Certain writing choices aside, I feel the Rebuilds would have been greatly improved if more time had been spent on building up the characters and their relationships with each other. Overall, my proposal would be a total of 7 movies rather than only 4.

1. You Are (Not) Alone - this movie can stay the same.

2. You Can (Not) Advance - this should be split into 2 parts. Asuka Shikinami did NOT have enough screen time. Neither did Mari!

Part 1- Introduce Asuka and Mari. Asuka and Shinji have to synchronize to defeat an enemy similar to Israfel. Instead of Rei threatening Asuka's dominance, Mari does. Also put an arc where Shinji saves Asuka's life or similar, cementing her feelings for him.

3. Part 2- A little more background and depth on Mari. A kiss and awkwardness between Asuka and Shinji. Asuka is destroyed by Bardiel and near 3rd impact happens like in the original movie.

4. You Can (Not) Redo - This can stay largely the same. I know it's usually regarded as the worst Rebuild movie, but that's because it didn't take any time to explain anything about the new world.

5. YC(N)R Prequel 1- Show the immediate aftermath of Near Third Impact. Asuka's recovery and gradual angel decontamination. Conversations between her and Mari. Kaji's sacrifice, and the birth of Ryoji Jr.

6. YC(N)R Prequel 2- More depth on the formation of WILLE and what exactly the new HIP is with NERV. More background on the Shikinami clone series, the original Asuka Shikinami, and how they made current clone Asuka feel a sense of inferiority. Maybe she lost her clone sisters or something. More background on Mari and how exactly she maintains her youth while being Gendo's age. I.e. Makinami clones generally don't have memories of the original Makinami.

7. Thrice Upon a Time - mostly the same. But it might make more sense.

Post your thoughts or your own ideas.

I could simply say I would change the characters or the story format (a series would probably work better as a new Evangelion story). But realistically, I think I would have kept the original version of Q intact. I love the movie we got, but I think it would have worked better as a fourth film rather than a third installment in the long run.

I would give Anno a million dollars and tell him to not make up the story at the last minute. If he gets it all done, he gets more millions.

Eliminate parts 3 and 4 altogether and start over with a new part 3 actually based upon the preview at the end of part 2. Then do a part 4 that naturally flows from whatever happens in the new part 3.

Rebuilds is a complete teardown. I would not use the old footage and just made it a new story. It was made to save money on production, and they shot themselves in the foot with this decision. They wanted to make something new by adding Mari, but realized that the original was so good, that she doesn't work at all, and in the end they just did nothing with her. Same goes with every character really, they needed to keep everyone from the original, to please the fans, so people would buy tickets, and in the end everything ended up underdeveloped, besides Rei, maybe. But Rei alone doesn't make these movies worth it to me. To me, when it comes to art, you either go all the way, or don't do it at all, and Rebuilds is just one big compromise.

The major thing for me would be to properly integrate Mari into the narrative of 2.0 instead of her just popping in and out in ways that don't tie in to the storyline. And also not doing it at the expense of Asuka's screen time. She doesn't really do anything to the story beyond hijacking Unit-02 against Zeruel, and her scene with Shinji falls flat because neither he nor the audience knows who the fuck this person is. This problem extends into 3.0 and Thrice Upon a Time, as well.

It's one thing to leave things purposely abstract for the audience to make their own conclusions, but nothing about the addition of Mari to 2.0 makes any sense.

thewayneiac wrote:Eliminate parts 3 and 4 altogether and start over with a new part 3 actually based upon the preview at the end of part 2. Then do a part 4 that naturally flows from whatever happens in the new part 3.

We know they did have plans to do that eventually and have considered making a movie around those plans.

I think it will eventually happen but it would be somewhat creatively bankrupt. It feels like those new reboots for 40 year old franchises that are completely unnecessary, and I say this as someone that loved, say, Prometheus.

On topic, we should also remember that the original plan, and Tsurumaki admitted this in the Shin booklet (contradicting Anno lol), that they were simply going to recreate/reanimate "the first 80%" of the show and then come up with a new ending. Would this have been any better?

I personally still have 3.0 as my favourite. I think they could have done more with that setting, Shin just feels like a regression to a pseudo-2.0 in a sense.

Keep most of Q the same EXCEPT add a 20-25 minute scene after the middle title card (After Kaworu states "There is always hope.") catching us up on all the time skip events, giving us much wanted character development for Misato, Asuka, Mari, Sakura, and the rest of the Will-e group. After that sequence, the rest of the movie mostly continues as before.