Is Eva 3.0 the most hated Evangelion film thus far?

[TheDrmcvey]

In terms of pacing, I've enjoyed 3.0 the most.

As for the question, it kind've reminds me of the reception the last two episodes got as well as EoE. After awhile though, everybody jumped on the bandwagon and praised the hell out of them.

It's pretty much expected at this point. Some fans I've talked to said they might change their mind about 3.0 as soon as 4.0 comes out, and I expect 3.0 might get more love after that. As for me, I've loved all 3 so far, and am eagerly awaiting for the final installment!

[WunderBah]

And that's the problem with 3.0, it isn't supposed to be just for the fans who care more than the average viewer. If it was, it would have had much more details that were from NGE or be filled with even more speculative ideas. You can't excuse bad story telling on saying you have to watch it more than once because you come across not caring about the average viewer.

It's weird, because i tried a similar approach with watching EoE more in detail than once since i had similar "WTF?" moments with it initially, and i started loving it even more. It's the same with 3.0 towards me, it's not perfect of course, but i don't believe it's that bad either.

It's just me though.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Q seems to have the larger backlash toward it outside of this forum. For whatever reason we tend to react the opposite way the rest of the world does when it comes to Eva. Most loved 2.22, most here complained about it. Most disliked Q, but most here kinda liked it.

I don't see how we are supposed to understand the movie better by watching it multiple times?

Nearly all the answers are linked to events happening during the time gap. You can watch the movie as many times as you want, if things aren't explained, you're aren't going to understand them more.

At the end of the movie you don't know what the impact was for, you don't understand what that weird black moon is, you don't know what Eva-13 is, you don't understand what happened to the landscape and who is alive/dead, what happened with Lilith and the FOIs, you don't understand what mark 9 and the Wunder really are, etc.

I really don't see how watching the movie multiple times is going to help. At the end you just don't know wtf happened and why nothing is explained to the public.

Oh, c'mon. You and I both know that there wouldn't be any answers in the coverage of the 14-year gap either. It would mostly be full of Fuyutsuki saying things like "Now that you've used the Mark.06 to put the 12th Angel into hibernation, you'll start production on Unit 13," and Gendo will hide his face while replying "That's correct. Everything is going according to plan."

If there is a flashback in the 4th film covering the time gap, it'll probably revolve around Misato and Co. breaking from away from Nerv. Answers to Impact and stuff will probably come in the form of watching ReiQ discovering things about herself in FINAL.

[Deva Victrix]

FYI, I loved the Old Shit.

The New Shit is fucking awesome. I am dying waiting for 4. I'm probably gonna lock myself in my house and just watch it all day, drinking tequila and chewing nicotine gum and exploring my inner headspace while watching Anno's latest thingie.

My job's gonna go to hell, but I don't care because <3 Anno.

Also, I'm not new to this rodeo. I read the fanfiction about Shinji dying in Yui's ass cheek and saw the diagrams of Yui in her bathing suit AFTER she had the surgery done.

[Corpex]

I don't see how we are supposed to understand the movie better by watching it multiple times?

Nearly all the answers are linked to events happening during the time gap. You can watch the movie as many times as you want, if things aren't explained, you're aren't going to understand them more.

At the end of the movie you don't know what the impact was for, you don't understand what that weird black moon is, you don't know what Eva-13 is, you don't understand what happened to the landscape and who is alive/dead, what happened with Lilith and the FOIs, you don't understand what mark 9 and the Wunder really are, etc.

I really don't see how watching the movie multiple times is going to help. At the end you just don't know wtf happened and why nothing is explained to the public.

Fifth time I watched 3.0 I understood completely the movie and I had all my theory speculations completed. Before that i had doubts about everything.

Like FreakyFilmFan4ever said, I think Anno is not going to reveal anything about 14 years time skip. And i think it´s not necessary.


Here are my thoughts about your questions:

SPOILER: Show

-At the end of the movie you don't know what the impact was for

Gendo´s masterplan obviously will be revealed in 4.0. My specultation is Gendo knew Kaworu will kill himself for stopping 4º impact. Gendo wanted kaworu´s soul inside Eva 13.

-you don't understand what that weird black moon is

Black Moon is the "space-transport" used by lilith. I speculate it has the same function in RoE, but the design has been modified to look like a grail.

-you don't know what Eva-13 is

he is one of the fourth adams.

-you don't understand what happened to the landscape

Its a combination of destruction by N3I (2.0) and 3I (14 years time skip)

-who is alive/dead

i don´t know this, but i speculate some old characters are coming back in 4.0

-what happened with Lilith and the FOIs

This is the truly "uncertain" thing. I speculate: during 14 years Third Impact occurred (lilith + mark-06 [+ maybe sleeping EVA-01]) converted all lifes into LCL, and starting a process of creating a new God (LCL is transformed into EVAs). Then something went wrong before finishing it, and it was aborted with spear of cassius and longinus. That inactivated lilith (decapitated) and inactivated FOIs (decapitated too)

-you don't understand what mark 9 and the Wunder really are, etc.

in my opinion they are Angels clones like mark04 units (maybe developed by IPEA )

You can't excuse bad story telling on saying you have to watch it more than once because you come across not caring about the average viewer.

well for me story telling is similar to 2.0 or 1.0, but this time you don´t have your "Average Viewer NGE Knowledges" to compare the events occurred in 3.0 with the serie.. more difficult more hate

[driftking18594]

I too have seen a lot of hate for Q from those who aren't serious Eva fans.

As for myself, I have mixed feelings about it. It was visually stunning and really made me think. On the other hand, there is that sense of frustration caused by not knowing what happened during the timeskip.

[Jinroh]

Oh, c'mon. You and I both know that there wouldn't be any answers in the coverage of the 14-year gap either.

I am not talking about the 14 year gap. They could have explained some thing happening in 3.33 that aren't directly related to the 14 year gap. But they don't, and most of the things in the movie can't be well understood without knowing what happens before. Everything's tied together. The cryptic language used by the characters doesn't help either (Adam's vessel, Adam survivor, etc.)

SPOILER: Show

My specultation is Gendo knew Kaworu will kill himself for stopping 4º impact. Gendo wanted kaworu´s soul inside Eva 13.

Nothing tells us it's going to be explained in the next movie. Why would we have 3 movies void of informations and suddenly a lot of things revealed in the last movie? Without Evangelions 2 we wouldn't even know about seeds of life, FAR, the role of Adam and Lilith, etc.

Black Moon is the "space-transport" used by lilith. I speculate it has the same function in RoE, but the design has been modified to look like a grail.

Again, we don't know about that, nothing is explained in the universe of the movies. And we don't know as well why the black moon is curved like a grail. In fact, we barely know anything about it.

he is one of the fourth adams.

Maybe yes, maybe not so much. We don't know at what degree it's an Adam, we don't know why it really requires two pilots, we don't know what Gendo/Seele really wanted to achieve with that Eva, etc. You can speculate, but if the Eva doesn't appear in the next movie for some reason, we'll never know its role in the story.

Its a combination of destruction by N3I (2.0) and 3I (14 years time skip)

It's the obvious answer, but we don't know why it was turned to core (is it an Adam eco-system for the FOIs? But they are based on Lilith/Eva-01), we don't know why the moon got closer to earth, we don't know what the red and white crosses on the horizon are, etc. And again, even if we eventually "see" in one way or another what happened during third impact, we might still end up with a lot of unanswered questions.

i don´t know this, but i speculate some old characters are coming back in 4.0

Well, I hope so, but nearly everyone in the Wunder seem to be rookies. If there were many people left, such as real military personnel, they would be operating the Wunder, but it's not the case... So I have doubts.

in my opinion they are Angels clones like mark04 units

Well, I don't think so, mark.09 seems to be the most powerful foe they encountered in these movies, and he's somewhat linked to the Wunder... Maybe it's an Adam, maybe not. The only "raw" Adam we've seen in these movies is mark.06, and it's nothing like 09. But both evas are gone, so are we really going to know more about them after watching the fourth movie? Nothing's sure...

So yeah I'll wait until we get to see the last movie, but I'm pretty sure there will be shittons of questions left, and it's not "subtle" nor it is interesting. That's what Ridley was trying to do with Prometheus (without even knowing the answer to those questions!!!), and it failed miserably.

Mysteries are interesting if there's a background, references or a context you can use in a subtle way to complete the puzzle and find the answers. I just don't like it when it's thrown at your face without any hint. Of course we can try to figure out more or less what happened, but you can't understand the how and the why, neither can you understand the significance of all these strange symbols we see during the whole movie (i.e.: post third impact world, FOIs, crosses, etc.).

So I think that unlike the two first movies, in itself 3.33 fails to deliver. Even more when you consider that it's not necessarily aimed at "otakus" such as us who will spend countless hours discussing all the details on a forum. We are a very tinny minority. Had I been a "normal" viewer, I would have felt that the director of that movie can forget about me paying to see his next movie. And that's probably what a lot of people felt after watching this in the theaters.

Even the best of directors sometimes make crappy movies. We don't know if it's the case here, we'll be the judges of it once everything is released and we can think it all over. Anno producing these movies doesn't necessarily mean it's good. We'll see.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

Had I been a "normal" viewer, I would have felt that the director of that movie can forget about me paying to see his next movie. And that's probably what a lot of people felt after watching this in the theaters.

Why do people forget that it's the "normal" viewers that gave Q it's insane ~$60mil box office gross in Japan?

Anime otaku power does alone does not give your movie a higher gross than Avengers, Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises and Spider-man.

Eva was also the 2nd highest grossing anime film in 2012. Higher than the yearly installments of Doraemon, Pokemon and Detective Conan movies which are always guaranteed money makers. Only One Piece beat Eva. Yet all 4 of those other animated franchises rely on the very lucrative child audiences.

"Normal" viewers are the one that gave Eva Q the gigantic stamp of approval in Japan.

[Kendrix]

^Exactly.

From what I've gathered, a lot of the German fandom loved it, and in its home country (where ppl actually buy the discs) made cash like crazy despite being shpwn in relatively few theathers.

I don't get why everyoone's acting as if this is new. Didn't Death and especially EoE get ridiculously similar fallout, with the exact same complaints?

Adapting the storyline to movie format =/= dumbing it down.
He wanted to instroduce something to the new viewvers, but what he wanted to introduce to them in EVA.
It not doing what you want it to is part of the experience.

[Guy Nacks]

Eva was also the 2nd highest grossing anime film in 2012. Higher than the yearly installments of Doraemon, Pokemon and Detective Conan movies which are always guaranteed money makers. Only One Piece beat Eva. Yet all 4 of those other animated franchises rely on the very lucrative child audiences.

"Normal" viewers are the one that gave Eva Q the gigantic stamp of approval in Japan.

I get the feeling a big part of why Q probably did so well in theaters even though it may or may not have been "good" was because of the huge cliffhanger at the end of 2.0, plus the added guarantee that the new film was going to be in completely different territory from the series for a significant portion of its running time.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Or 3.0 did well because it is a "good" movie (god, what a loaded concept) that offers a unique cinematic & emotional experience that is unlike most movies. Movies that offer nothing.

Each one of the Rebuild Eva films has done exceedingly better than the previous & they aren't frontloaded with half their business done in the first week. People in Japan talk about the film & go see it for the experience.

And No - the Eva film that has gotten the most hate so far is End Of Evangelion. Maybe "Death & Rebirth" could have gotten a little more hate back in the day but it's not really a movie so it doesn't count.

[Jinroh]

Why do people forget that it's the "normal" viewers that gave Q it's insane ~$60mil box office gross in Japan?

I'll use an example so you can understand something basic.

Final Fantasy 13 was terrible, but it sold super well.

Final Fantasy 13-2 was much better, but it didn't sell as well.

Do you understand the analogy? If you loved 2.0, you'll want to see 3.0. If you hated 3.0, chances are smaller you're going to want to watch 4.0. That's how it works.

Success =! quality.

[JoeD80]

Hm by who's measure?

metacritic FF13: 83/100
FF13-2: 79/100

[WunderBah]

I'll use an example so you can understand something basic.

Final Fantasy 13 was terrible, but it sold super well.

Final Fantasy 13-2 was much better, but it didn't sell as well.

Do you understand the analogy? If you loved 2.0, you'll want to see 3.0. If you hated 3.0, chances are smaller you're going to want to watch 4.0. That's how it works.

Success =! quality.

Why can't it be both? Success & Quality aren't impossible to coexist with each other at all.

Toy Story 1/2 were great, and sold super well.

Toy Story 3 was wonderful, and sold well too.

[TheFriskyIan]

I'll use an example so you can understand something basic.

Final Fantasy 13 was terrible, but it sold super well.

Final Fantasy 13-2 was much better, but it didn't sell as well.

Do you understand the analogy? If you loved 2.0, you'll want to see 3.0. If you hated 3.0, chances are smaller you're going to want to watch 4.0. That's how it works.

Success =! quality.

Except some people will want to see FINAL cause they hope that it will redeem 3.0. Others will see it just because it's the end for Eva as a whole.

Also, up yours. Final Fantasy XIII was absolutely amazing. Not as good as XII, but it was still a wonderful experience. "MUH OPEN WORLD!" "MUH PARTY LEADER!"

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

3.0 needs no "redeeming" because it doesn't horrible fail at a whole lot.

Sure, you can argue that it didn't explain everything (or that you didn't catch all of the explanations just yet). But of that's your argument then get off the forum. You do remember this is Evangelion we're talking about, right? It's a series franchise that always has fed off of the logical confusion and emotional intensity of its viewers. To not like 3.0 for the same basic reasons that make the original series so powerful (confusion and tense emotions) is akin to not liking the sequels to Koyaanisqatsi because there wasn't any dialogue, which is to say completely and utterly contradictory and nonsensical.

Now people have the right to dislike whatever they want. They have the right to be contradictory and nonsensical, too. It's just the kind of world we live in.

I think the main thing people keep tripping up over is the 14 year gap. It's as if people feel like they are missing parts of the plot without ever realizing that the 14 time gap is part of the plot. You know what else we're missing? The 14 years of Shinji's life before Jo started! Clearly important stuff happened there, otherwise people wouldn't be in the mess they were in when the movie started. You just need to wait patently in order to figure out what happened in those 14 years in order to figure out the rest of the plot.

Same thing with the gap in NTE. It's just another 14 years you have to wait on and piece clues together about. Deal with it. Or don't, and get off this forum and get spoon-fed some Michael Bay nonsense elsewhere. I hear he's got Mark Wahlberg in Transformers 4, you'll like it.

[Bagheera]

I don't think people get too hung up on the timeskip. What I usually see complaints about are characters doing stupid things to advance the plot, seemingly important bits from the first two movies tossed aside with no explanation, and the curse of Eva. The timeskip is generally viewed as irksome, something scoffed at in passing, but not a dealbreaker in and of itself. But the other things are a very big deal.

[Guy Nacks]

I don't think people get too hung up on the timeskip. What I usually see complaints about are characters doing stupid things to advance the plot, seemingly important bits from the first two movies tossed aside with no explanation, and the curse of Eva. The timeskip is generally viewed as irksome, something scoffed at in passing, but not a dealbreaker in and of itself. But the other things are a very big deal.

This.

The timeskip in of itself was kinda cool and I loved the tonal shift. But these are my main sticking points.

Honestly, the biggest realization was that this was the first incarnation of Evangelion where I felt like I could have written a better script for the film myself. That's generally a bad sign.

[WunderBah]

I don't think people get too hung up on the timeskip. What I usually see complaints about are characters doing stupid things to advance the plot, seemingly important bits from the first two movies tossed aside with no explanation, and the curse of Eva. The timeskip is generally viewed as irksome, something scoffed at in passing, but not a dealbreaker in and of itself. But the other things are a very big deal.

Such as? (Not trying to be rude, just asking).

[Bagheera]

Such as? (Not trying to be rude, just asking).

Browse the forum, there are many threads on the subject.