Current view of the Rebuild series and last movie expectations

[Ryuichi]

So, as we finally getting closer to the last movie(which I expected a short decade earlier but eh)

After seeing the 3 rebuild movies, what are your expectations for the last one?

It's odd to see how the first rebuild movie's animation is a bit different style, as it was made more than 10 years ago.
I remember watching it and while I loved ,absolutely loved the new things, like the neon lights of UNit-1 at night, and the new Ramiel, and the new music.
But I was baffled how much was cut, like the deep ,character focused scenes, Shinji running away etc.

I loved the second movie as well, the new angels ,great animation, but it felt it wants to be too flashy- I loved in the original that UNit 1's arm grew back biologically, as they were big cloned gods, but in the movie it's all magic and force fields now. It kinda lost it's grounded feeling.
I loved the shaky camera during the revelation of Adam in the original series, when he was awaken on Antarctica, feels like the rebuild movies are a bit...overdone? Flashy? Michael Bay like.
I was really looking forward seeing Gendo and Fuyutsuki visiting the Dead Sea, as seen in the preview but it never happened.

I know many of you loved the YAmato fan service ship in 3.0, but to me, it was way over the top.
I love the End of Evangelion's dirty look, surreal, dark, apocalyptic atmosphere, best description of an all out armageddon.

In 3.0 the whole thing felt like a usual over the top mecha anime, not the eva kind of more surreal sci-fi-deconstruction.

One thing that really got my attention is the sequel theory, but I see in the past few years it's basically not believed anymore.
A sequel would ease my mind, as now I feel some people will not watch the original and think the remake is enough, but if its a sequel then it's not a "fix" but just a continuation. (like in the manga, life got back into shape, but the big mass produced eva bodies were left all around the world. Though it certainly don't explain how Tokyo-3 is fine again etc)
If not true what about Kaworu's lines in every movie about "next time, we will meet again, the third again, this time" etc?

Do you think Anno has a plan , or he just wanted a quick remake in 4 movies but the studio made him to take it in another direction?

Will there be some big revelation? Will Shinji have a big happy ending this time? Will we get an even darker EoE?
OR will it be more fanservice but "no depth"?
Will Kaworu be back?

Do you like EoE, or is just just me, who really loved the surreal, depressing, dark tone of that movie?

Also I miss Keel. Seele is now an ancient monolith? There are many changes I'm just not sure about.

/sorry for my limited vocabulary, English is my third language. /

[pwhodges]

Do you think Anno has a plan , or he just wanted a quick remake in 4 movies but the studio made him to take it in another direction?

I think he had a plan, but just as in the series he has been departing from it as he goes - more (much more) than before because (a) he is in charge, not the studio, (b) there's none of the constraints a TV schedule forces, and (c) more time means more new ideas.

All I am prepared to predict is that his ending to the story will be far wackier, and far deeper, than the feeble patches written by me or any other fans to fill the gap pro tem.

As for "will we get EoE again?" - I'd say both yes and no. We need an apocalyptic conclusion to the war between Wille and Nerv (we've seen some of Nerv's mass-production preparations, and Wille has a ship beyond anything the terrestrial forces had in the series). We've had a good dose of darkness, and there are plenty of loose ends, like the "failures of infinity" to mention only one; but there have only been hints of the internal conversations and self-analysis that will be needed to drive the resolution of Shinji's own problems. Of course, Anno will do it all in ways I can't predict, but those elements seem to me to be necessary. I suspect that the ending will be a bit less open-ended than EoE was, to play better with the market.

Will we get some equivalent of GNR (and GNK for that matter)? I'm not so sure we will. There'll be something amazing, but pretty certainly different. But of course Kaworu will be back! He promised, remember?

Meanwhile, explore this forum - these matters have been debated in many ways over the past not-so-few years, so you'll find many different answers to your questions - all of which will turn out to be wrong.

[Ryuichi]

Yes, I've been following the forum for many years now.

But some theories ,threads are not active since the last movie, so I was just curious what's the current view and expectation.

I just can't decide if the third movie has a really thought out , deep new lore, or Anno just made up a lot of mushy dialogue not leading anywhere.

I think I'm disappointed a bit that the original show's and the rebuild series' lore is different. Probably that's why I hope a little bit it's some kind of cyclic sequel thing.

And I'm just not sure of this flying ship thing. Too cheesy , Yamato like, for me, Evangelion was more grounded, with the mechas being actual creatures, etc.

I love the idea that the failures of infinity are the Earth population turned into angel cores, made in Unit-1's image, suggesting that in this version, every single soul turned into a god like creature, not joining as one big lonely god as in EoE.

BUt who knows, maybe it was just something that looked good scattered along the buildings. My big fear is that the last movie will be something really dumb, random fanservice , no deep meaning this time, and that would retrospectively lower my appreciation for the whole franchise.It would suggest the whole lore was a fluke.
While many anime uses these western religious references and words, in eva it works so damn well. Would be a shame if no revelation would happen in the last one.

I kinda hoped for more backstory about what's going on, as they said this will be easier to understand for the larger market, but they cut out so much, it's largely action.

[Gendo'sPapa]

He's had a plan from the get go. It's the same plan he had when he made Neon Genesis Evangelion in the 90s.

Yeah, this universe of giant mechas fighting kaiju from the sky in a weaponized city is awesome but in the end none of that shit matters. Lore is window dressing. This is a story about a wounded boy going through hell and ultimately accepting who he is so he can improve and save himself.

In 3.0 he intentionally forces the audience back into Shinji's shoes at a level heightened more than even before. The world Shinji - and the fanbase - knew intimately has been entirely turned upside down and as an outsider looking in very little makes sense. There's a million questions to be answered and Shinji is not getting those answers. Neither is the audience. Things in the post-post-apocalyptic universe just are.

What matters is what Shinji is going through. His feelings of being lost and feeling angry at how things are. For feeling guilt over the role he played in causing all this. The selfish feeling of thinking if I fix everything everyone will love me again. THOSE are perfectly tangible and is what Anno is focused on.

The sci-fi universe around Shinji is fun to play around in and allows the filmmakers the opportunity to create grand visuals & setpieces they couldn't do otherwise but it's all window dressing to the real story.

It doesn't matter how the Wunder flies - which come on, a giant flying ship is far more grounded than a giant human encased in metal, that's just familiarity with one thing over the other talking - or how WILLIE came together to built it and what mystical elements it's comprised of. What matters is that in his eyes, because of the Wunder's existence Shinji is no longer irreplaceable to Misato. It's no longer "you're the ONLY one who can pilot the Eva to save us" because they no longer need someone to pilot the Eva. And when they do need pilot to Eva those roles have already been filled by Asuka & Mari.

I think no matter what FINAL does A LOT of people are going to be disappointed regardless because they want the full picture of this new world Shinji finds himself in. They want the 14 years of backstory filled in, the intricate explanation of what the new Angels are, how this thing over here works and how that thing doing this functions and so on and so forth. They want the Encyclopedia of the new world first and foremost.

That's not Anno's interest as a storyteller. He may have the universe intricately mapped out in his head but he isn't putting that element into the narrative of the film unless it matters to Shinji's emotional story.

Since I'm all in for the emotional component of the story and could care less about what the history of Evangelion Mark 9 means - though it certainly means something serious to the characters so I know it's bad news - I can enjoy 3.0 - and most likely Final - for the strong thematic and profound emotional work it's doing.

I'm willing to bet the "lore" of FINAL is going to be just as confusing as what is presented in 3.0 but the emotional story will be grounded and effective.

[Giji Shinka]

I'm expecting some answer to questions we have (Few flashback scenes to post-N3I, Yui's and Gendo's past etc.) and we will learn how this new world works, Mari hints this when she says to Shinji that he "should learn how the world works", but like Gendo'sPapa said, Final won't go super in-depth when it comes to lore because that hasn't been the point of Rebuild films, the focus is mostly on Shinji and most plot points serve to develop Shinji's character.

[Ryuichi]

I'm just surprised why were so many character focused scenes cut from the first movie. I took it as a clear indication this iteration of Evangelion will focus more on the world- as the said they wanted to make it more understandable this time- so it took me some time to accept that the deep character analysis is not important anymore.
BUt you're saying that's the focus after all?

Also, the cloned ancient entities were something I could accept as a serious sci-fi concept, the flying ship felt like an obvious cheesy fanservice for Spaceship Yamato fans.

THe original show is great because it both has great, realistic character writing, AND incredible lore, ans world. I'M really sad if we lose some of this.

[pwhodges]

The focus is solely on Shinji this time round, so there's more development of him, but less of other characters. And lore and background is reduced simply because the running time is so much less.

But I will reiterate what I've said in other threads - comparing the new films directly with the old series will get you nowhere. They are different and independent. I'm sure that stopping thinking of the series will make the films easier to understand.

[Ryuichi]

This is why I'm usually not a fan of reboots.

It's always hard-nearly impossible not to think about the original.

And with the "cyclic" theory, I don't think I'll fully look at it as a completely separate thing until the last movie comes out and we learn if there's a connection or not.

However, 'I'm excited to see if Shinji will end up in a better situation than in EoE. He's in a pretty dark place again.And while EoE was basically a happy ending for him as a character,as he chose the real world , with all it's pain, I wonder if we'll get something more uplifting this time.

Or will we get an opposite EoE, with him choosing to become part of a god like being without boundaries and no human interactions?

[BlueBasilisk]

The focus is solely on Shinji this time round, so there's more development of him, but less of other characters. And lore and background is reduced simply because the running time is so much less.

But I will reiterate what I've said in other threads - comparing the new films directly with the old series will get you nowhere. They are different and independent. I'm sure that stopping thinking of the series will make the films easier to understand.

Yeah, something like that is pretty much unavoidable due to the differences in format. The original Eva was more of an ensemble series but that's something a TV serial allows them to do. With a movie you can't cram in that many central characters and keep it at a reasonable run time without creating an awful mess. Anno did the same thing with the Nautilus Story cut of Nadia. A fair bit of world building and character scenes were left out to tighten up the narrative and focus it more around the Gargoyle/Nemo conflict.

There are trade-offs, though. Being pushed a bit further into the periphery means characters like Asuka, Rei and Ritsuko are less broken and traumatized and rather more well-adjusted than they were in the TV series. You win some, you lose some.

*snipped for size*

Have a Kaworu of Approval for this excellent post!

There's a rich lore underlying NGE but you only ever see parts of it through the lens of the characters effected by it. 23 years on and we're still debating the exact chain of events that happened during Second Impact or who Kaworu was modelled after or which came first, Rei's body or soul, and while those are all points of interest on their own, they're ultimately not that important to the story. It's very telling that the show's final two episodes throw all that out the window, including the Lilith bombshell dropped on you in the last 5 minutes of the previous episode, in favor of digging into the minds of the four primary characters.

A lot of what we know about Evangelion's world has been backfilled by two decades of supplementary materials. Interviews, guide books, tech manuals, tell-all video games, etc. That's where that kind of information belongs and I'm sure there'll be a nice thick technical manual on CRC accompanying the final movie to fill in those details for those of us who care about that stuff.

It's more Anno's style to throw an interesting visual or some cryptic dialogue at the audience and let them figure out what it means for themselves. The final shot of Shin Godzilla is a great example. I won't spoil it for people who haven't seen it, but there's not a bit of explanation about what you're seeing. The camera just holds on the image before fading out, like it's saying 'hey, what do you think of this?' You can more or less figure it out by rewatching the movie, but the art book spells it out for you if you just need the answer.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Have a Kaworu of Approval for this excellent post!

Those are real?! I want ALL the Kaworu’s of Approval! I need them! Gotta catch ‘em all!

P.S. Thank you. My posts tend to go long because at lot just comes to me when I start typing and because I don’t self-edit my thoughts and just let it flow I’m always fearful whatever I write will be a messy, poorly sentence structured, typos all over the place annoying mess. Thanks!

[BlueBasilisk]

Well, if they weren't real before, they are now! And sometimes it takes me like three hours to write a post because I keep editing on the fly. Yikes.

Anyway, my thoughts on the movies. On their own I find them rather straightforward and not that hard to understand, particularly in regards to the character drama. The movies have told us again and again and again what's wrong with Shinji and what he needs to do to get himself in order. We the viewers are just waiting for the rubber to meet the road. We know what's going on with most of the main characters because they either tell us themselves in pretty unambiguous language, or it's conveyed through body language. Gendo's a bit more difficult to read, but that's because we still don't know what his end goal is and most of his character revolves around that.

I see a lot of people say that the characters in 3.0 make no sense, but I completely disagree. Rather I think 3.0 is where it becomes most clear that what Gendo'sPapa said is true, that the world is just set and window dressing for the character drama. All the 14 year thing does is create repetition. It sets Shinji back to square one and echos his original arrival into the world of NERV, just that this time he's going from Familiar Old Evangelion to Strange New Evangelion. Just ignore all that stuff. Block out the flying battleships and UFOs and all that strange shit and just look at the characters. Almost all of the character arcs pick up right where 2.0 left them off. It could just as easily be set 14 weeks or 14 months later and it would make almost no difference except for some of the technological advancements and Sakura being an adult.

It's that set dressing that trips people up and leads them to make things more complicated and confusing than they need to be. Like the idea that people are mad at Shinji because he destroyed the world. That really picked up traction when we were getting the first early spoilers from the movie, but that's not what the movie itself says on the matter, at least not in regards to Wille. Ritsuko spells out quite plainly that they don't trust him and put the DSS choker on him because Unit 01 awakened to save Asuka in the beginning of this movie. That's it. All they ever say or show on the matter is the end of 2.0 and the beginning of 3.0. Nothing about any stuff happening in between. Asuka has her own reasons for being mad at him, which again carry over from how they parted in the last movie, and she lays it out for him at the end. It's almost as if the stuff that happened during that unseen gap didn't really have anything to do with Shinji, at least as far as the heroic side is concerned. It's really easy to assume it does but you're never actually told that's the case.

It's complicated a bit by Kaworu telling lies and saying it is Shinji's fault, but right after he does that you get a cutaway to Gendo and Fuyutsuki discussing how this is Seele making a play on Shinji. And here again we have the time skip being mostly irrelevant window dressing. The incident Kaworu references? The ending of 2.0, complete with recycled footage. A blatant lie or at best an Obi-wan "from a certain point of view" partial truth since we saw how that concluded. The truth? Eva Mark.06 and the 12th Angel, verified by Asuka. It's an in-between event, but when did it happen? 14 years ago, prior to the time skip, meaning it couldn't have been very long after the previous movie ended. And to the best of our knowledge, Shinji wasn't there for it and had no idea it happened, so we don't get to see it either. We're just told it did and left with some ominous set pieces ripe for forensics to try and figure out the nitty gritty for ourselves if we care that much.

Remember this stuff from 1.0?

SPOILER: Show

Same idea. What is any of that and how did it get where it is? "Remnants of Second Impact." That's all you get but that's all you really need for the story the movie is telling. The last one does have an explanation...that was storyboarded, left out of the movie and kicked to a supplementary book. You can make a pretty good guess what happened on that hillside after seeing the second movie, but the story doesn't waste any time circling back to it.

People also over complicate the story and confuse themselves by trying to analyze the new lore and trappings through the lens of the old and the pieces just will not fit. I was lurking around here when 2.0 first dropped and I remember people being confused as fuck that Unit 01 was able to cause Third Impact on her own as the movie depicted. How did that happen? That makes no sense! It doesn't if you're trying to apply the old NGE lore, no. It shouldn't be possible for that to happen. But taking the movies' own internal lore and logic, there's no issue there. It took people a while to come round to the realization that Unit 01 was an Adam in the movies because they're so familiar with the original TV series where it wasn't.

Same with how the Evas work. People were making some wild theories about how Mari was able to pilot Unit 02 in 2.0. The craziest one was her being Eva Unit 07, which I think was at least partly a joke, but still. But once people started to really analyze the movies as their own thing, they started to see that the movies had just changed how that mechanic worked at that the only Eva/Mother connection was with Unit 01. Rei Q is in the same boat as all this. NGE lore? Makes no sense. Nothing contradictory about it in the movies though. People are still running on the assumption that one of the Reis houses Lilith's soul because again, that's how it was in the TV show. The movies do establish that there is some connection between them but they have yet to clarify the exact nature of it.

I'm glad Gendo'sPapa brought up Eva Mark.09/The Vessel of the Adams. It's the perfect intersection of set dressing troubles and lore confusion. Whole new concept with no counterpart in the old lore, which it doesn't fit into at all because of how bizarre and alien it is. It's been a real hot topic of debate here in the Rebuild sub-forum. I've taken part in many if not all of those myself because I'm interested in this aspect of Eva lore. It's been a real headscratcher, trying to figure out exactly what the stupid thing is and how it works.

But just taking it in the context of the story as it's presented, it's not really confusing or hard to understand. We are told 1) it's strong, 2) it's dangerous, 3) it's really hard to kill, 4) it's some kind of Seele monstrosity, and 5) it's the original master of Wunder. All of this contextualizes its role in the story; it's the sub-boss or The Dragon. The information given establishes it as a legitimate and dangerous threat to our protagonists from the Seele camp. The stuff about it being The Vessel of the Adams, eating pilots, being made of core, or being Wunder's original master? That's all there to justify (or handwave) the unusual abilities it has. It has an Adams connection, so it flies and shoots lasers like they can. It's made of core, so killing it is harder than blowing its head off or pumping it full of lead. Wunder's master justifies it being able to hijack the ship and taking Wunder out of action before Unit 13 is stopped. Pilot-eating creates a dilemma for Rei Q by putting her into a do or die situation where she can act without orders to save her own life or continue acting passively at the cost of her own life.

I'm sure there's a fascinating story behind it and eventually I'd like to know that story, but that's not really important for the role in plays in 3.0. It has basically nothing to do with Shinji and it makes no sense for Wille to stop and tell each other things they already know just so the audience can be clued in.

There's a difference between being confusing and nonsensical and just being unexplained. The movies fall into the latter. We have new shiny lore that has yet to be filled in or properly contextualized, and we're still missing a movie that'll likely explain a lot of the most important stuff. I'm sure plenty of stuff will go unexplained or left to guides or whatever, but a lot of the remaining mysteries are linked, and more importantly are linked to Shinji himself, so once that stuff is covered it'll probably be possible to piece most of the rest together.

It won't stop people from saying Anno doesn't understand his own lore or doesn't 'get' Eva because it's not what they think it should be. The claim that he's using the movies to "ruin Eva" or trying to erase the original (which I've seen popping up a lot more lately) is just dumb. If anything, since obtaining the full rights, Khara is making the original NGE more widely available than ever before, and content-wise it's basically untouched since the last cut of Death in 1998.

[Ryuichi]

What blows my mind is that I was watching the new Voltron cartoon, and I was disappointed as the last season ended up being more story focused and not character focused.

On Rebuild of eva, I expected more lore and sci fi, as that was the main thing I loved about it. (I'm more of an Arthur C. Clarke fan, who wrote his books , and used his characters as a tool to describe the world around them, to paint scientific ideas out)

So it seems I'm just on the wrong side with both franchises.
However, isn't it understandable that people have a hard time to disconnect these new movies from the original show? After all the first movie was basically just an animation update.

[Ryuichi]

About Kaworu, it was mushy for me even in the original, how Seele got him and could manipulate him.
And Angel in human form. It was an interesting idea. Did he have Adam's soul in the series? I forgot it. The rebuild version getting out from a numbered coffin on the moon, was that symbolic only or did they think it through lore wise, be it a completely new lore?

Just rewatched 3.1
They impact scene is wonderfully directed, and really has the apocalyptic atmosphere. I can't say it's a cheap movie.

And one of the threads about how they used deep references to Nebuchadnezzar and myth proves Anno did his research and it's not a "flick".
Because I'm not sure about Mari and have a constant fear the last movie will be nothing but fanservice without substance.

[pwhodges]

a constant fear the last movie will be nothing but fanservice without substance.

Why? The rest aren't like that (in spite of what some people say about 2.22).

[Ryuichi]

Thing is, it all depends on the last movie.

it can sway my opinion either way.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Pretty certain 3.0 & it’s intentionally aggressive tone and message showed that Anno doesn’t give a fuck about simply appeasing people with fanservice.

If all Anno wanted to do was give people empty fanservice these four films would be a lot less divisive because they’d play it safer down the middle.
At this point after the turn of 3.0 the idea of expecting FINAL to be a case of major fan service is a deliberate misread of the film series.

[Ryuichi]

There were those interviews where Anno talked about how the studio pressured him to add Mari, as they wanted to give a reason for people to watch these new movies, if they are just a recut of the original , that's not interesting enough. They wanted new characters and scenes.
And he was talking about how he was struggling adding Mari to the story, giving her Asuka's scenes, making her piloting different Evas etc.

From that I kinda got the feeling he didn't have full control after all, and he was not fully sure where he was heading with the new movies, especially after the 3.0 preview and movie itself had nothing to do with each other.

Don't get me me wrong, I'm not hating, and I have fate in Anno, but I'm not completely certain what was the original plan and how thought out the new story is.
And maybe it's my fault for caring too much about the lore, but I love it so much, been reading about all these little clues for two decades now, who the ancestral race was etc. Even if it's just a dressing, I hope it will be consistent inside the rebuild universe.

[BlueBasilisk]

Ack! I didn't get the notice that there were new posts.

However, isn't it understandable that people have a hard time to disconnect these new movies from the original show? After all the first movie was basically just an animation update.

Yeah, I didn't say it wasn't understandable. That part completely understandable and it's something I have to contend with myself. It's more of an issue with parts 2 and 3, or even the later parts of the first one which introduce new concepts or things not present in the original which would change fundamental parts of the story, but people keep trying to smash them into the same frame of reference or won't even try to disconnect them. One of the worst things I've seen is people telling newbies to skip 1.0, watch episodes 1-6 of NGE, then go into 2.0, or the reverse.

It's like mixing up Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Brotherhood. Yeah they're mostly the same up to a point, but what comes after that adds whole new context to what came before, plus certain characters have different arcs or are more/less prominent in the parts that are similar.

Anno says made the decision to add Mari to the story all by himself, wanting to add a new female pilot from the outset because he didn't think he'd be able to change the course of the story otherwise, but it proved really difficult because of NGE's own "rigid" structure and because he was basically fighting against his own thoughts and ideas from 10 years prior. Even 3.0 can't escape it. For all the talk of how radically different it is, the ghosts of episodes 21, 23, 24, and the End of Evangelion still have a heavy presence in the plot. The events are just broken up and rearranged.

At this point after the turn of 3.0 the idea of expecting FINAL to be a case of major fan service is a deliberate misread of the film series.

That just depends what kind of fanservice you like. Mine's not bouncing boobies and panty shots.

[Guy Nacks]

My fanservice is getting a story with characters that I feel a strong emotional connection to and don't feel like shallow recreations of earlier material.

I would hope that the final film is going to go full metatextual and tie together all elements of the Evangelion canon and pseudocanon (manga, NGE, GoS, etc) in order to give some finality to the franchise as we know it, since this is going to be Anno's final entry into the series. That includes acknowledging Rebuild being a sequel/alternate timeline/Shinji instrumentality recreation/etc, because as far as I'm concerned, it's the only plot development that would excuse how superficial the Rebuild series has felt when compared to the original.

[Reichu]

@Guy Nacks: IMO, doing something like that would not only not advance the story or character developments in any way, it would actively defy the groundwork that's been set so far. The story has been built up with a view toward anti-escapism, and how the choice is really between choosing reality or choosing destruction. Things cannot be magically fixed like in so much of fiction; there are real consequences that matter. A reveal to the effect of, "There are objectively many iterations of this set of people and events. We might be nothing more than the dream of the 'real' versions!", or whatever, would achieve... what, really? How does this help Shinji come to terms with his terrible mistakes? How does it help him reconcile with the people he cares about? How does it give him a reason to keep on living? How does it help a battered band of fighters fight for the future of life on Earth? If you actually want NTE to not be "superficial", you don't hope that it takes the most irrelevant and premise-destroying possible route to the finish line.

(I don't necessarily think the movie won't acknowledge the modern frothing-at-the-mouth for giant interconnected fictional universes, but I doubt it would be done in a way that can be meaningfully predicted.)