Deleted Scenes and Unused Plans - 1.111/2.222 Wishes

[Archer]

Thread for discussions about deleted scenes and discarded plot ideas. What do you wish had been left in the film? Would you want to see some scenes added in if 1.0 and 2.0 get yet another remaster?

Translated version of the 2.0 CRC’s are available here which give a good overview of 2.0’s production history and all of the cuts and changes that were made to its story.

Split off from some discussion that was being had in the Amazon release thread.

[Joseki]

1.0: more scenes with Shinji, Toji, Kensuke and Hikari in the B part of the movie
2.0: more Asuka in the A/B part, possibly a few Kaji/Ritsuko/Misato moments

[Xenoblade]

In 2.222 I want an epilogue scene where Vader Asuka wakes up on an operating table that rises vertically. Beside her is Palpatine Misato:

Where is baka Shinji?
Is he safe?
Is he all right?

[Kendrix]

As a standalone product/ general EVa franchise entry I have always loved 2.0 and defended it from pretentious squidwards complaining that it wasn't edgy or pedantic enough or whatever.

But now that the Rebuilds are finished & one can see the whole structure one can only conclude that 2.0 was unlucky enough to be made while they were still trying to fit the trilogy outline / in mid-process of going from "fancy HD remake" to "full-blown serious spinoff". They needed more than 3 movies anyways; They might as well have made it five.

Look at the CR - They basically had material for a whole other film there. Good material.
Some of it is wild over the top unripe brainstorm suggestions, but they arrived at multiple solid outlines.

The problem is that they crammed too many darn episodes one film.

Looking at 2.0 and Q alone you might think that Asuka & Mari are simply side characters - that's basically what happened to Ritsuko, some cuts are inevitable, but without spoiling anything, they are actually both important in final so it feels now like more buildup was needed. Besides if adapting from the great third act calamity was the big challenge of the last two films I felt we should've spent more time before it.
It kinda works because established viewers will project stuff from the old show in there but as a standalone product it could've used more time.

In the CR the makers themselves sorta acknowledge this - they couldn't fit in some Misato friendship scenes without shifting the focus too much from the younger chars, & they had to make hard decisions with Asuka's portrayal & decide which aspects were more important - like cutting the Kaji thing & making her more introverted because else "the sense that she went to Japan alone would have been lost" and they were on a strict timeline to make people care about her before Bardiel. In the OG series they could show her as gratingly perfect & popular at first & then gradually show her inner loneliness.

A lot of ppl commented how Asuka was so different etc but a lot of things they point to as examples are things later in the movie after she is supposed to have changed & developed - but the confusion is probably there because we could've used more time to establish Asuka's initial state.


With 2.0 as it is it was probably the right choice to focus on Rei, 'cause she was gonna get the axe in Q, so this was 'her' movie.

But remember that in the old series there were 2 story arcs there: eps 8 to 12 that were mostly focussed on Asuka, and the third act from 14 to 19 which had more Rei content.

Though Rei didn't do much in the action arc that was kinda the point where both her fighting attitude & her more philosophic side came out, both things that were maybe a bit missing from the rebuilds for all that we got this wondrous extra content (especially everything focussing on her sense of trappedness) - ep 11 is one of the more juicier eps Rei wise, if you ask me.

So I think they should've done two movies - One that would be more focussed on Asuka & Mari, cumulating in the Sahaquiel fight.
You would have mean competitive Asuka for most of this first movie, maybe go into more detail with both of them.
I imagine that you' start it with Shinji's "Wow some people actually like EVa piloting" line & end with the sleepover scene that was supposed to the the turning point in Asuka's character; Make it more recognizable as such.

And then have a second movie that is pretty much the 2.0 we already got minus the first half hour. with maybe a lil bit extra stuff. It could start out showing early on how Asuka is nicer now & does stuff like cooking, leading up to Bardiel

Stuff to include:
More definitive Mari scenes like:
- The scripts in which they show Mari & Asuka gradually turning from rivals to friends, including the ramen & double piloting scenes
- The scene where she volunteers to fight despite being heavily injured
- Mari at home with her pets etc. (that struck me as something that would explain her a lot really show both the serious & eccentric sides)
- A "Why do you pilot" motive/ life philosophy explaining scene with Shinji
-The Ramen scene

Non Mari stuff:
- That cut but already voiced scene where we see Rei talking with Ritsuko/ being examine in the room that later winds up being ReiQ's
- Same with that cut of Shinji being so happy about being taken to places by Kaji
- Whatever that "favorite Misato scene" was. Unlike others it was only mentioned but we got no transcript
- the extended bardiel sequence
- the dialogue about how "each of the children has a defined role to play"
- that bit of the angel 'kissing' EVA 01 after absorbing Rei
- More Asuka stuff was mentioned. Like with the Misato scene they didn't go into detail but supposedly lots of it was cut

[Gendo'sPapa]

I think 1.0 could benefit from a few extra minutes. Mainly the cut to introducting Toji & Kensuke. It's an effective edit but it really only works because most viewers have seen NGE and know who these two guys are and why one is upset with Shinji. They try to work around it but it never sits right with me. So I'd say bring back the first scenes in the classroom from Episode 3 that introduces Toji & Kensuke & maybe even keep or rework Shinji foolishly revealing to the class he's an Eva pilot. Anything else - more Misato, Ritsuko, Rei, etc - would be a cherry on top.

2.0: I have ideas but mainly I wish they'd bring back the early concept of Mari being a cat lover who has tattoos all over her body of various kitties she'd loved and that the tattoos are mostly hidden by her plugsuit. I want Tattooed Mari.

[Kendrix]

I also wonder if they're gonna do a CR for the last two movies, and what's gonna be in it - possibly a a script of what the 'timeskip movie'/ original trailer movie would have been like.

[Archer]

I also wonder if they're gonna do a CR for the last two movies, and what's gonna be in it - possibly a a script of what the 'timeskip movie'/ original trailer movie would have been like.

I’m like PRETTY sure I remember reading someone posting an announcement for the 3.0 CRC’s some time before the movie came out, though it’s probably somewhere inside the spoiler subforum now. I’d be surprised if it DIDN’T include snapshots of how the story grew from the “double feature” version to what we’re actually getting given how detailed the 2.0 CRC’s were.

[cyharding]

2.0: I have ideas but mainly I wish they'd bring back the early concept of Mari being a cat lover who has tattoos all over her body of various kitties she'd loved and that the tattoos are mostly hidden by her plugsuit. I want Tattooed Mari.

Isn't tatooing a major taboo in Japan due to its connections with organized crime?

[Kendrix]

She's British tho.

And who says that she isn't a secret Mafiosa?

[ElMariachi]

Although those cut scenes for Mari would had greatly fleshed out her character, and established her as someone very different from the rest of the cast, they all became impossible the moment that Anno decided to make her Kaji's co-conspirator: officially she's death, so she's supposed to keep a low profile (her parachuting in Tokyo-3 was her way to enter Japan covertly), so having her having chats with Shinji and Rei in elevators, tea times with Shinji or an open rivalry against Asuka was completely out of the question.
Especially since her death was part of Kaji's test of loyalty toward Gendo, alongside destroying Bethany Base and stealing the Key of Nebuchadnezzar, IIRC Gendo even calls her "the problematic pilot of EVA-05, implying that there's something about her that could threaten his plan (whether it's the implication that she isn't a pilot under NERV command or something else is unknown to me at the moment), which makes me realize that things must had been very awkward for Kaji once she publicly came back!

The thing I wonder is if they planned to be Kaji's co-conspirator (and thus more knowledgeable about the conspiracy business) from the beginning and then realized at that some point that making her having any scene with the NERV staff became out of the question if they wanted to stay logical, or if they first planned to have her a another (very eccentric) pilot but couldn't make her scenes fit in 2.0's crammed screentime and thus decided to change her into Kaji's sidekick to justify keeping her in the background until the battle against Zeruel.

The plot of her being a rival turning friend for Asuka is obviously something that happened during the timeskip, probably that Asuka first thought that Mari would replace her, a mutilated and corrupted shell of a pilot, except that Mari didn't give a crap about being the Ace pilot, nor taking Asuka's place, and the lack of emotional baggage with her and easy-going and non-judging nature made that (probably one-side) rivalry into a genuine friendship.

As an aside, after thinking about it for some time, I think that this is actually Mari's role in NTE, she's here to be an available pilot to fight for the rest of the pilots to able to do something else, and also to be that one friend that can relate to them that they desperately needed but never got in NGE. For Asuka she was this other pilot that's also cursed by Eva (and let's be honest, Asuka would had been a profundly fucked up person had she been all alone during the time skip), and here I'm speculating, but I think that she may be the same thing to Shinji in Shin, in that like him she knows the pain of piloting an Eva and to be a pawn of other people (remember that she was supposed to die in EVA-05, and probably would had without Kaji) and will be a kind of sister figure/warrior therapist to give him some much needed pep talk and life advice.

[baldur]

I would absolutely lose my mind if we got remastered 1.111 and 2.222 bundled together with 3.333 and Shin in a 4K boxset.

I do like that Rebuild starts off with only very subtle differences to NGE, but I'd also be lying if I said that 1.0 doesn't feel sort of inert as a film to me. I think more new and original stuff would really help it stand out more. Those are the most memorable parts of it - the intrigue in catching those weird idiosyncrasies and differences. Why are the seas red, why is everything so overgrown, what's Kaworu doing on the moon and why's he being teased so early, why does Misato know about Lilith and why is the mask different, etc. More stuff like that would've really helped the film, I feel. I'm not saying it'd have to be anything on the scale of 2.0, to be clear. My favorite thing about 1.0 is how the changes are so subtle that the film is almost uncanny valley-ish. Something familiar but just slightly off; meanwhile, 2.0 obviously beats you over the head with the differences. Maybe it could also use some extra time to make the story more clear, like @Gendo'sPapa mentioned with Toji and Kensuke, but I'm personally not very bothered by that stuff. I've heard plenty about Rebuild being made with new audiences in mind, but it's always felt to me like something made primarily for people familiar with NGE.

For similar reasons, I don't mind that 2.0 fails to provide development for Asuka or Misato or anyone else, with one exception - Mari. Unlike the others, this is a new character, one we haven't already spent hours falling in love with during NGE. You'd think it'd be a big priority to provide her with depth and pathos going forward, but she kind of just disappears after the opening scene and doesn't return until pretty late into the film. She's a bit of a Mary Sue, too, and doesn't really feel like an Evangelion character; but honestly that makes her feel right at home in 2.0. I do genuinely like how she's a mysterious and alien presence. So maybe the issue is just that she's not present enough in the film. I agree with everyone that I would have liked to see those cut scenes. Her interacting with her pets, tattoos on her body being revealed, etc. Some of this stuff is very interesting to read about - I like Mari as a mysterious and somewhat underdeveloped presence, but it really would've been interesting to see this earlier direction where Mari kind of "replaces" Asuka; her being in the elevator scene sounds fascinating and kind of hilarious. It may even have been a better direction than what we ultimately got, allowing her to take a bigger part in the narrative while still retaining the idea of her being a "foreign presence" intruding on a story we're familiar with. It goes without saying, but a change like this would obviously be way outside the scope of a hypothetical 2.222, though. Still, if there's anyone who needed (and deserved) more scenes in 2.0 it would be Mari. That being said, Anno clearly had a lot of difficulty inserting her into the story and I agree with his assessment that despite those difficulties she was ultimately not a failure. By the end of 3.0 I had actually grown to like Mari a lot more than I thought I would based on her look and reception. I think she embodies a sort of ineffably ridiculous quality that's present throughout Rebuild, which I can't help but love.

Also, in the CRCs Anno talks about the eating/food motif in 2.0 and how it ties in with Episode 19 which serves as the climax of the film. It's a shame that the element of Eva-01 devouring Zeruel could not be incorporated. It really would have been a nice detail that tied everything together thematically.

[Mr. Tines]

My favorite thing about 1.0 is how the changes are so subtle that the film is almost uncanny valley-ish. Something familiar but just slightly off

I agree about the "just slightly off" thing; on first watch, that feeling left me less receptive to the changes in the latter fifteen minutes or so (and thus to the whole not!Asuka, the Gerry Anderson spaceships and the 5th Child material in the 2.0 PVs over the following months).

Some years later, having done a rewatch of the original half dozen episodes and then of 1.01 in quick succession (for the spectacle of the final battle), the big difference I spotted was the dourness of the delivery in the latter : nobody seemed to be happy at any point, everyone working with a set-point of mildly miserable, compared to the light-hearted interludes in the original.

[ElMariachi]

I agree about the "just slightly off" thing; on first watch, that feeling left me less receptive to the changes in the latter fifteen minutes or so (and thus to the whole not!Asuka, the Gerry Anderson spaceships and the 5th Child material in the 2.0 PVs over the following months).

Some years later, having done a rewatch of the original half dozen episodes and then of 1.01 in quick succession (for the spectacle of the final battle), the big difference I spotted was the dourness of the delivery in the latter : nobody seemed to be happy at any point, everyone working with a set-point of mildly miserable, compared to the light-hearted interludes in the original.

Now that you mention it, it's true that aside the scene where Shinji first meets PenPen, there aren't other humorous scenes and few lighthearted scenes, the later mostly happening in the final act of the movie (Misato bringing Shinji to Lilith, the message left by Shinji's friends before the final battle against Ramiel and of course Rei's smile)

Which makes the contrast with the much more humorous and lighthearted first half of 2.0 all the more impacting, especially since many of those scenes are exclusive to NTE. (I still get a chuckle everytime I see the decontamination scene in the Aquarium)

[ChaddyManPrime]

One scene I really wanted to see was, what the fuck was up with Mari hanging out with the 3 versions of Rei? I thought was going to lead up to something significant.

[Archer]

One scene I really wanted to see was, what the fuck was up with Mari hanging out with the 3 versions of Rei? I thought was going to lead up to something significant.

The... what? I don’t remember this happening at all.

[ChaddyManPrime]

It was in the preview at the end of 2.22.

[BernardoCairo]

I recently talked about Jo in another thread here on the forums.

As it stands right now, this is my favorite NTE movie. It is clearly focused on Shinji's perspective of what's happening and that works amazingly! Characters like Misato, Ayanami and Toji lose significance, but that really isn't an issue. Firstly, the film doesn't rely on them to evoke emotions out of me. Secondly, I can still feel their presence in the story. Scope, that's the word. This film is aware of its limitations and works its themes around them. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good!

Well, taking that into account, I wouldn't touch this movie. While Ha and Q are unable to deliver on their own massive scope, Jo dances with it. The film explores many ideas, but they are all bonded by the same theme. We see the world through Shinji's eyes and that works really well. It's simple, but that's why it's so good. This movie does not try to rock my world, but to tell a fun, cohesive and tight story. I love how it chooses to introduce the new concepts of NTE gradually, for example. It set the stage for what was to come and made subsequent changes much more impactful! Pacing is the key word here and I would not dare to mess around with it.

Ha, on the other hand, is almost the complete opposite. It has a beautiful presentation and incredible concepts. However, it lacks the proper time to deliver on said elements. It tries to introduce two new pilots, while also teasing Kaworu. It expands on Shinji's friendship with Ayanami, but also brings Asuka into to the mix. We have the Bardiel sequence (which is a defining moment of the series), the Zeruel fight, the Tunniel showdown and so much more. It doesn't do anything amazingly well, but it does a lot of things.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fun movie. However, if I could, I would change some of its major structural components. That said, you put me in a box. Since we are taking a possible "2.222" into account, I cannot go as deep as I want with the revision. I must not hurt the original work's integrity. So, what would I change? Well, I would add something that can be considered a spoiler for Shin hahaha! That's it. I'm not going to elaborate on it.

On a side note, since we are talking about Mari, I must admit that I have nothing against the way she was chosen to be portrayed in the series. She simply runs in the rule of cool and I'm fine with it. I think that's a defining trait of her persona, actually. She is nothing more than a funny and badass pilot. That sets her apart from everyone else and, since she is a new character, her nature doesn't bother me at all. I'm not saying that she doesn't have a backstory, but that element has clearly not been explored and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Mari is fun.

[Saint Eva]

To me, more Misato scenes are always welcome. There were scenes that were storyboarded but weren't included in the movie but later animated and included in Pachinko games. I would have been happy if they had included them in BluRay release.

1.0 More scenes of the Three Stooges. The slice of life scene showing Shinji learning how to cook and Misato tasting his food for the first time (it's my profile pic) Shinji and Misato reconciling after she berates him when he returns from wandering around.

2.0 Scenes devoted to development of Mari. The Ramen scene and the "favorite Misato scene" from the script. More scenes to develop Shinji and Kaji's relationship which would explain why he trust him so much that he reveals Misato's past and makes him promise to protect her.

Also I wanna know what the hell was Anno planning with Gendo and the donkey. It looks so odd to see Gendo in mountain hiking clothes

[ElMariachi]

One scene I really wanted to see was, what the fuck was up with Mari hanging out with the 3 versions of Rei? I thought was going to lead up to something significant.

That's one of the more frustrating things for me about the timeskip: assuming that the events in the next time preview happened during the timeskip (and there are a couple of hints in Q that it's the case), there were a ton of things that happened, lots of drama, conspiracies, secret revealed as every player made their move, all culminating in NERV's rebellion birthing WILLE and the absolute chaos that was Third Impact (3.333 added a blue "WILLE" graffiti on top of a crashed VTOL's old NERV logo in Lilith's Chamber, implying that the rebellion happened around the same time as 3I)

If Shin doesn't have flashbacks of those events and if someone make a spin-off of NTE, the top thing I want to see is the events that led to the birth of WILLE, because that probably was insane, even if we don't get the rest of the time skip, at least show us the beginning of the neo-NERV/WILLE war!

2.0 Scenes devoted to development of Mari. The Ramen scene and the "favorite Misato scene" from the script. More scenes to develop Shinji and Kaji's relationship which would explain why he trust him so much that he reveals Misato's past and makes him promise to protect her.

Again, extra-scenes with Mari interacting with the pilots are now impossible, since she's supposed to keep a low profile as Gendo thinks she's dead (and being discovered would blow up Kaji's cover), I do agree that more Misato and Kaji scenes would be great, as well as more scenes of Shinji with Toji and Kensuke, even though what we got in Jo and Ha was enough to show us that those three are good friends often hanging around, which make the appearance of Toji's shirt in Q hit us hard in the feels, as it should. In fact, I would say that it hurts even more than what happened with Toji in NGE, because back then we knew what happened to him and the aftermath, but here we're left with a lot of questions and uncertainties ("how the hell did Toji's shirt ended here of all place!? And what does that mean about him, what happened to him?"), and Shinji too asked himself those questions, and at this point couldn't support to not know anymore even though he was clearly scared of the answer, and as we say, the rest is history...

As for Gendo and the donkey's adventures, that goes with the spin-off or flash-back of the birth of WILLE I talked about above.

[HARVEST]

I would love a three-hour cut of 3.0+1.0.

That or 3.333 and 3.0+1.01 combined into one four-hour long film (which is what they are already doing) just so that Rebuild of Evangelion can be the longest animated film of all time and the first animated film to be over three and four hours long.
Also, I am curious, is the 3.333+Shin double feature screening considered one film by Eirin just like how Death(true)^2 and EoE released as one film a few months back or are they considered two separate films? Because if they are one film, Q+Shin would officially break the record as the longest animated film of all time, being 251 minutes long, or 4 hours and 11 minutes. For comparison, Zack Snyder's Justice League is 9 minutes shorter at a "paltry" 242 minutes long or 4 hours and 2 minutes.
Still not as long as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - Extended Edition, which is 263 minutes or 4 hours and 23 minutes long, about 12 minutes longer than Q+Shin.

They surely cannot release the uninterrupted double feature as one movie on one disc without heavily compromising the quality.
Even Zack Snyder's Justice League and The Lord of the Rings: The Extended Edition Trilogy are all split into two discs each with the disc breaks doubling as intermissions.