huge disappointment.
On top of that, the story plays silly, coy games with the three main protagonists that don't make any sense. Hathaway is Mafty; anyone with even a passing familiarity with the novel's existence knows this. Yet this movie goes through the motions of Hathaway trying to keep it a secret while on the shuttle and with the Federation. Towards the very end, he reveals that there was actually literally no reason for him to have even been on this shuttle; he just wanted to see the people who would be killed one more time. Total, insane vanity that was never set up and isn't even CLEAR by the end. Then there's Gigi and the Federation officer, who don't really do anything of significance. Hathaway is attracted to Gigi and his desire to save her overcomes his desire to see his plan(?) come to fruition—the plan being a terrorist attack to kill those officers and distract the federation while he, Mafty, returns to Mafty the organization after his voluntary jaunt to see those officers' faces before they die. And the Federation officer just exists to want to fuck Gigi and figure out Hathaway's secret identity because Hathaway compromised himself by being on that flight.
I mean, what the fuck? Maybe it works better in the novel, but I can't imagine a description of Hathaway's pointless presence here being any good. I can only imagine he and his compatriots are given more of a backstory after he joins them at the conclusion of the part of the story in this one. And the movie absolutely should have done that the other way around. Why should I care about Mafty's position (which I am predisposed to do) or the Federation's opposition if I don't know what lead Hathaway to do this? Or what he did to inspire this many people to join him?
And, ugh, it's so frustrating to get to the end of this movie and suddenly a bunch of people with actual character designs show up. As if they actually matter. Only for the movie to abruptly end.
This isn't a "wait for the rest of the trilogy" sort of misfire. It's a "we have no idea what we're doing, and if this wasn't tied to the Gundam Fandom then we wouldn't get the chance to finish the trilogy" mistake.