Axx°N N. wrote:The difference is that Robert Zumeckis didn't write the original Beowulf poem.
I get what you mean, but I think that any franchise or mythology (and franchises basically are the mythologies of the modern era) is going to have to deal with that "Quixotic effort" you mentioned anyway. In this case, it's the same creator making a different story, but I don't think that's necessary for new works being compared unfavorably and unfairly against older ones. I guess you can argue that NTE is something Anno thinks is better as a final word, but even then, I feel that if one makes the effort, NGE and EoE can still be viewed on their own terms, in the way some people even view EoTV and EoE as different works-complementary, but still separate from each other.
I don't feel like anyone with a negative view of Shin/NTE is saying NTE is bad because it's commercial, but rather that it's commercial and is bad. The difference between master painters and Lot 49 is that, unless you were told, you would never be able to tell the difference between them and something that wasn't made from a profit circumstance. Rebuild however very obviously concerns itself with being a commercial work in the sense that it tries to consistently pleasure its audience in tropes whose entire purpose is to do so.
When I first watched NTE, I didn't find it particularly commercial. Sure, I was wondering whether Anno had lost himself and was making some sort of a cashgrab while watching Jo and Ha, but with Q, my feelings for NTE as a whole became rather different and more full of praise. Once again, I don't think NTE is really all that commercial. Yeah, Jo and Ha are, but that's intentional in my view and besides from action and that one shot of Mari where her boobs jiggle, I struggle to understand how Q is commercial, too. (And I've already said I consider the action there more strange and in line with the film's weirdo aesthetics than anything resembling conventional fanservice). I've already said this before, but I find it such a weird work that I think in order to find it commercial one has to look for reasons as opposed to finding them. Q's pace is...kind of all over the place, but in a good way and about the script being more talk than show, then that's a strange thing in my opinion, because Q and even NTE in general are actually more openly in line with the old adage of "show-don't-tell" than NGE was for most of the time. (NGE certainly held true to that principle for the majority of its runtime, but I think NTE manages to use it a lot better.) Stuff like Kaworu's and Shinji's relationship, which I guess can be construed as commercial, is also something I've said I consider less commercial than more-and if Anno decided a slight degree of relatively more "normalcy" was necessary for communicating his themes, then that's fine by me.
Granted, I haven't seen Shin, but a cool person pointed out recently in EGFD that he thinks having Shin be a happy ending is the only place to go from EoE and I think there's merit to that idea-Shin might be commercial, but it seems to be mostly commercial in the ways a Ghibli movie like Kiki's Delivery Service or Whisper of the Heart is and then maybe commercial in the way NGE was in its first half.
I get you're saying that the problem with NTE is that its "indulgence in audience pleasure" is only bad because it interferes with its artistic integrity, but I personally can't even see how it's that commercial to begin with.
Konja7:I'd rather wait for the movie-I have read the translations, but I've found I'm a lot better in discussing themes than I am in discussing lore and I feel watching Shin might probably make it all a lot easier for me to get. I'll trust your word for now.
