Review of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo

I’m really conflicted about this movie. It strays far from being an alternative retelling of the Evangelion anime series and turns into something entirely different. There isn't a single scene that mirrors the original anime—everything here is completely new. And to be quite honest, I can't decide if that’s a good thing or not. If this whole rebuild saga had been its own separate story rather than a rebuild, this would have worked much better, because the movie itself is quite good! But the plot takes such a strange direction that it almost feels like fanfiction of the original series, which is a bizarre feeling. There'sa 14-year time jump for some reason, yet none of the characters have aged, which makes no sense at all. It's briefly mentioned and attributed to the "curse of the EVAS," but the movie doesn't bother to explain what that actually means. The only noticeable changes to the characters are new haircuts, a pair of glasses, or a cool eye patch, but that's it, nothing else has changed in 14 years. It all feels hard to believe, and it seems like this movie undermines everything the first two films in the rebuild saga had established. It breaks established canon, with characters behaving strangely, and some barely resembling their former selves.

Shinji is kept in the dark and cast aside, treated like trash and shunned by everyone. Then, they’re surprised when he rebels and chooses to escape what essentially amounts to imprisonment. It feels like Evangelion, yet somehow not at all—it’s hard to describe the strangeness of it all.

I actually enjoyed this when I looked at it purely as a movie. It’s a perfectly fine film that can be appreciated on its own terms. I wasn’t particularly fond of the heavy use of CGI, but that might just be personal preference. However, as a "retelling" of the Evangelion saga, it felt off to me because it strays too far from the original and presents the characters in ways that don’t quite align with what you'd expect. With all that being said, you can probably still enjoy this movie for what it is but I prefer the narrative of the original rather than the rebuilding.