== Why I don't rate the Rebuild of Evangelion movies all that highly

Back in [[my best N in 2013 entry BestNIn2013]] I mentioned that while
I'd seen all three currently available Rebuild of Evangelion movies in
2013, none of them made my year-end list for reasons beyond the scope
of that entry. Today I feel like elaborating on that passing remark.

Fundamentally the reason I don't find the movies really impressive is
that I've already seen both *Neon Genesis Evangelion* (the TV series)
and *End of Evangelion*. Having seen both, there is not much really new
and impressive that the Rebuild movies bring to the table. There are
two sides to this, one for the TV series and one for EoE.

While the production values of the first two movies are higher than the
TV series, the TV series covers basically the same ground in more depth
and as a result has more fully developed and interesting characters.
This is really what you'd expect because the TV series simply has more
time. The movie hits the high points and adds some twists but its
limited time forces it to simplify many elements (often ones I quite
like) and I don't think it really adds more than one or two new things
to compensate for this (the 'seaside' scene was nice but about it).
Rebuild's desire to retread most of the same ground confines it and
lessens it.

As for the third movie, it's mostly incoherent and unexciting as a movie
(although it has some spectacular action sequences). What it really is
is yet another giant Anno gesture in the direction of the fans, and
as mentioned I've already seen Anno's first version of that. *End of
Evangelion* is in many ways the ultimate middle finger to fans and I saw
it years ago.  By now yet more gestures from Anno to the fans have lost
their ability to shock and impress me; now my reaction is more 'what,
again?' (with a side of 'haven't you got tired of this yet?').

(The other difference between *You Can (Not) Redo* and *End of
Evangelion* is that EoE tells a coherent and powerful story that just
happens to be brutally ugly and 3.0 doesn't really. EoE is successful as
a movie, not just as a gesture to fans.)

So the short version is: the Rebuild movies look nice but they aren't
doing anything particularly new and interesting and they aren't
significantly great purely as movies. This still makes them decent
movies that I didn't regret watching but they're not [['best N in 2013'
BestNIn2013]] material.

(The first two movies are probably close to the best that they could be
under the circumstances, but I tend to think that almost any relatively
faithful movie retelling of a good TV series is going to suffer because
of having less time. The movies did have some stabs at departing from the
straight and narrow of the TV series but I didn't find those compelling
enough on their own merits.)

I do accept that Anno is trying to say things to and about
the Evangelion fandom; [[see Bobduh for one analysis of this
http://wrongeverytime.com/2014/02/10/once-more-with-fury-rebuilding-evangelion/]].
I'm just not particularly compelled by Anno's commentary, at least
wrapped up in this form. To put it unkindly, being meta does not
automatically make you interesting.