Post by legios on Nov 8, 2011 22:32:53 GMT
"Evangelion 2.22: You can (not) Advance" is the second part of a project to remake the Neon Genesis Evangelion television series as a series of theatrical movies. The general gist of things is that a high school age boy named Shinji ikari lives on an Earth under constant threat by huge alien... things... called Angels and is recruited into an organisation called NERV, in which his cold and distant father is a highly placed member, and trained to pilot a giant mecha called an EVA against the Angels to defend the surviving population of the world. Things are more complicated than that mind you, much more complicated.....
The first thing to say about "You can (not) advance" is that it looks wonderful. The CG animation is incredibly fluid. The colour palette has a stylised and almost "more real than real" quality to it at times which adds hugely to the atmosphere of the whole production. The use of light and shadow to set mood is very accomplished as well in a way that is often missed in animation.
In storytelling terms the whole thing is quite obfuscated - many background elements are left solely to implication (such as the huge death tolls presumably inflicted on the planet in the past) and, like the series before it, these remakes are holding a lot of cards very close to their chest. This is part of the point - the sense of isolation, confusion and distance from the motivations of the characters is making a point about the isolation of the human condition - but I do wonder if it doesn't make it a little hard to engage with the film at times
By its nature 2.22 remains a very deconstructionist piece of work - something that is built into the foundations of the original source material. It takes the standard trappings of the Giant Mecha show, dissassembles them and puts them back together in a somewhat twisted way. The hero's father isn't a kindly old soul building the mecha in his garage, the secret organisation isn't really preventing the end of the world - it is just keeping the end on pause for sinister purposes of its own, the young mecha pilots are all psychologically damaged in one way or another, even the EVA's aren't even really Mecha..... It is a very deft and thorough deconstruction of the tropes of the sub-genre and I can't help but respect the deftness with which it is done.
But I think it is that element that makes it harder for me to honestly say that I like either this project or its immediate predecessor. Whilst I respect its technical accomplishments and its visual beauty, and the quite adept way it is put together on a writing front, but in honesty I think it might be going too far to say I enjoyed it. The very systematic way that it dissects the sub-genre puts a little bit of a wall between the film and I. My first instinct on finishing "Evangelion 1.11: "You are (not) alone" was that I really needed something light, funny and with a more reconstructionist approach to Giant Mecha, and I have come away from "You can (not) advance" in much the same frame of mind. Technically adept, decently-written, but perhaps tonally not for me I think.
Karl
The first thing to say about "You can (not) advance" is that it looks wonderful. The CG animation is incredibly fluid. The colour palette has a stylised and almost "more real than real" quality to it at times which adds hugely to the atmosphere of the whole production. The use of light and shadow to set mood is very accomplished as well in a way that is often missed in animation.
In storytelling terms the whole thing is quite obfuscated - many background elements are left solely to implication (such as the huge death tolls presumably inflicted on the planet in the past) and, like the series before it, these remakes are holding a lot of cards very close to their chest. This is part of the point - the sense of isolation, confusion and distance from the motivations of the characters is making a point about the isolation of the human condition - but I do wonder if it doesn't make it a little hard to engage with the film at times
By its nature 2.22 remains a very deconstructionist piece of work - something that is built into the foundations of the original source material. It takes the standard trappings of the Giant Mecha show, dissassembles them and puts them back together in a somewhat twisted way. The hero's father isn't a kindly old soul building the mecha in his garage, the secret organisation isn't really preventing the end of the world - it is just keeping the end on pause for sinister purposes of its own, the young mecha pilots are all psychologically damaged in one way or another, even the EVA's aren't even really Mecha..... It is a very deft and thorough deconstruction of the tropes of the sub-genre and I can't help but respect the deftness with which it is done.
But I think it is that element that makes it harder for me to honestly say that I like either this project or its immediate predecessor. Whilst I respect its technical accomplishments and its visual beauty, and the quite adept way it is put together on a writing front, but in honesty I think it might be going too far to say I enjoyed it. The very systematic way that it dissects the sub-genre puts a little bit of a wall between the film and I. My first instinct on finishing "Evangelion 1.11: "You are (not) alone" was that I really needed something light, funny and with a more reconstructionist approach to Giant Mecha, and I have come away from "You can (not) advance" in much the same frame of mind. Technically adept, decently-written, but perhaps tonally not for me I think.
Karl