Acrobatic mecha and color-bombs of explosions might be a part of the themes, though. I am in the camp of people who consider Ha an intentionally bad film and if it is that, doesn't the action part of that still have a thematic relevance of its own? Jo had about as much action as the first 6 episodes, while Q is a bit of a different beast, but for me, the action there is most of the time as weird, strange and sometimes even downright bizarre as the rest of the film, so I look at it as part of the film's aesthetics and internal atmosphere. For example, the final Fourth Impact action scene features a lot of character discussion, and as a matter of fact, it's far more interested in what the action means to the characters than it is interested in any sort of true action-y stakes. Kaworu's death, Rei Q's start toward independence and self-searching, Shinji's actions-they seem to be far more important to Anno than making a more traditional action work.
As for your first point it's hard to say; to me it seems like there's a handful of considerations involved, but I believe the commercial consideration in the end was the most consistent one. [...] Evidenced by everything I've seen of 3.0+1.0, the last entry is also tonally commercial, with a lot of cliches that feel lifted from something more eager to crowd-please than Eva of old; things are resolved very easily in a kind of Shonen or Hollywood fashion, and the messaging seems more direct, almost to the point of advisory.
If the commercial consideration was the most consistent one, I seriously doubt Anno would have given us something like Q. For commercial purposes, it would have been a lot easier to simply make another Ha-a slice-of-life romcom with harem-ish qualities and a cool guy Shinji for whom all the girls want to act as emotional validation. Instead we had a weird, strange, bizarre, sometimes even grotesque and surreal film told 95% of the time entirely from the viewpoint of a subconsciously egotistic child without the wider picture. And Shin seems to, for the first half, be a slow, glacially paced film that then goes into abstract meta territory-not exactly traditional franchise material either.
I'm also open to certain things working better or worse for me once I've actually seen the film, in fact it would only be natural.
Agreed.
BernardoCairo: I agree that Eva isn't the only artistic work used by many for simplistic escapism nor do I think that Anno is somehow necessarily at fault here because he couldn't communicate his message clearly enough or anything nor that Eva's legacy is horrible or bad at large. I just felt the need to say what I said because Blockio's post made me think about what exactly is so wonderful or great about Eva's legacy that we need to worry about it. Yes, partially that legacy is cool, but it also partially isn't.