Hideaki Anno (2012)
I have no idea why I keep coming back to Evangelion but I do. It really makes no sense when you consider just how much I dislike Shinji, the main character. I am not the only one, he is fairly hard to like as one of the most complaining and moody action heroes of all time. You could make entire feature films with just scenes of him moping from the original series. He does get the occasional moments of badassery in the Rebuild installments but they are few and most of the time he remains the cowardly self-centred cretinous brat everyone loves to hate.
I told you it made no sense.
Speaking about things that make no sense, I cannot figure out You Can (Not) Redo. I don’t mean the Christian imagery, the mythology of the world and all things Human Instrumentality Project. No one understands those. I mean script choices. One of my favourite things about Evangelion 2.0 : You Can (Not) Advance was where they were going with the character developments and the relationships between said characters. It differed from the series in a welcome way and explored interesting directions, like a possible love triangle or making Rei act like an actual person ! All that flies out the window with a time gap of 14 years between the two episodes and Rei’s death which kind of complicates developing her character any further.
But the real let down of the movie is the final sequence. I love that it references episode 23 by also using the Ode to Joy (best scene in the series) but truth is it does little with it. There is little action and the climax is weak. A couple of fights are resolved easily enough and the opening of the Doors of Guff has almost no consequence. No one dies, nothing is destroyed that was not already in tatters ; there are almost no stakes. This is lightyears away from You Can (Not) Advance and its final battle with the fantastic cliff-hanger.
Still, the film has redeeming qualities, like the amazing animation (still holds up) and the piano sequence. And it is Evangelion, which I like. For some reason.
6/10 – Mostly disappointing
Pretensiously Yours 
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