3.0 to hit North American theaters in January 2014

[Giji Shinka]

Is everyone laughing because "Haha! Kaworu's gay"?

Yeah, why don't we ever hear: "Hehh, Shinji is straight!"

[ElMariachi]

I am mystified that almost every account of people going to see Q describes more or less laughter from the audience. What on earth are they laughing at; or is it just their own embarrassment at their bafflement?

From what I saw when I got to see it on theater, yeah, it's the gay subtext that many people find funny, although thankfully in my case that was just some chuckles and short laughs for the horse scene, which has the double particularity of feeling completely out of place and giving a strong gay vibe in the context of the scene.

But yeah, mostly "lol gay".

[Yokai]

I personally felt the Portland showing was fun, almost like everyone in the whole room was in on the joke and no one was left out.

That would have been ok, but personally I feel that it hit an extreme. I think the occasional moment was funny, but there were definitely moments laughed at that weren't comedic and I think it would have been distasteful if the same thing were to have happened in the Hobbit or even the hilarious 47 Ronin movie. The fact of the matter is that none of those people would dare go to a chain movie theater and try to pull the same stunt.

I guess my point is, there's clearly a lack of respect for the source material. Don't get me wrong, I love that Portland had such a strong showing for Evangelion and I'd love to meet more people in the future (admittedly, I'm a quiet guy -- always have been, always will be) and I feel I did have a lot of fun regardless, but I honestly feel that there were a lot of cases where the laughter was excessive and any other movie showing wouldn't really accept that.

It's fine to giggle to yourself, it's even fine to have some laughter, but when you're laughing loudly over the whole movie you create a bad cinema experience for those who may have been holding out or not seen Evangelion 3.0 yet. Hell, the fact everyone was too busy giggling over Kaworu and Shinji essentially talking about what it means to be an artist, how sometimes you have to put yourself out there regardless of how you feel about your own work, made me realize that perhaps people don't really care about depth and only care about action (nobody laughed at the honestly silly Wunder spinning sequence). Yet again, laughing probably wouldn't have happened if Kaworu switched places with Asuka.

[Reichu]

Until a scientific study is done, I'm going to blame the dub for debasing the material to the point that so many people felt at ease to laugh at it.

Assuming tickets are still available, I should be seeing this tomorrow, just to see how my experience compares. I've spent $10 on more frivolous things...

[Yokai]

Assuming tickets are still available, I should be seeing this tomorrow, just to see how my experience compares. I've spent $10 on more frivolous things...

Despite my complaints, it was definitely worth it. The space scene looks amazing through a projector, especially with its introduction. I was never a fan of the slow introduction before, but the darkness that surrounds the screen really immerses you into the setting -- and then the planet swipes in with all of the colors and it looks amazing.

The Portland movie theatre didn't have the greatest sound system, but it was still fun and definitely unique when compared to watching it on my computer monitor. Reichu, I thought perhaps you saw it in Japan but I guess I was mistaken?

[CJD]

Is everyone laughing because "Haha! Kaworu's gay"? I mean, I can't remember anyone on this forum thinking that or anything else in this film was funny in the slightest.

...unless they're all laughing at the horses. (I still wouldn't get it, but at least I've seen that reaction before.)

The horses probably got the loudest laughter when I saw it at Otakon, but yea if I recall correctly it was mostly "heheh yaoi subtext XD" kind of stuff. I suppose one needs to remember that the majority of people seeing it in theaters like that are probably young, carefree adults who don't look at Eva the same way we do.

You know I was surprised by it to immediately after the fact, but in retrospect I shouldn't have been. You guys need to remember that the stereotypes of anime fans exist for a reason, and factor those into the equation.

Until a scientific study is done, I'm going to blame the dub for debasing the material to the point that so many people felt at ease to laugh at it.

Sorry to disappoint but it was subbed at Otakon and, again, the reactions were largely the same.

It's funny, I think think the Madoka 3 screening had far less laughter than 3.0 did. I'd wager that's because, since it wasn't released and subbed on DVD yet, the ratio of hardcore fan vs casual fan was more balanced.

[Reichu]

Reichu, I thought perhaps you saw it in Japan but I guess I was mistaken?

I've never set foot on the glorious islands of Nippon.

Sorry to disappoint but it was subbed at Otakon and, again, the reactions were largely the same.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Ticket reserved for 7PM Manville showing. Hoping I get the chance to growl "SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU MISCREANTS" at least once.

[deleuzean]

I saw subbed DCP (digital) projection of 3.0 Friday 1/10 at Maple Theater in Bloomfield Hills SE Michigan.

Even with it subbed, when the moment of Rei nudity, and then, soon after that, the Kaoru / Shinji Piano duets rolled along a handful of idiot dudes a couple rows back from me started in with the sophomoric commentary. I was just about ready to say something when a guy down the row from me shouted - with a kind of slow-burning rage in his voice - "Could you please SHUT UP! You're like little children!"

After which I loudly chimed in with "THANK YOU," and I could kind of tell others were appreciative too. we did, after all, pay $15 each to see a movie that was not advertised as something like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or other "audience participation" experience.

For the rest of the screening everyone was pretty quiet.

Reading this thread, I am very glad I didn't drive back the next night for the dub screening.

The other thing that I think might have helped encourage people to take the movie seriously was the fact that I had arranged with the theater's programming manager to deliver a short (7 or 8 minute) mini-lecture introducing the film (I can post the text on a thread somewhere in the forums if anyone wants).

During that I talked about Anno's history as a filmmaker, some ideas that are important in Evangelion and his other films, and did a brief recap of some points from the first two movies.

The audience - which was probably around 200-250 people, I think - seemed pretty attentive to my intro and I tried to set a good tone of what I thought was "serious enjoyment" of the movie.

I think the idiot dudes came to the screening with the intention of commenting idiotically throughout the movie like they probably do when they're watching anime on Crunchyroll at home in their "man cave" with their "bros," then they waited a bit for the effect of my intro to wear off before they started in. I was so grateful for the rage guy so I didn't have to stick my neck out. After he called them out, it was like everyone had been pulled back into serious mode. Whew.

I remember seeing the first Gurren Lagann movie at AX years ago, and basically the audience was whooping and hollering the entire time, but you kind of expect that with a con audience - at least in the US (I've never been to a con anywhere but the US). I just went along with it - partly because that material is really tough to take seriously.

For Rebuild there was no way I was going to be able to tolerate it, especially with how heavy, serious, and freaking brilliant 3.0 in particular is.

[Gendo'sPapa]

From the way I've seen a lot of them act online - not here but anywhere else film is discussed or on Twitter- the large majority of anime fans in America strike me as emotionally stunted man children who think calling people "gay" is a real insult so none of these horror stories really surprise me.

[Mt Olympus]

Just got back from the 3.0 showing in New Jersey and loved it! Coming from the Philly area I left really early to avoid rush hour traffic, the show started at 7 but I got there at like 4:30, but it gave me a chance to meet a cool guy there with the same name as me and we chatted it up for a while waiting for seating to begin. We even got one of the people who work there to tell us the best seating in the theater which I found out is the seating used to calibrate the sound system.

The dubbed version is very nice, my prediction about Misato's English voice actress was on point. Translation is pretty good. Overall I liked the Japanese version better but English is much more convenient. Seeing Eva in theater is a blast but I forgot that in some theaters you can hear the next door theaters if they're loud enough, in this case it was and of course during some of the quiet parts of the movie you could hear the loud ass bass from next door. One thing that was strange which ya'll have mentioned is the homophobia towards Kaworu, I didn't expect the reactions from the crowd, twas a strange thing but whatever I fucking love Kaworu.

There wasn't as many ppl there as I thought there would be but everyone there seemed like someone I could befriend so it was cool. I was the dood on the green sweater who kept leaning on his arms cause the seats there were terrible and killing my back, sorry :P

All in all 10/10 would bang

[Reichu]

Back from the showing.

No previously-unreported differences between 3.0 and 3.33 popped out at me. I suspect that the majority are so subtle that you'd need to do a "3.0 in one window, 3.33 in the other" compare and contrast to find them. (Hmm, any chance of an illicit 3.0 BD rip hitting the Interwebs?)

The crowd was pretty good. There were the occasional laugh-out-loud moments (I have no sense of humor, so I never joined in), but it was typical theater crowd stuff (laughing at something unexpected or amusing, or whatever), and nothing really unexpected. There were three guys in the row below mine who were talking constantly throughout, but it didn't get to the point that I had to whisper choice words at them.

I don't think I really gained anything from seeing the movie projected on a big screen with theater sound. At no point did I think, "Wow, this is so much different from my previous experiences with the film." Well, okay, it was different on account of the dub, and not in a good way.

dub commentary that shouldn't be in this thread  SPOILER: Show

Compared to honsou's sentiment above that 3.0 has one of the worst dubs ever recorded, my opinion is, "No, it really isn't THAT terrible, BUT...". Here are the specifics. (Note that I haven't heard the dubs for 1.0 or 2.0.)

On the cast:

• Spike Spencer's performance was overbearingly awful. He has two vocal modes: tolerably quiet and peak volume-rapingly loud. Whenever he tries to emote, terrible things happen to people's ears. No dramatic range makes for a piss-poor Shinji. I cannot detect any improvement whatsoever from his TV dub performance. He really should have been replaced with someone who could handle the part. I will avoid this dub forevermore just so I can avoid him; he cancels out all positives.
  
• Tiffany Grant has gotten surprisingly better. I don't really like her as Asuka, but I can respect that she's been working on her craft.
  
• Allison Keith-Shipp has also improved from what I remember, and she pulls off a hardened Captain Katsuragi fairly well.
  
• Jewell's Kaworu only really worked for me when he had to emote (like during the Central Dogma battle). Rest of the time, he just felt awkward and flat. He talks like an android, capturing none of the smooth, gentle articulateness that Kaworu ought to have.
  
• The voice direction for Mari is horrendous. I have nothing else to say here.
  
• Rei is inexcusably bland. I think I like AWL better.
  
• Gendo and Fuyutsuki sound too similar, as often noted. Williams' Fuyutsuki did an okay job with the shogi scene, so ditch Swasey; his performance is boring.
  
• Ritsuko's voice is okay, but I think (same problem with the NGE dub) they veered too far from cold professionalism at times and into outright stone-cold bitchiness.
  
• The voices of the techies got the job done. Sakura was a little meh, though.

Miscellany:

• Most of the attempts at inserting foul language fell flat: instead of feeling natural, they almost always attracted attention to themselves and incited waves of laughter.
  
• Whether due to poor enunciation or interference from booming sound effects, some dialogue was rather difficult to make out.
  
• Translation and dialogue localization was a mixed bag. Sometimes the translations felt like an improvement, and some of the localizations worked; others, not so much. I disliked it when the meaning of lines were changed completely (for example, Maya's comment about men being omitted completely for a throwaway "Tell me something I don't know").
  
• Some of the translations used for terms include: Code 4#, Eva Unit-02 Prime, Vessel of the Adams, Survivor of the Adams.
  
• "Godslayer" is mentioned a few times as if it's actually a thing (no "So this is the power to kill gods"). I thought this sounded kind of funny.
  
• Attempts are made to pronounce "Wunder", "Wille", and "Seele" properly, but the ball is dropped completely on "Nerv". (They could have fixed this problem for 1.0. Why the hell didn't they?!)
  
• Kaworu calls Lilith a "she". Mari calls Eva-13 a "he". (No precedent for either in the original Japanese, of course.)
  
• Misato's final "Shinji..." is growled in irritation, whereas the original performance is much more ambiguous. I didn't like this one bit.

That's all I can think of for now.

Just got back from the 3.0 showing in New Jersey and loved it!

I thought you'd planned to go on Saturday? Too bad. We could've hung out and stuff.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

[*]"Godslayer" is mentioned a few times as if it's actually a thing

But it is a thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o44_NA3syKA

Just not the right thing...

[Yokai]

No previously-unreported differences between 3.0 and 3.33 popped out at me. I suspect that the majority are so subtle that you'd need to do a "3.0 in one window, 3.33 in the other" compare and contrast to find them. (Hmm, any chance of an illicit 3.0 BD rip hitting the Interwebs?)

I'm not sure. One thing that striked me as odd when watching the English version is that they actually fixed a continuity error from the original Evangelion 3.33BD (That is, asuming it really isn't just 3.0 that was uploaded as you said) in which Shinji's collar pops out of existence when he yells for Rei (you all know the scene I'm sure.)

Gendo and Fuyutsuki sound too similar, as often noted. Williams' Fuyutsuki did an okay job with the shogi scene, so ditch Swasey; his performance is boring.

Yeah I thought the same. I've always felt that Gendo and Fuyutsuki's voices should have been swapped since Fuyutsuki's is oddly lower than Gendo's voice actor (which is in complete opposite to the original.)

Whether due to poor enunciation or interference from booming sound effects, some dialogue was rather difficult to make out.

To be fair, I'd probably chalk that up to the sound system of the movie theatre you went to (perhaps, depending on the quality of the theatre.) The Portland showing had almost the exact opposite problem, it didn't have the 'umph' in bass one expects from a film. The fact you had seemingly the opposite experience makes me believe that it's probably just a variable thing from theatre to theatre.
Sorry to be quoting you so much, but I thought those were some points I shared similar opinions to. I'd like to add a few of my own thoughts as well:

• Music was turned down too much during some key scenes. Worse enough, when they did choose to turn the music back up, I noticed some small popping. Overall, there's definitely some sound balance issues with the dub (which, you know, is usual for dubs.)
  
• Some translation choices are perhaps a little bit to assumptive. Things could have been made less concrete like they are in the original Japanese version.
  
• Rei and Shinji interactions scenes were made less uncomfortable and more cringe-worthy in the English dub version.
  
• Recordings *did* seem to lack bass when I saw the film, but as mentioned above, that could be more a variable thing. I'll wait until the DVD comes out.
  

[Chuckman]

I've seen several comments from people who went to different theaters about the sound. I wonder if there's a problem and that's why the blu-ray release date has been pushed back?

[Kid]

I just got back from the movie and there were quite a few giggle moments throughout (mainly during the Kaworu/Shinji scenes) but nothing even close to what some people are saying they experienced. I honestly giggled once too, but I'd blame that more on Kaworu's voice actor.

• Jewell's Kaworu only really worked for me when he had to emote (like during the Central Dogma battle). Rest of the time, he just felt awkward and flat. Sounds like he's trying to talk like an android, capturing none of the smooth, gentle articulateness that Kaworu ought to have.
  
• The voice direction for Mari is horrendous. I have nothing else to say here.
  
• Gendo and Fuyutsuki sound too similar, as often noted. Williams' Fuyutsuki did an okay job with the shogi scene, so ditch Swasey; his performance is boring.
  
• Most of the attempts at inserting foul language fell flat: instead of feeling natural, they almost always attracted attention to themselves and incited waves of laughter.
  

Here are my complaints almost word for word. I've seen NGE, EoE, and prior Rebuild films dubbed and yet Kaworu and Mari both managed to nearly take me out of the movie entirely. I actually had someone refer to Kaworu as "the robot kid" due to his lack of emotion the entire movie (save for the spear pulling scene). Mari... I just don't know what happened with her as she was fine in 2.0.

The poorly done foul language actually lead to funny post-film Asuka impersonations all consisting of "Little shits little shits dumb dumb little shits." If there was any laughter from my audience I missed it because I'd wince and drop my head into my hands every time Asuka would repeat the EXACT SAME bad word immediately after she JUST SAID IT. Oh and I did catch the Mari f-bomb. The enunciation wasn't really clear and she said it to Rei and Shinji? That whole bit was odd

I'd have to say it isn't really necessary to see it in theaters since 3.0 lacked any scenes that truly needed to be seen on the big screen, but it was still fun anyway.

[Mt Olympus]

I thought you'd planned to go on Saturday? Too bad. We could've hung out and stuff.

I did plan on going Saturday but the weather was really bad and didn't want to put up with the traffic it would cause, and I also have Bridgestone Blizzak tires on for winter time, which means that if the temp goes above 50 degrees my tires turn into a wobbly mess.

I wish I mentioned something about evageeks while I was there, since I'm the only one I know who likes anime; I've never actually met people IRL that have similar tastes before last night and would've loved to meet you :3

[Reichu]

Jeez, that's awful! It's was one of my favorite scenes in Q because of if it's ambiguity and possible reaffirmation of Misato's "mixed" feelings toward Impact-kun.

Yeah, it was a very poor decision. This is one of the more noteworthy, and in no way positive, instances of the dub "spelling things out" where the original left interpretation up to the audience.

I wish I mentioned something about evageeks while I was there

I probably wouldn't have heard, to be honest. Well, when the theater thread for Final rolls around, maybe we can be more proactive about arranging a meet-up.

[Mt Olympus]

Well, when the theater thread for Final rolls around, maybe we can be more proactive about arranging a meet-up.

Most def :3

[hui43210]

I just got back from the theater, holy crap was that a cool experience. It started with me getting on the wrong bus and getting stranded in the part of Ottawa that I was not aware of, but that would resort itself. The laughter level was reasonable, the asshole line got the biggest laugh as well as the shot of Kawrou staring at Shinji stargazing, but nothing on the level of the New York premiere. I may get crucified for this but I like the English version better swearing and all. It's just the voices I'm used to, and not having to read let me take in how truly beautiful this movie is.

[Reichu]

The posts commenting only on dub-related matters have been split. (Note that the ones that also comment on the theatrical experience, or otherwise couldn't be properly relocated, remain.) They should've gone to the Official Dub Thread to begin with, but I never claimed to not be absentminded!