3.0 Film Reaction Thread

[ElMariachi]

But Obi-Wan didn't told Luke the truth about Vader because he wasn't ready and it could lead him to the Dark Side, he did it because he cared for Luke.

Here WILLE didn't told Shinji the truth... why exactly? They takes all these troubles to make him feel how much they despise him, to make him see that he failed them, to punish him to atone for his crimes... but don't bother to tell him WHAT the crime actually is?! It doesn't make any sense!

Kaworu told him the truth gradually(he befriended him before showing him what he did) because he cared for him and wanted to make him face the consequences of his actions in the way that would break him the less(and even then Shinji became near-insane on the spot!), so that when he give him the chance to atone by piloting EVA-13 with him, Shinji accepts.

WILLE don't bothers with Shinji's wellbeing, so why didn't they told him WHY he has to endure such punishment?! They just punished him again and again without giving him any meaning for their actions... it's like they made him suffer just for the sake of making him suffer, that they acted in the precise way to maximize his suffering! And seeing how Misato still has some sympathy for him buried deep inside I really doubt she would have been that asshole-ish and agreed to this course of actions.

[Ornette]

Shinji was with Wille for like 10 minutes, and was immediately broken out of the place by Rei after his first meeting with the major cast. Not sure if you're really insinuating here that their plan should have been "wake this kid up, 14 years into the future, everyone already hates him, and let's just lay it into him really hard by telling him what he's done to the planet and 90% of the population", and that it would have been a better plan then letting him adjust first (which he had the luxury of when he was at Nerv).

It makes perfect sense to me.

[ElMariachi]

That would imply that WILLE actually cared about Shinji's feelings, and by looking how they treated him that didn't seemed to be the case.
Or they were trying to let him adjust and didn't told him what are the charges against him by Misato's order, which in retrospect is perfectly possible.
The problem is that even if they really wanted him to adjust to the situation, they did it wrong in almost every level : I'm not saying they should have been all nice and friendly and made him play piano to humor him, but how was he supposed to adjust to anything by letting rot between a quarantine zone and a cell and only letting him out so that he could see the look of contempt of everyone in the Wunder?

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[ElMariachi]

I think I expressed myself badly : I'm not blaming WILLE for giving Shinji the cold shoulder, nor for putting the DSS Choker on him : after what he did, what he could have become after passing 14 years in EVA-01 core and what is at stake, it was a proportional response(they could have done it worse and chained him to a table for example), and everyone's bitterness is also understandable, painful to watch if you identify yourself with Shinji but still understandable.

What I'm saying is that it was poorly handled in the movie : or you kept a cold facade and kept him in total confinement and in the dark about the Time Skip, the DSS Choker... until the moment you're ready to tell him everything, or you goes for the direct route and tell him everything right away, but doing it halfway is stupid : they told him about some facts(Time Skip, the fact he won't be allowed to pilot anymore, the DSS Choker) while keeping essential information away, like why he can't pilot or why they put a bomb collar on him... or the most egregious : who the fuck they are!

I admit I didn't saw the camrip, only the script, but from what people said in this forum, between the moment the Wunder destroy the Nemesis Series with its main canon and the moment ReiQ abduct Shinji, he passed an undetermined amount of time in a cell, then Ritsuko comes and told him about his synch-rate, the Choker and the Time Skip, illustrating the last one by having Sakura presenting herself... so why Sakura, Ritsuko, or even Misato after Asuka's little tantrum didn't said something like :

We are part of an organization called WILLE, we are opposed to NERV and our goal is to destroy all the Evangelion left on the world. It's too long to explain the why right now, but in short your father has betrayed the world and want to destroy him, the 'Angels' guarding the Tesseract where you were contained and the one who attacked the Wunder earlier are 'Artificial Angels' called 'Nemesis Series', they have been created by your father to destroy us."

That's it! That was so simple! Why didn't they told him, it was nothing that would have destroyed his sanity like "You caused an Impact and wiped most of the biosphere"?!

I admit, it probably wouldn't have changed much when ReiQ appeared, since Rebuild!Shinji is very impulsive and would have followed "Rei" just because it was "Rei"(Aaaaah, love, what stupid things it makes us do...), but at least in a narrative point of view WILLE wouldn't have looked like bearing a massive Idiot Ball just for the sake of drama and surprise!
If Anno really wanted to surprise us with the revelation that Gendo is up to no good(like we really weren't expecting it...), he could have make Sakura/Ritsuko/Misato being cut off by ReiQ's raid at the "It's too long to explain the why right now" part, it would still be cliché, but at least WILLE wouldn't pass as inept at communication.

[CJD]

The thing is keeping someone in a quarantine cell for five minutes isn't letting them rot.

The amount of time Shinji's in the cell isn't exactly clear. I suspect he was in there for quite a while before they got around to him.

[Mr. Tines]

What I'm saying is that it was poorly handled in the movie : or you kept a cold facade and kept him in total confinement and in the dark about the Time Skip, the DSS Choker... until the moment you're ready to tell him everything, or you goes for the direct route and tell him everything, but doing it halfway is stupid

If I could find the "ten minutes in the shower /a/non" posts, I'd be linking them right now in support.

[Warren Peace]

I just don't understand this idea that MORE of an info dump would have increased his reasonableness. The existence of ReiQ makes it all a moot point anyway. As soon as she showed up, of course Shinji was gonna go with her no matter what Wille said. I suppose they should have also explained how she was actually a clone of his mom, but NOT the one he knew before. And do it in a really nice tone of voice.

[thegoodson]

I just don't understand this idea that MORE of an info dump would have increased his reasonableness. The existence of ReiQ makes it all a moot point anyway. As soon as she showed up, of course Shinji was gonna go with her no matter what Wille said. I suppose they should have also explained how she was actually a clone of his mom, but NOT the one he knew before. And do it in a really nice tone of voice.

Exactly. Regardless of what they said, the fact that Shinji is reacting very negatively to his treatment (whether you agree that they should have treated him that way or not), he's probably not going to take her word for it. Misato after pointing trigger device "Hey, Rei's a clone of your mom." He'd call bullshit because he wants to go with Rei anyway. It makes sense too that if Misato still cared enough not to kill him, she also was probably a little conflicted on mentally fucking him up by laying all that on him. Or now that she's in charge, is using intimidation as her main tactic.

I have a general question in regards to the Japanese reaction to the film. While I am curious if there have been any translated critical response out of Japan, my main question is about how the Japanese view the whole “no one telling Shinji anything” point. To go back to that Tarantino interview I posted when he’s talking about the response to Schultz’s scheme he says

I see where you're coming from. But it does sound like you're thinking what you would do. You have to think about how Schultz would respond. And it is actually kind of interesting that we've been getting a lot of different reviews coming out of England and France and no one has questioned Schultz's methods when it comes to that. But they have been questioned in America. Now, I think there is a little more common sense laid in the American mindset when it comes to these kinds of things.

I’m wondering if this same kind of cultural reaction can be measured with 3.0. Is there more of a general acceptance of how the characters interact coming out of Japan, because from what I have heard most of the negative Japanese reaction has been to how depressing the film is. Is the American (that I’ve seen) reaction that its bad writing come from them saying “let’s look at it logically” instead of “why are the character’s doing this?” Does the Japanese base understand and accept these interactions? Is there anything to this idea? I hate to generalize in these ways, but I’m really curious if there are any overriding cultural aspects that have affected how it’s been interpreted over there.

[Ornette]

The problem is that even if they really wanted him to adjust to the situation, they did it wrong in almost every level : I'm not saying they should have been all nice and friendly and made him play piano to humor him, but how was he supposed to adjust to anything by letting rot between a quarantine zone and a cell and only letting him out so that he could see the look of contempt of everyone in the Wunder?

- They were being attacked by the Nemesis series, it wasn't like there was anyone available to go and politely bring Shinji up to speed
- As soon as Wunder was in the air, the scene immediately shifted to Shinji being fetch out of his cell to run some tests with Ritsuko, where she fills in some of the details of where he's at and what had just happened
- Ritsuko explains the DSS choker, why he's wearing, it, what it does, answering all of Shinji's questions about it, including that it will kill him
- Ritsuko says that with all of this, it can't be helped that Shinji is confused as he's bumblingly asking questions
- Asuka shows up to tell him that 14 years has passed, Shinji's still pretty confused and still asking questions
- Ritsuko continues to explain what's happening, after Shinji constantly asks about Ayanami, how he was the only thing that was salvaged, no Rei
- Not having any answers to the Rei question, Shinji continues to ask about Rei, and at this point, Wunder is attacked again

Re-watching this again, I really can't fathom where the serious issues with how Shinji was being treated, under the circumstances, come from. The interaction isn't without its snags, Shinji having been an unexpected salvaging result, everyone already doesn't like him, and he's not helping the situation by (without his knowledge) asking all the wrong questions. Then poof, he's gone. I don't see anywhere that insinuates that he was left in any cell to rot, nor that he was purposely kept in the dark. The situation plays out as naturally as it could, given these circumstances, so I don't see how telling him to shut up and dropping the info dump on him would have been anymore helpful, keeping in mind that they had no idea Shinji was going to be abducted right then and there. If you're saying the circumstances themselves are wrong, then, that's a totally different issue.

[cozxy]

- They were being attacked by the Nemesis series, it wasn't like there was anyone available to go and politely bring Shinji up to speed
- As soon as Wunder was in the air, the scene immediately shifted to Shinji being fetch out of his cell to run some tests with Ritsuko, where she fills in some of the details of where he's at and what had just happened
- Ritsuko explains the DSS choker, why he's wearing, it, what it does, answering all of Shinji's questions about it, including that it will kill him
- Ritsuko says that with all of this, it can't be helped that Shinji is confused as he's bumblingly asking questions
- Asuka shows up to tell him that 14 years has passed, Shinji's still pretty confused and still asking questions
- Ritsuko continues to explain what's happening, after Shinji constantly asks about Ayanami, how he was the only thing that was salvaged, no Rei
- Not having any answers to the Rei question, Shinji continues to ask about Rei, and at this point, Wunder is attacked again

Re-watching this again, I really can't fathom where the serious issues with how Shinji was being treated, under the circumstances, come from. The interaction isn't without its snags, Shinji having been an unexpected salvaging result, everyone already doesn't like him, and he's not helping the situation by (without his knowledge) asking all the wrong questions. Then poof, he's gone. I don't see anywhere that insinuates that he was left in any cell to rot, nor that he was purposely kept in the dark. The situation plays out as naturally as it could, given these circumstances, so I don't see how telling him to shut up and dropping the info dump on him would have been anymore helpful, keeping in mind that they had no idea Shinji was going to be abducted right then and there. If you're saying the circumstances themselves are wrong, then, that's a totally different issue.

+1

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[ElMariachi]

Mmmmmmmmh... my bad, I tough that between the end of Shinji's conversation with Ritsuko, Asuka and Misato and Mark.06 attack there was another ellipse, not that it was right in the middle of the scene.


My apologizes, I admit it was rather stupid to get in an argument while I didn't even saw a camrip, I think I will withdraw from that topic until I got my hand of the film in all his glorious HD-ness!

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I really want to agree with Ornette's post, but there's something about that final exchange with Shinji and Misato that rubs me the wrong way. I think a big gaffe that led to it was when Misato called him 'useless'; being useless is one of the biggest things that Shinji strives not to be, and was one of his arguing points when he boarded Mk.09. I'm not arguing that it wasn't a true statement, but there would definitely have been a better time to say it. Say, when Ritsuko is explaining to him his dead synch ratio. A huge thing was how Misato treated the whole Rei situation. The first time Shinji hears Rei Q's voice and asks for an explanation, they blank out the window and ignore his question. When he asks Misato about it when she's holding a bomb trigger on him, she simply tells him (again) that she is gone. If she told him that she didn't know what was going on, it could have helped to establish some kind of trust. Of course, that might have just given Shinji more incentive to leave in the first place.

I suppose that everything was just a combination of stubborn Shinji, terrible circumstances, and angry/irrational Wille staff.

[Bagheera]

I'm with Ornette 100% here, and will add that I'm still baffled by the notion that Wille was giving Shinji the cold shoulder. Apart from Pinkie-chan (never can remember her name) literally nobody gives him so much as a harsh glance from the time he comes onboard until the time he leaves (you can count Asuka, I guess, but c'mon, this is Asuka we're talking about). Where's the cold shoulder? The harshness? Ritsuko's clinical, Misato's ambivalent, Sakura's downright nice . . . just not seeing the harshness here. Seems more like it's business as usual for pretty much everyone.

[ElMariachi]

Pinkie-chan's name is Midori, I remember it because her VA is the one who voiced Stocking, I look forward to see her in good quality, that will be weird!

As for the "cold shoulder", I will not respond, since I learned today that just the script don't let me have a good understanding of the subtleties of the movie.

[Ornette]

I admit I didn't saw the camrip, only the script, but from what people said in this forum,

I didn't see this tidbit until just now. While I commend you for not tainting yourself on a seriously sub-par version of the movie, it's hard to grasp the flow of things without it. But I think in the later, there's a lot of exaggeration happening if you read any especially heated discussion in the rebuild subforum as a whole, like, since 1.0. There's a common trend where discussion about something degenerates into people exaggerating their stance or point of view, or even piling on hyperbole, in hopes of convincing others that they're right (or if it's for another reason that people do this, it completely escapes me). So when you're following something that's sort of heated, like anything involving Shinji, keep in mind that there's such a debating tactic going on. Stuff like that isn't exactly unwarranted, it's just that isolated, it can seem sort of extreme.

I remember my first reaction to the film was very mixed, and one of the things that bugged me a LOT was the whole Wunder thing, and really, most everything was sort of out of nowhere. So it took a bit of adjustment and a step back to take it in properly, which I never really had a chance to do until I've had decent subtitles and at least some sort of visual reference (e.g. a camrip). The experience is really jarring, it's not expected, and when I think back at the first viewing in a Japanese movie theatre, I thought Q was sort of head scratchy in a lot of ways (Wunder probably being the most of all). But after thinking about it and at least one more rewatch of it, you get the sense that the unspoiled audience had the bomb set up on it and it knew as much as Shinji did, and got to experience all of this crap as Shinji would have, and it's kind of a brilliant and risky move.

If you read my initial writeup of the premier of the movie, I kept mentioning how much the world hates Shinji, because that was my initial impression, and it felt like it was pretty strong. 15 minutes into the movie and I knew nothing more than Shinji did and it seemed like everyone hated him. It's not until much later in the movie that all of that hate was quantified. At least within the movie itself, there's been people here that has been screaming for his head since the end of 2.0 so I had a pretty good idea what they were pissed off about from the start. It's just that it was so unexpected and confusing at first.

[Bagheera]

If you read my initial writeup of the premier of the movie, I kept mentioning how much the world hates Shinji, because that was my initial impression, and it felt like it was pretty strong. 15 minutes into the movie and I knew nothing more than Shinji did and it seemed like everyone hated him. It's not until much later in the movie that all of that hate was quantified. At least within the movie itself, there's been people here that has been screaming for his head since the end of 2.0 so I had a pretty good idea what they were pissed off about from the start. It's just that it was so unexpected and confusing at first.

Maybe you can answer this, then: what is the source of that impression? I went into the movie thinking everyone would be hating him six ways to Sunday, but apart from that glare from Midori I couldn't find anything in the actual movie to substantiate it. Do you think we're supposed to make that leap based on that one glare and Asuka's little rant? It just seems kind of odd given how everything else plays out.

And I'm with you on the Wunder. It's emblematic of my problem with the whole franchise, really: too much WTF? distracting viewers from more important things. Not bad in and of itself, but definitely not my thing (at least not when it comes to Eva).

[Ornette]

Maybe you can answer this, then: what is the source of that impression? I went into the movie thinking everyone would be hating him six ways to Sunday, but apart from that glare from Midori I couldn't find anything in the actual movie to substantiate it. Do you think we're supposed to make that leap based on that one glare and Asuka's little rant? It just seems kind of odd given how everything else plays out.

It seemed to me that everyone was, for the lack of a better description, "not very happy that Shinji is in the same room". You have the guard that's next to him as he's brought in, doesn't look like a very happy fellow. Everyone's sort of got their back to Shinji at this point, and you can see that they're sort of glaring without turning their heads, at least that's what it felt like, and Shinji's clueless as to what's going on. But my memory is a disservice here, it was my original impression, and it was a strong one, so it could have been misleading.

[Warren Peace]

Before Midori, there's a shot of (I think) Hyuga staring at him (and signaling the spooky music). After Midori, the black woman seems to be glancing over her shoulder (admittedly, the cam rip is murky on that, but it would be a really weird shot if she isn't looking). Then, in the distance behind Shinji, Sakura with a pitying if more sympathetic stare. Shinji seems freaked out by the bad vibes and looks up at Misato/Ritsuko, who have their backs to him, talking as if he's not there. That the control room hates this kid is among the clearest things in Q.