Evangelion 3.0/Q - Should We Be Worried?

beecass

Hi, everyone! I recently joined the forum and just posted in the official welcome thread, and have been itching to throw this particular brain fart out there for a while, so I thought I'd jump right into it!

I have a background as a film student and have been involved in some fairly intense productions recently - of my own and through work experience/internships - so have at the very least a cursory knowledge of film production cycles through my education, avid following of film news, and personal experience. I've been consuming any bit of info I can on the new Rebuild film I can as it slowly trickles out, and trying to make sense of it the best I can. I entered the Eva fandom comparatively late compared to most fans and only really got into the series well after 2.0 had been released, so I can't be certain that its release cycle wasn't as tumultuous, but most pieces of info I've encountered point a fairly smooth (if unusual) process.

From a production-based perspective, every bit of information that has come out of Khara and its affiliates seems to indicate that production of the new film is in trouble. The lack of information coming out of the company, and the lack of substance to the information that does see the light of day is telling of a production that has either gotten itself extremely behind schedule, or gone off the rails completely. The first and most worrying bit of info that has been released was the sudden announcement of a new distributor for the film after a fairly long period of production (at least from what we know) - whilst The Klockworx are definitely nowhere near as large as T-Joy, given their long association with anime releases and previous experience with Khara, and the sheer amount of cash the previous films had pulled in for them as a company, one could easily assume that they would stay on as distributors for the film, or at least try to contractually lock in the small animation studio - and hey, it would just make sense. T-Joy, as far as I am aware, (at least judging by info available on ANN), has not released any anime in the entire history of the company, and along with a few other productions going on at the moment, Evangelion 3.0 will be the company's first animated release. Did The Klockworx dump them as distributors after it became clear that the film was no longer financially viable or that things were in trouble? It's unlikely that things are that dramatic, but a sudden change in distributor midway through production (even for an independent studio like Khara) is extremely out of the ordinary.

Another, more subjective thing that I've been interpreting as a bad sign has been the marketing strategy used for the film thus far - while it's certainly not out of the ordinary for a production that Anno is involved in, or even an Evangelion property in general to have unusual advertising, the campaign used so far for 3.0 is nothing short of perplexing - even by the usual standards. The piano animatic we saw in the most recent commercial, whilst technically impressive and mysterious, gives us no information of the story whatsoever - despite the mass fanwanking that has gone on over the revelation of the meaning of "Quatre Mains". While I'm willing to brush that aside, the more concrete bits of advertising we've seen are far more indicative of a troubled (or at least horrifically behind schedule) production, and can't really be ignored. The updated preview for 2.0 that was included during the television broadcast of 1.0 contained many polished chunks of footage that are nearly identical to what we went on to see in the film, and went on for a span of time comparative to the preview we had seen at the end of the actual 1.0 release. The preview we saw for 3.0, however, contained a lot of unshaded and unfinished CG, and really went for less sixteen seconds. The next bit of real footage we saw from the film (the Eva Extra trailer) was similarly short, and only contained footage from the same scene we had seen previously. The only other "true" pieces of advertising (discounting the lame airline, horseracing and Shick tie-ins) I have seen for 3.0 include a magazine spread of Unit-02 in space again, and Anno's lantern scrawlings of Unit-02 and Unit-08.

The film comes out in November (less than two months away) and we still know next to nothing about it. The only true bits of advertising material for the film we've seen have depicted exactly the same scene, and the first time we saw it, it was unfinished! Are things really as dire as I'm making them out to be over at Khara? T-Joy is a reputable distributor with a lot of successful films under its belt, but how much do they really know about anime development cycles? The current advertising strategy in place might be a brilliant avant-garde ploy by Anno (though I doubt it, considering his latest attitudes towards people who consider him and his works to be "deep"), is it wise from a financial standpoint? This wouldn't be the first time a production that Anno has been the head of has gotten itself in trouble, but that was a long time ago - surely he's learnt his lesson by now? Right?

I might be reading into things entirely wrong, but having watched productions spiral out of control before, the indicators are all there. While things might not be as dire as I'm making them out to be, I definitely believe that when (or even if) we see the film in November, there will be a lot of indicators of its long and unorthodox production cycle. If you have any bits of information that could support or contradict what I'm saying here, throw in your two cents!

Quadhonk · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:10 am Post subject:

I'm not really worried. They didn't really release too much information for 2.0 either. I just don't think Gainax is up for telling us too much. We may get one more clip or trailer a month before release, outside of that they're amount of advertising has been pretty average.

Blue Monday · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:48 am Post subject:

Hmm, well, they've set the date - So they're going to deliver. They could've pushed back more if there were going to be any further issues or delays, I'm thinking. I feel all the the content we have seen of Q/3.0 so far (Ads, trailers, previews, etcetera) have been in line with Evangelion. Whatever that means, haha.

There was talk in the 'new trailer' thread about how this minimal buzzing will actually let the movie speak for itself in a way. I agreed a lot with that.

Note: I should mention that I have no idea how these kinds of things were handled with Jō/1.0 and Ha/2.0 though, haha. I'm new to NTE as of this year still.

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beecass · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 9:27 am Post subject:

Blue Monday wrote:

Hmm, well, they've set the date - So they're going to deliver. They could've pushed back more if there were going to be any further issues or delays.

I'm not so sure though - 2.0 was delayed fairly close to its supposed release as far as I'm aware (end of 2008 to part way through 2009), and if the production is in trouble and the film is released with problems, it wouldn't be the first time Anno and the crew have failed to meet a deadline but pushed out a sub-par product anyway. Death and Rebirth had an unusual advertising strategy too, felt pretty hastily cobbled together and was missing the second half of the film proper. EoTV was (subjectively, anyway) a total mess, hampered by TV Tokyo's rejection of the initial scripts and the propensity of the GAINAX crew to meet deadlines later and later throughout the show's life (along with the production company's financial woes), but got shunted out into the world regardless. The fact that the CG in the first proper preview of the film after two years of the development time - the first chance Khara had to set an example of what the film would be like - was unfinished, is cause for alarm.

I'm just not entirely sure we can write off what we've seen so far as normal from a production standpoint, and Khara's behaviour in the marketing of this film compared to the last ones is erratic enough to remind me of the last time we saw stuff like this.

**Sailor Star Dust**

beecass wrote:

The preview we saw for 3.0, however, contained a lot of unshaded and unfinished CG, and really went for less sixteen seconds.

Which was last year (August 2011), so that makes sense the scene wasn't completely finished: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMhtWttKsH0

Quote:

The next bit of real footage we saw from the film (the Eva Extra trailer) was similarly short, and only contained footage from the same scene we had seen previously.

Nope. It's more footage of the battle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiigKLPcYlw#t=1m06s

Fans think Khara is doing things the way they are to get the fans pumped about Asuka having a possibly bigger role (or at least more screentime) compared to 2.0.

And just because we haven't gotten lots of 3.0 news yet (the keywords posters or more updates on the official Evangelion website) is no reason to worry, it's still early for advertising.

The 3 main trailers for 2.0 only started around 2 months before 2.0 hit Japanese theaters ( http://www.evageeks.org/2009/03/rebuild-20-trailer/ , http://www.evageeks.org/2009/05/evangelion-20-trailier-2/ , http://www.evageeks.org/2009/06/evangelion-2-0-trailer-3/ ), and right now it's about 2 months before 3.0. We should be fine.

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svenge · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 10:21 am Post subject:

Even assuming that said speculation regarding production problems was indeed true, it's not like that's an unprecedented occurrence.

Note that Death and Rebirth was supposed to be wholly completed before its March 1997 premiere, but due to production problems Anno had to announce a month beforehand that Gainax was splitting the project into 2 parts (with The End of Evangelion premiering in July 1997).

Had events gone on as originally planned and on schedule, there would have only been one Evangelion theatrical film, as what's currently known as The End of Evangelion would have been the "Rebirth" part of Death and Rebirth. It would've resembled Revival of Evangelion, which was released in March 1998 and consisted of Death(True)², Air, and Magokoro wo Kimi ni.

In short, I'm not worried. Delays and revisions are part of the Evangelion experience.

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riffraff11235

First and foremost, welcome to EvaGeeks!

beecass wrote:

The piano animatic we saw in the most recent commercial, whilst technically impressive and mysterious, gives us no information of the story whatsoever - despite the mass fanwanking that has gone on over the revelation of the meaning of "Quatre Mains".

By "fanwanking...over the meaning of 'Quatre Mains,'" you mean simply all the possible implications of "Four Hands," such as connections to Rei and Shinji fused inside Unit-01, right?

If they could just release the Eva-Extra trailer online, I would be set until November. I'm glad they're not revealing much about Q. The trailers for most Hollywood movies end up spoiling a lot of plot twists.

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JoeD80 · Gaghiel Joined: 08 Jan 2010 Location: Los Angeles

Anno was busy doing other things between 2.0 and 3.0. Tickets are already on sale. The date is locked in with hundreds of theaters. There is nothing to fear.

beecass · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 7:06 pm Post subject:

Sailor Star Dust wrote:

Nope. It's more footage of the battle.

To clarify, I just meant that it was more of the same battle (the blue Armisael lookalike notwithstanding - that could be from the same sequence in the form of some Arael-Armisael hybrid serving the plot purposes of both Angels, or it could be from anywhere else).

svenge wrote:

I'm not worried. Delays and revisions are part of the Evangelion experience.

That's a really interesting perspective, and one that I'm inclined to agree with. EoE wouldn't have existed without the beautiful, fantastic mess that 24 and 25 were, and it's a brilliant, unconventional film - probably my favourite entry in the franchise. If things are looking grim and 3.0's original vision is compromised or the film is delayed close to release, it's likely that it could help it along, or at least radically change what NME has been up until this point.

riffraff11235 wrote:

By "fanwanking...over the meaning of 'Quatre Mains,'" you mean simply all the possible implications of "Four Hands," such as connections to Rei and Shinji fused inside Unit-01, right?

Yeah, I'm referring to all of the different theories about what the scene could mean, whose hands they're going to be, and what (if anything) it's going to represent.

JoeD80 wrote:

Anno was busy doing other things between 2.0 and 3.0. Tickets are already on sale. The date is locked in with hundreds of theaters. There is nothing to fear.

While I titled the thread "should we be worried?", I don't believe that what we're seeing is going to result in the film not seeing the light of day, and we should be really alarmed - It's just interesting to note that everything we've seen out of Khara since the first bit of 3.0 footage came out has been really unconventional from a production standpoint, and might indicate that development of the film has been fairly troubled, or at least slower than we believe. Khara is a fairly small independent studio in comparison to what GAINAX was during NGE's original production run, and it wouldn't be unusual that they would run into some kind of trouble. Whether that trouble is budgetary, story-based, or the result of failure to follow a schedule is yet to be seen, and it may present itself in what we see on screen come November.

bladerj · Zeruel Joined: 13 Jul 2009

They revelead last year i think, they were having trouble with the cg scenes,what trouble wasnt explicit, whether is was technical or making a scene work, comply to director view etc, anno admited the movie was at a halt and he went on to oversee other stuff like the ghibli museum

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Electric Sachiel · Lilin Joined: 27 Nov 2008 Location: Toronto

beecass wrote:

Khara is a fairly small independent studio in comparison to what GAINAX was during NGE's original production run, and it wouldn't be unusual that they would run into some kind of trouble. Whether that trouble is budgetary, story-based, or the result of failure to follow a schedule is yet to be seen, and it may present itself in what we see on screen come November.

To be honest with you Gainax was also a rather small studio when it was originally operating during the course of NGE's production. And as we all know that studio also suffered hard times towards the second half of NGE"s production (lack of time, budget etc....). While Khara could encounter many of the same issues whats different this time is the fact that Khara has supposedly easier ability to finance each film project, especially after the financial success of Evangelion 1.0 and 2.0. True that scheduling conflicts may have occurred, but in the grand scheme of things this is of little significance. The studio did a lot of hiring of new animators during 2010 and 2011. And animation went into overdrive over the last year.

We even got some twitters from Yuko Miyamura about how she was working on dubbing work back in April and May. So i'm sure all is well. I noticed you also live in Australia. One thing that film school may not have taught you is that the way the Japanese film industry operate is different from how a Western film industry, including that of the Hollywood film industry operates. The high octane marketing campaigns that you would see for hollywood films is almost non-existent in the Japanese film industry. You dont see too many films being advertised like crazy months if not a year in advance with fancy trailers and huge posters and other infomerical ads. Marketing budgets are much more conservative for asian films in general.

And then its Khara and Anno's own animation studio. For whatever reason his films have always distanced themselves from a Hollywood style marketing campaign. Hence why others here have said that even for 1.0 and 2.0, the trailers that actually meant something to us and showed actual cool footage were not released until 2 months or even 1 month and half before theatrical release.

Your worries are unfounded. Though the change in distributor, Klockworx to T-Joy is definitely suspicious....

Hyper Shinchan · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:02 pm Post subject:

Electric Sachiel wrote:

Your worries are unfounded. Though the change in distributor, Klockworx to T-Joy is definitely suspicious....

I don't know if we should look that much into it, a larger distributor means that the film will hit more cinemas, if I understand correctly how cinemas work in Japan, so it would just make sense to prefer it; also, maybe T-Joy offered to Khara some amazingly good conditions because they're new to animation distribution and they wanted a sure investment.
It's just my wild guessing anyway, surely the production has been delayed but like others said I doubt that it's going to necessarily have a negative impact on the final film.

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**Sailor Star Dust** · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:49 pm Post subject:

beecass wrote:

Whether that trouble is budgetary, story-based, or the result of failure to follow a schedule is yet to be seen, and it may present itself in what we see on screen come November.

For what it's worth, I believe this thread mentions that Anno's financing Khara/the Eva movies on his own (and 2.0 made a lot more money than 1.0 did): http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/10946/Evangelion-20-CRC-Anno-Interview/

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Gendo'sPapa · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 9:05 pm Post subject:

Should you be worried? No.

By all accounts Anno & Co. are doing exactly what I wish EVERY big release around the world would do - keep the story underwraps!

Eva 3.0 also has the advantage that it's EVANGELION. The series is & has been a mainstay centerpiece of Japanese cinematic culture since 1995. There's really no reason to go out of there way to sell 3.0 to an audience. After 17 years it's pretty set who is & who isn't going to go see a new Evangelion film.

I wish more studios would play this game.

beecass · Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 9:13 pm Post subject:

Electric Sachiel wrote:

I noticed you also live in Australia. One thing that film school may not have taught you is that the way the Japanese film industry operate is different from how a Western film industry, including that of the Hollywood film industry operates. The high octane marketing campaigns that you would see for hollywood films is almost non-existent in the Japanese film industry. You dont see too many films being advertised like crazy months if not a year in advance with fancy trailers and huge posters and other infomerical ads. Marketing budgets are much more conservative for asian films in general.

And then its Khara and Anno's own animation studio. For whatever reason his films have always distanced themselves from a Hollywood style marketing campaign. Hence why others here have said that even for 1.0 and 2.0, the trailers that actually meant something to us and showed actual cool footage were not released until 2 months or even 1 month and half before theatrical release.

I'm aware of how the two industries operate. Your use of the umbrella term of "Hollywood" really grates me - you're not referring to American and Western films in general by saying that, you're referring to a fairly small portion of films that get released every year that have millions and millions of dollars poured into them over their production cycle. Comparing their marketing campaigns to that of Evangelion 3.0 - an animated film made by a independent production company for a fairly niche audience - is irresponsible as a viewer. A better comparison would be productions of similar scale in terms of budget and the size of their target audience - comparing 3.0's marketing campaign to the high octane stuff produced for films like The Avengers or The Hunger Games is a weird comparison - it's production is closer to independent content like Hanna or Drive, which have comparatively small marketing budgets.

To say that the marketing campaign for 3.0 has been sparse compared to Western releases of similar scale would be a lie - the amount of commercial ties-ins with the 3.0 and Khara logo slapped on them exceeds the number you would find even with the most marketable Western films. My beef is with the lack of real content we're seeing in a fairly large and intense campaign - Evangelion has always been a big money spinner for its owners in terms of tie ins, but the ratio of real content to irrelevant use of the Eva property that Khara is jamming down our throats is skewed enough at this stage in the film's production to be cause for alarm. T-Joy have distributed films as large and bigger than Evangelion 3.0, and their marketing campaigns have been relatively conventional by Japanese standards. From the point of view of a distributor, the marketing campaign for 3.0 should be worrying from a commercial standpoint - as its trying to capture an already existing audience who would have gone to see the movie anyway: the fans. Teasers for 2.0 at this stage in its production showed a newcoming target audience everything they needed to see to be interested - there would be giant robots, there would be a diverse cast of characters interacting in many different situations of increasing scale, and there would be babes. The film was a huge success. A newcomer to the Eva franchise who saw any of the material released for the film thus far would know nothing about it - from a financial standpoint, it doesn't make sense, especially for a distributor as large as T-Joy.

TheFriskyIan · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 12:57 am Post subject:

Gendo'sPapa wrote:

Eva 3.0 also has the advantage that it's EVANGELION. The series is & has been a mainstay centerpiece of Japanese cinematic culture since 1995. There's really no reason to go out of there way to sell 3.0 to an audience. After 17 years it's pretty set who is & who isn't going to go see a new Evangelion film.

That's why I like the cover box for 2.22's BD set in Japan. It takes a strong following for a company to be able to just take a blank box, slap Evangelion in the middle of it, and then shove it into stores expecting it to sell, and it did.

This late in the game, everyone and their grandmother has decided weather or not they want to see it.

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Electric Sachiel · Lilin Joined: 27 Nov 2008 Location: Toronto

beecass wrote:

My beef is with the lack of real content we're seeing in a fairly large and intense campaign - Evangelion has always been a big money spinner for its owners in terms of tie ins, but the ratio of real content to irrelevant use of the Eva property that Khara is jamming down our throats is skewed enough at this stage in the film's production to be cause for alarm.

I think you still may be jumping ahead of yourself. Yes we havent seen anything substantial yet. But even when 2.0 was being prepared for release, two months before the film came out we hardly had any concrete trailers for it. If you recall, perhaps not since you came into the franchise late, all we got up until May of 2009 was a 30 second trailer with red Japanese text against a black blackground. Trailer #2 which showed the first glimpse of all the major battle scenes in the Evangelion 2.0 didnt appear online until May 9th, 2009, just a month and a half away from the film's release date on June 27th, 2009.

I'm sure history will repeat itself. And though you didnt make it clear with your inital post, the hollywood blitzkrieg marketing campaigns were just an example. Your fretting about being worried about the commercial success of Evangelion 3.0 is something of a moot point. Khara and by extension T-Joy are simply just following what worked before for 1.0 and 2.0. We will see giant robot action soon and we will see it in a brand new trailer probably later at the end of September if not early October. As well unlike movies in North America, Japanese movies in general stay in theatres for upwards to 6 months at a time. During this time, if the film is good enough, word of mouth from japanese viewer to the average joe on the street will equate to more sales. And as you know Khara and T-Joy will continue to support the marketing campaign with an onslaught of commercials, ads and merchandise well after November 17th and into 2013. Nothing to fear...please....

Note:
I'd like to add that I'd only be worried about the state of the film's commerical success if we dont get any new trailers by October 1st, about a month and a half from release. At that point you can press the panic button. But until then just sit tight and be patient. It's a smile.

JoeD80 · Gaghiel Joined: 08 Jan 2010 Location: Los Angeles

One thing about schedule: the beauty of Anno running everything with his own studio is that he can set his own schedule. There isn't a TV network demanding episodes week-by-week.

beecass wrote:

T-Joy have distributed films as large and bigger than Evangelion 3.0, and their marketing campaigns have been relatively conventional by Japanese standards. From the point of view of a distributor, the marketing campaign for 3.0 should be worrying from a commercial standpoint

There's plenty of other marketing. Lawson is one of the largest convenience store chains and they've got merchandise. You can't live in Japan and not walk into these things. Not everything has to revolve around trailers.

beecass · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 7:23 pm Post subject:

While I'm sure the film will be released on time, there are far too many indicators of a meandering production cycle to think that what we see in November is going to be anything like the previous two Rebuild films. Khara's resources have been spread fairly thin from what I can see with Anno being producer on Kantoku Shikkaku, and a lot of its animators wrapped up with commercial tie-in material. Everything we've seen so far - be it from my perspective or from the perspective of someone who views the latest pieces of advertising for the film as simply avant garde - indicates that 3.0 is going to be as meandering and inaccessible as 2.0, if not more so. 3.0 has been internally funded to a greater degree than the other NME films, but directors and studios shouldn't always be given a free rein on their releases, no matter how good their history is.

Merkaba · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 8:37 pm Post subject:

^ No offense, but who are you to judge Anno's work? ("Meandering and inaccessible..." "Directors shouldn't always be given free rein...")