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esselfortium wrote:A film, in a trilogy or otherwise, inherently should stand on its own. Of course the overarching story isn't completed, but there's a story arc of each film with a beginning, middle, and an end.
A film, in a trilogy or otherwise, inherently should stand on its own. Of course the overarching story isn't completed, but there's a story arc of each film with a beginning, middle, and an end.
The article in question (
http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/movies/21roundup-20_RVW.html )
makes a number of dubious comments, I think.
> That 1995 anime revolutionized the giant-robot genre and spawned a billion-dollar franchise
It's well into the multi-billions now; it passed the billion mark way
back in the '90s. (Matt Greenfield of ADV claimed in 2006 Eva had
grossed at least $2 billion, and the 2 new movies have increased that
by at least $100 million.)
> which may be why the films keep being released in the United States, even though the adult-oriented story never made much of an impression here.
I suppose it depends on what 'impression' is. If impression is defined
as general popularity like _Titanic_ or gifted with a massive
Disney-style release like _Princess Mononoke_ or _Spirited Away_, or a
nation-wide craze like Power Rangers or Pokemon, then that is true.
But as anime go, it was *extremely* popular in the US, routinely
appearing at the top of best-seller lists*, and made ADV's financial
fortune - fans sometimes quipped that ADV (the largest anime
distributor in North America before its recent collapse) was 'the
house that Eva built'.
* the manga, despite an amazingly erratic release schedule, sells
similarly well in the US
Indeed, that _1.0_ and _2.0_ even appeared in theaters, despite
Funimation knowing that the runs were doomed to financial loss and
Oscar ineligibility, is a remarkable tribute to Evangelion's enduring
popularity in America.
> it reuses some animation from the TV series but appears to be mostly new. (That’s not as cynical as it sounds: the earlier “Evangelion” films consisted entirely of re-edited TV footage.)
This is mistaken on many levels. Only one Evangelion movie, _Death &
Rebirth_, reused animation. _End of Evangelion_, _1.0_, and _2.0_
were all brand-new animation with the exception of a few flashbacks in
_End of Evangelion_. (Money and time were no longer an object.)
The reviewer is perhaps misled because _1.0_ re-animated some scenes
from the TV series, faithfully enough that one has to compare them
side by side to see that they actually are new animation; perhaps he
made a similar error when claiming _2.0_ re-used animation from the TV
series. The Rebuild movies *cannot* reuse the TV animation; the movies
are made with different aspects on different material. You could not
take the key frames from the TV series, photograph them and just slot
them into the film reel.
A specific example:
http://wiki.evageeks.org/File:Nge-vs-rebuild1_toji-shinji.gif
Notice the differences: the background clouds are completely
different, the buildings are gone, the perspective isn't quite right
and the proportions differ, the clothing's folds differ, as do the
facial expressions... Heavily inspired? Copying or re-animated? Yes.
But actual 'reuses', the original images edited in, with all that
implies about the miserliness and cheapskateness of the clip-show
production? No.
> But to what point? If you don’t already know the story — about young robot pilots being used to battle mysterious “angels” that threaten to destroy Earth — the film, which recasts events from roughly the middle of the TV series, will make no sense.
Not a correction but I feel compelled to add a final comment: well,
yeah! What do you expect? Would _Empire Strikes Back_ make a whole lot
of sense to someone who hadn't seen another _Star Wars_ movie or even
knew who the characters were? (Ditto for _The Two Towers_; it's a rare
trilogy which manages to pull off the trick of having the movies be
independent episodes but also cohesive parts of a whole.)
A film review on Jan. 21 about “Evangelion: 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance” referred incorrectly to earlier “Evangelion” films. While they consisted largely of scenes identical or similar to ones from the animated Japanese television series “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” much of the animation itself was new. The films were not entirely re-edited television footage. (A reader pointed out the error in an e-mail to The Times on June 30.)
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