MovieChat Forums > Evangelion Shin Gekijôban: Jo (2007) Discussion > Horribly Disappointing

Horribly Disappointing

posted 16 years ago by EricYJChoi
39 replies | jump to latest

Wow. I'm extremely surprised by the overwhelming praise this movie received. Being a die-hard fan of the original TV series, I had reasonable expectations for this film. Unfortunately, I felt it was incredibly disappointing and ultimately pointless.

My biggest complaint is the pacing. The film moves from scene to scene with little regard to character development and mood. I had little trouble understanding the plot, being already very familiar with the series, but it made the entire experience boring. Very few of the scenes are allowed to play out to their full potential, making them emotionally hollow. What was executed perfectly in the original TV series is truncated and rushed through. I thought maybe this was to condense the running time of the movie but the movie is barely over 90 minutes long. There was plenty of room to give each scene some breathing space and allow the characters and events to fully sink in. It's a shame since, again, the TV series's pacing was flawless.

This brings me to my next complaint and it's that there really is no point to these rebuilds. What this amounts to is a nearly shot-by-shot remake with gorgeously updated animation but with terrible pacing, little character development, and no brilliant opening theme song. The creators have been saying that these are the movies that will introduce new audiences to Evangelion. But if that's the purpose, then why is every scene condensed and rushed through to the point where only Evangelion fans are able to follow the plot?

And if these new films are being made to come up with yet another new ending for the story, then color me unimpressed. I'm a firm believer that the creators got it right the first time with the TV series and these repeated attempts to "fix" the ending are ridiculous. I understand people were upset with the ending of the TV series because the events taking place in the real world weren't revealed in detail but do those events really matter? Wasn't Evangelion really about Shinji and the psychological demons he must overcome?

Oh well, another topic for another day.

[–] Luna552 15 years ago

You're absolutely right, I thought this film was awful. I wasn't expecting much of it anyway, seeing as it was obivously just another way of milking the eva cash cow, but I would have expected something better from a director who used to be so brilliant. The pacing was awful. Everything was whizzed through with no regard to how confused and bored this left the viewer. And the amount of frames it just took and reanimated from the original was just lazy. If it's a new story, then do it new, instead of picking up bits from the tv series and trying to mesh with your new bits. The end result was very unpleasing. There was no time for characterisation which was what made the tv series so great in the first place. I can't believe it's got such high ratings. I've come to feel like there are some people out there who are just so obessed with anime that they have lost all ability to actually judge a show for what it's worth any more.

Really, eva was designed as a tv show and that's the only way it works. This is also why I think live-action movies would be bad, because there just isn't enough time for things to play out properly.

[–] nerullralishaz 15 years ago

I just saw it and also felt it was rushed. I felt like they could have put in another 15-20 min of character development and it would have been a great film. With the "trimming" they did on stuff it came off like they were just introducing everything and then suddenly they were at the end.

I think watching the original series might have influenced my thinking. Usually I try to consider each version of something on its own without letting it influence my thinking (ex. I considered Watchmen the movie on its own without considering Watchmen the graphic novel). But it is kind of hard not to compare them when most of the animation from the original series shows up and other than some tweaking they are very similar.

[–] Pacofroman65 15 years ago

Being a die-hard fan of the original TV series, I had reasonable expectations for this film.

hahahahahahahahahahaha

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[–] quigonzel 15 years ago

This is just the set up...

Wait until 2.0... it's unbelievable the amount of stuff they have crammed into it.

[–] Max-Maxwell-42 14 years ago

The first fifteen minutes of the TV show are well-paced, but the movie compressed it into about five minutes. It was like, "Here's our main character, now straight into the Eva!" All the time I was watching, I tried to imagine what a newcomer to the series would be thinking, they would probably feel totally confused. For a show that gets its substance from deep psychology, it could have spared another half-hour to keep the first episode more or less intact, especially if the whole point of the movie was to bring in new fans.

Anno certainly felt that the scene of Shinji meeting Rei, the fan-serviest moment in all of fan-serivce, was worth keeping shot-for-shot, and did not feel even slightly contrived the first time around.

The structure of the second episode, with the outcome of the fight not clear until the end, was perfect, cutting the battle in two parts to focus on character development was a bold move, and it worked well. In the movie, it's played straight through at the expense of the TV show's unique approach to narrative.

The one strong point to the movie was the fight against the prism Angel, very much an improvement on the TV episode.

But hey, maybe this is all part of some grand scheme by Anno, to tell NGE the way he would have. Not that his plan makes much sense to any potential newcomer, but maybe to the fans, some unexpected developments await.

[–] megamixx 15 years ago

I've only seen a bit of the TV series a loooooong time ago, but I gotta agree. Things just seemed too rushed, like it was obligated to go through the motions. I think people who were not previously familiar might be a bit lost, but also I think there was enough there to keep them non-confused and interested (Cool action scenes, and what relationships there were were easy enough to follow, just hollow).

That said, the heart of Eva for me is the characters, but the heart of the movie seemed to be the action sequences, which were gorgeous, but when you don't care about who's doing them...

BTW, dub SUCKS so hard. I wish they played the original language in the theatres. At least they kept Utada Hikaru's gorgeous theme song in tact. BUT I LOVED SEEING THE MOVIE IN A THEATRE FILLED WITH MY OTAKU BRETHREN! REPRESENT!!

[–] Mad_Jay-Dub487 15 years ago

I thought they did a great job for the new dub. The voices fit their characters, the delivery was natural and they didn't butcher the dialogue.

I really dislike the dub from the orginal series, which definitely did sucked. They didn't even try for that one. Their voices, more or less, didn't fit their characters, the delivery was horrible and they butchered the dialogue. Anytime Spike Spencer screamed in that series, instead of getting chills, I got giggles.

I didn't laugh at him one once in the dub for this movie, except when it was supposed to be funny, which shows just how far he's come as a voice actor. He definitely understands his character more since he last played him, and it definitely shows through in his delivery.

[–] Timstuff 15 years ago

I do agree that 1.0 disappointed me as a movie. 2.0 is apparently a huge improvement, but 1.0 was underwhelming. If it weren't for the much pretty animation and 16:9 viewing format, I'd rather just watch episodes 1-6 of the TV show. It was like it was scared of taking risks or showing us anything new, and while I'll buy it on Blu-Ray eventually the movie does have a feeling of being unnecessary about itself. There are one or two little bits of new material tucked away in it, but at the end of the day it's just a prettied up, condensed version of episodes 1-6 but with less character development. As a movie, it was poorly paced and emotionally monotonous, unlike the show which kept things interesting across those 6 episodes despite only having 3 battles between them. I only watched it once, and I'm probably not going to watch it again until I can get the 1.11 Blu-Ray.

[–] manco82 15 years ago

I agree they had to sacrifice some character development scenes due to time constraints, but it wasn't just a frame-by-frame remake. There were new scenes, and Ramiel was completely re-done from the original show into something way more awesome.

[–] EpsilonX 13 years ago

i'm kind of disappointed, as the first couple episodes had some amazing scenes of character development, i especially like the scene where shinji practices aiming with the gun, it seems like he's doing it over and over until he's just going through the motions. is that scene still in the movie?

[–] Commissar_Fuklaw 14 years ago

Sure is mad in here.

Women love a man who can purge Heresy.

[–] heelmaster2000 12 years ago

Indeed it is. I enjoyed it myself.

[–] Dr_Harford 11 years ago

Agreed, I liked the 2nd one a lot though. You should have posted this as a review.

[–] Kent_Kainer 10 years ago

I was disappointed that it has no soundtrack. It's supposed to be a movie.
Much effort put into the visuals and audio neglected. A good score here and there would have enhanced the movie.

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