Shin Eva - Official Social Media: 2.22 You Can (Not) Release

[Lacissal]

I haven't played MGS4 yet, but I'm not sure its quality has anything to do with that of MGS2, a game originally written to be the last in the series.
... ... ...
I also doubt the long runtime of the film is due to explaining everything, something Anno notably has never done.

This. MGS2 wasn't purposefully setting up mystery boxes like Lost for some kind of pay off down the line, but was intended to be final. It's themes and messages, the things it tells you fairly explicitly towards the end (like EoE in the 3rd Impact sequence) were far more important than explaining mysteries, resolving plot threads or the 'action' in a conventional manner. If there was an Eva analogy it'd be more like EoTV/episode 26 if the planned episode 25 had been made when it aired.


Eva is able to deliver a lot of information in a very dense, but still ambiguous manner, like the 2nd Impact flashback in 2.0, the preview for Q, or Misato explaining the Angels to Shinji in the car ride in EoE. You don't have to search far to find demands that the time skip requires an entire film, OVA or even a series to explain what happened, or that a significant portion of Shin has to be devoted to it when it can and probably will be alluded to very deftly.

[kuribo-04]

when it can and probably will be alluded to very deftly.

This.

We might be proven wrong by the film, but this is what I'm expecting. Any broader information about things we haven't seen will probably be there to serve the character drama I'd say too (like if there is something about Asuka we need to know to understand her current situation), but for the drama's sake more than anything.

Just what I'm expecting from Anno's style.

[Joseki]

Metal Gear Solid and Eva structurally and narratively are NOTHING alike so I don't get the comparisons.

Apparently during the staff screening, Anno’s greeting was

“It’s a little long, if you want to go to the toilet, go”


From one of the khara animators twitter

This also confirms there is no intermission in the movie.

[Jäeger]

I haven't played MGS4 yet, but I'm not sure its quality has anything to do with that of MGS2, a game originally written to be the last in the series.

And what a horrible choice for an ending. But wait until you play/watch (It's the same) MGS4........

Similarly, even though 3.0 was not written to be the last, it is a masterpiece as is to me. Shin is really just extra to me, cause I'm already happy with the movies.

Sorry, I cannot agree with you ("Shinji-kun, don't do that, it's dangerous but I'm not gonna do anything to stop you, I better hide my face. By the way, I'm an angel, the first and the last, but only If you have watched NGE will understand that"), but I can understand what you like about the movie.

I also doubt the long runtime of the film is due to explaining everything, something Anno notably has never done.

I hope not but almost half and two hours is not your usual length. I'm afraid of explanations "a la Nolan"........

[Giji Shinka]

Sorry, I cannot agree with you ("Shinji-kun, don't do that, it's dangerous but I'm not gonna do anything to stop you, I better hide my face. By the way, I'm an angel, the first and the last, but only If you have watched NGE will understand that").

If this is meant to be critique of the movie, then it's pretty poor because we still have no idea what was going on with Kaworu during that scene. If there is no explanation in Shin (or it contradicts what we've seen previously), then your point would be fair.
Also, Anno/Khara has said that these new movies were designed for people who have never seen Eva, so the whole thing about beginning and the end, the first and last angel should hopefully make sense after Shin.

[GhostlyOcam]

I'll believe this EVA-EXTRA staff commentary for the time being.

They mentioned that the main complaint they kept getting over and over after it premiered was that people didn't understand it, but since 3.0 and Shin were supposed to originally be billed together, they hope that people can expect most of those answers in the second half.

[kuribo-04]

because we still have no idea what was going on with Kaworu during that scene. If there is no explanation in Shin (or it contradicts what we've seen previously), then your point would be fair.

Tbh knowing that something was going on with Kaworu would be enough for me. I don't know how much "actually it was [insert sci-fi explanation]" would really change the scene. You can deduce it has something to do with him getting "dethroned" as the First Angel. Maybe it isn't at all meant to be taken literally.

Also, Anno/Khara has said that these new movies were designed for people who have never seen Eva, so the whole thing about beginning and the end, the first and last angel should hopefully make sense after Shin.

I wonder if that is still the intention with how much 3.0 is defined by its differences from the show.

[GhostlyOcam]

Ticket presales begins on March 5, three days before the premiere. I remember presale activities being suspended since January because of the lockdown, so I guess this means theaters will operate normally again.

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date

Also it's nice of khara for putting the New Normal Moviegoing Manners guide on their site, I was afraid there would be a repeat of Demon Slayer situation but that doesn't seem to be the case, getting a bad rep is the last thing everybody wants anyway especially when they're just fresh off a lockdown.

[Jinroh]

Damn I'm impatient. I still hope we'll get to know more about what happened between 2.0 and 3.0.

Any of you guys will be there to watch it?

[Archer]

Sorry, I cannot agree with you ("Shinji-kun, don't do that, it's dangerous but I'm not gonna do anything to stop you, I better hide my face. By the way, I'm an angel, the first and the last, but only If you have watched NGE will understand that").

If this is meant to be critique of the movie, then it's pretty poor because we still have no idea what was going on with Kaworu during that scene. If there is no explanation in Shin (or it contradicts what we've seen previously), then your point would be fair.
Also, Anno/Khara has said that these new movies were designed for people who have never seen Eva, so the whole thing about beginning and the end, the first and last angel should hopefully make sense after Shin.

I mean that's the thing right, 3.0 gives so little evidence that it's pretty much impossible to make informed speculations about anything. What's up with Kaworu? We don't know. What happened during the timeskip? We don't know. Personally I can't enjoy a movie on its own if all it does is set up a bunch of mysteries without even giving any hints as to what the answers may be. There's nothing fun about making blind speculations in the absence of any textual evidence because at that point you're just writing fanfiction, not analysis.

My main issues with 3.0 aren't with any of its plot points in particular (except the sabertooth Unit 02, that will never not be really kinda dumb) but with the fact that it's a TERRIBLE movie to kick off a 9-year hiatus with, for the above stated reasons. Once 3.0+1.0 releases I think my opinion on it will turn around (especially given the "confirmation" from that staff comment that Shin will in fact answer those questions). But without those answers, I just can't enjoy it to any degree.

In some respects it reminds me a lot of how I felt about Age of Ultron. When I first watched it I thought it was absolutely god-awful. Looking back on it, it's... still pretty bad (mostly just because of how poorly Ultron was handled as a villain), but it was very obviously made to be a "middle installment" that sets up a bunch of stuff that only really fully makes sense after you've watched the later movies, and was not designed to work as a standalone film. It's just exceptionally hard to judge movies like that on their own merit before the movies they depend on for context have actually been released, because you can't determine whether or not the setup was effective without seeing the payoff.

[GhostlyOcam]

Fun fact, The Fellowship of the Ring was supposed to get a limited time IMAX revival screenings from March 5 to 25, but it was cancelled/pushed back to an undetermined date to make room for Shin Eva.

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date

Both films are very long (178 minutes vs 155 minutes) so it's probably hard for them to arrange simultaneous scheduling because of the limited IMAX venues, so they took Eva as the priority.

[kuribo-04]

My main issues with 3.0 aren't with any of its plot points in particular (except the sabertooth Unit 02, that will never not be really kinda dumb)

That is foreshadowed by 1.0, with the Eva-01 fixing its arm animation being more organic, and with beast mode in 2.0. Basically Evas are more malleable now. And with 3.0 blurring the lines between the abstract and what is supposed to be the literal Eva world, sabertooth Eva-02 is just another way of achieving that. Is it really any more stupid than a giant with metal armor piloted from the inside?

But without those answers, I just can't enjoy it to any degree.

That's fair. But I think 3.0 is like its title implies about how "you can not redo", and I don't think Shin is necessary for that. It might reinforce that message, answer it or disagree with it, but as a story I think it works. 3.0 is a movie that needs to have information concealed to work as a story to begin with.

[Archer]

That is foreshadowed by 1.0, with the Eva-01 fixing its arm animation being more organic, and with beast mode in 2.0. Basically Evas are more malleable now.

Haha, I never really liked that part either. This also extends to Eva-01's awakened mode, which somehow changes the paint on its armor from green to red. Like... why? It's just paint, it's not part of its body. I think it takes away from the idea of Evas as organic beings bound and restricted by their armor if the armor itself is now seemingly treated as an organic part of its body now that can be freely stretched and molded.

That's fair. But I think 3.0 is like its title implies about how "you can not redo", and I don't think Shin is necessary for that. It might reinforce that message, answer it or disagree with it, but as a story I think it works. 3.0 is a movie that needs to have information concealed to work as a story to begin with.

That's why I say it can work as a good middle installment if 3.0+1.0 delivers on our expectations, and that I'll re-assess my judgment of the movie after I've seen 3.0+1.0. In the context of the entirety of the Rebuilds, the story can be good and effective. But if that much importance is put on mystery and concealed information, then the reveal of said information better be well worth it. If the answers in Shin are satisfying, then 3.0 would've been an effective bridge. If not, then all the mystery would've been a waste of time because none of it mattered to begin with. As-is, I can't enjoy it in a vacuum without knowing how the payoff is going to turn out. That's why I don't plan on re-watching it til I can see it back to back with a non-potato English sub of Shin.

[kuribo-04]

Haha, I never really liked that part either. This also extends to Eva-01's awakened mode, which somehow changes the paint on its armor from green to red. Like... why? It's just paint, it's not part of its body. I think it takes away from the idea of Evas as organic beings bound and restricted by their armor if the armor itself is now seemingly treated as an organic part of its body now that can be freely stretched and molded.

I think that's the point. When Eva-01 awakens in 2.0, even Ritsuko is like "what the hell", and Maei seems to be the outlier that knows more than the rest. 14 years later, they are tapping into the full potential of what the Evas are capable of.

But if that much importance is put on mystery and concealed information, then the reveal of said information better be well worth it. If the answers in Shin are satisfying, then 3.0 would've been an effective bridge. If not, then all the mystery would've been a waste of time because none of it mattered to begin with.

But we don't know if info is being concealed or just isn't important or part of the story. Like, if Shin never got made, it's not like 3.0 would be a waste of a film.

Pretty much anything people have questions about you can to some extent already find meaning in. What's up with Asuka's eye? Well, something happened in relation to the 9th Angel. It's a visual representation of the scar that incident left, always with her.
What exactly happened to the world? Well, I don't know into how much detail the films will go, but we do know it's seriously messed up, we know what guilt this brings Shinji, and we know it's urgent enough that Wille would go to extremes to fight.
Where is Rei? We don't know that either, but looking at the way things have played out so far, I'd bet she is willingly staying in Eva-01 and making it so Shinji has a 0% synch rate, granting his wish. And even if that isn't literally what's happening, it's interesting that the low synch rate is pretty much what Shinji and Rei would have seen as ideal in 2.0.

Tbh I even think if Rebuild just ended with 3.0 I'd be satisfied.
Obviously there's too much potential in doing another film, so not doing that would be a disservice. It can also make the previous films richer with added information, but I don't know if they need it to work.

I'm not trying to change how you feel about 3.0, but hopefully I explained what I mean.

[Archer]

I think that's the point. When Eva-01 awakens in 2.0, even Ritsuko is like "what the hell", and Maei seems to be the outlier that knows more than the rest. 14 years later, they are tapping into the full potential of what the Evas are capable of.

Personally, that crosses the line for me where it goes from sci-fi that's vaguely plausible if you squint your eyes, into fantasy that's basically just Clarke's-Third-Rule science-themed magic. While Eva is hardly hard sci-fi I think NGE is relatively grounded whereas the Rebuilds are a lot more fantastical. A minor example of this is the changes made to the Ramiel fight. In NGE, Misato has to commandeer the positron cannon and scramble to get a heat shield made out of an old space shuttle (including the funny scene where Unit-0 just casually lifts the roof of the building and grabs the cannon). In 1.0, they already just have these things ready-made and lying around. Even the nominal scale of the Evas (40m in NGE, 80m in the Rebuilds) sorta plays into this. I've done the calculations - the scale of a human to an 80m Eva is almost exactly the same scale between a human and a Lego minifigure. While 40m is still a pretty damn big robot, 80m is really just ludicrously huge.

Tbh I even think if Rebuild just ended with 3.0 I'd be satisfied.

At that point it just comes down to personal taste. Personally, for anything that's not a slice-of-life or a comedy, the ending matters to me more than anything else. Or perhaps more accurately, I care mostly about the overall package of how well a story works as a whole in its themes, characters and plot. A good ending can turn an average show into an 8/10, whereas a bad ending can completely ruin an otherwise good show. It's why I have zero interest in ever starting Berserk (at least not until it actually ends), because I know that no matter how good people say it is, I'm not going to get any satisfaction out of reading an incomplete and sparsely-updating story with no end in sight.

Hell, I don't even think I would like Evangelion if EoE didn't exist. I don't mind EoTV in the context of it being an "alternative" ending to EoE; I can appreciate it for what it is because there's another ending that already answers all the questions I care about, but if it had been the only ending we got, I'd have 100% dismissed Eva as pretentious and overrated. I guess some people can be satisfied with the conclusion of the story being completely ignored in favor of an introspective character study... I'm not one of those people.

[kuribo-04]

I answered here cause it was feeling a little off topic:

https://forum.evageeks.org/post/911129/Debate-the-quality-of-Rebuild-here-2/#911129

[UrsusArctos]

Folks, please stick to the topic. Thank you for your cooperation.

[Jäeger]

Sorry, I cannot agree with you ("Shinji-kun, don't do that, it's dangerous but I'm not gonna do anything to stop you, I better hide my face. By the way, I'm an angel, the first and the last, but only If you have watched NGE will understand that").

If this is meant to be critique of the movie, then it's pretty poor because we still have no idea what was going on with Kaworu during that scene. If there is no explanation in Shin (or it contradicts what we've seen previously), then your point would be fair.
Also, Anno/Khara has said that these new movies were designed for people who have never seen Eva, so the whole thing about beginning and the end, the first and last angel should hopefully make sense after Shin.

Yeah, but I still believe that a movie must stand by itself, not depend on its sequel (9 years later!!!!) to have sense. In 2021/02/28 is a ridiculous scene and without NGE knowledge it has no sense. Maybe the 9th is different, but today, not.

[Zusuchan]

Anyone who still has an interest in discussing the quality of 3.0/3.33/Q do so here, please.

[GhostlyOcam]

New score sneak peek! Sagisu and an audio engineer (mentioned as a former violin layer) in the 2nd Abbey Road studio, mixing the cue that was used in the first half of AVANT1.

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date