3.0 or 3.33

In order to make sure the posts keep coming I picked the next bunch of films to write about. This time it’s the strange phenomenon of Evangelion. And I’m going at the latest iteration. The Rebuild project.

Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo (’13)

Wha, what? Waddafuck? What, wait? Now this took a decidedly strange turn.

I mentioned in the last entry that I had read that the third film would be going more it’s own route by comparison with the original series. But. Well. I didn’t quite expect it to go this far. And I understand now why they skipped that whole reveal with Shinji blacking out during the first sortie and then having to piece the events together using the comments of everyone involved with him after the fact.

I say this because. Spoilers. In the beginning of this film. This is exactly what they did. In the last entry Shinji seemingly rescued Rei and the fate of Asuka was left unclear as Shinji’s dummy-plug-controlled EVA went berserk, devoured huge chunks of Asukas EVA’s innards before cracking open her plug with its giant jaws. In the third film. Jump-cut fourteen years forward and both we and Shinji are left again reeling from the culture-shock and having to piece together how that day ended and what has been going on during this last decade and a half.

They say that Shinji caused the third impact and now everyone fears him to the point of fitting him with proper wedlock-type throat-exploders should he ever get out of control again. But he manages to flee the organisation lead by Misato and the former crew of NERV who now fights against both NERV and its implementation of the Human Instrumentality Project.

Seemingly the only people left from NERV that still works on it is Gendo, his lackey, a clone of Rei and a boy who calls himself both the first angel in the beginning and the 13’th one by the end. We who know the series recognize him as the boy who befriends Shinji only to put him in a position of having to end the life of his only real friend in his life in one of the most infamous scenes of the series. Gory, no. Just very, very, very drawn out. It is still a Anno-production. It is pretty clear that this movie-friendship won’t end well either.

My reactions

After I realized that they were going to stick with this sudden jump in the timeline and that they are now practically doing things all new and shouldn’t really be judged by its original storyline any more. After that. I really dug this film. It dared to break the remake-mold enough to make it alll feel new and unpredictable (Shinji’s friend aside) while still staying within what I would find to be acceptable breaches to the established canon. At least that’s what I think personally. I haven’t really looked into what the non-fanboys/girls think about any of this.

But at least for me it’s a spin in a strange new direction. And I liked it. Now I’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the last and final film called “Final” which reportedly is due in … uhm… sometime… (aparently it was supposed to come in 2013 but they are still working on it since the third one took longer than expected, oh well)

Tsuduku!