the movie starts out with shinji jerking off to topless asuka's unconscious body while he's visiting her in the hospital, and i almost turned the damn thing off there and then. ignoring how incredibly out-of-character and fucked up this is for shinji to do, this is also not the last time we have to look at some 14 year old's boobs in a movie that's supposed to be a serious psychological drama. there are a lot of weird "fanservice-y" moments in this movie that really do not need to be there, and they're incredibly off-putting. maybe that was the intent, but it certainly doesn't seem like it. back to the topic of shinji's character, it's... oof. did you think he was a passive and useless loser in the anime? hoo boy, you ain't seen nothing yet. he spends almost the entire movie being a self-pitying sack of shit that puts his past self to shame, and the consequences are dire.
(you are now entering... the SPOILER ZONE!!!!!)
in general, the main characters are almost completely different from their anime counterparts. rei is the only one that's almost excusable, since she's literally just a clone with no memories (except she is still capable of choosing to defy gendo and merging with eva-01 somehow???) asuka somehow manages to recover from her mental breakdown and magically resolves all her mommy issues (is her mom's soul in the eva, and that's why she was able to have that revelation? who the fuck knows!) shinji becomes the guy people who hate evangelion thinks he is. in the first half of the movie, he spends most of his time moping around (somewhat understandable, considering he'd literally just killed his BFF kaworu), but his inaction leads directly to the deaths of misato and asuka. if that weren't bad enough, he tells rei to make the aforementioned "human instrumentality project" happen, which involves killing everyone so they can all float around together in a sea of combined consciousness. yeah, i know. because he's suffered and lost people (often due to his own actions), he turns everybody into orange fanta. shinji literally becomes the "billions must die" meme.
of course, that would be too depressing and spit in the face of the OG ending, so after some soul-searching (and some weird, avant-garde ass live action sequences) shinji asks rei to undo it. however, it seems that he made it optional, so no one has to return to life as an individual if they don't want to. shinji wakes up on the beach, and finds that the only person next to him is asuka (who still has her outward injuries from her fight with the walmart evas???). he starts choking her to make sure they're not in the instrumentality project, she touches his face, he starts crying, and then she calls him disgusting. then the movie fucking ends. (i gotta say, it really makes the part where shinji decides that he can forgive himself and move on ring hollow in retrospect. in the anime it made sense, but after literally killing everyone on the face of the earth and probably ruining the atmosphere & planet, i don't think self-absolution is really possible.)
as a little aside, i'll briefly talk about the animation and sound. they're both great, as you'd expect. the song that plays during the third impact, "komm, susser tod", is an absolute banger (although i was too consumed with the sheer what-the fuckery of the plot to appreciate it at the time). the animation also isn't handicapped by the budget of three dollars i'm assuming gainax had during the last 2 eva episodes, so they're perfectly capable of drawing the cool robot fights and mental breakdowns we've come to expect from this series.
it's very rare that one comes out of a movie feeling like they knew less than they did before, but by god did EoE do it. i had to go to multiple wikis because i was so fucking confused about what the hell i'd just watched. i'd never watched a movie before this one that simultaneously made me say "too much shit happened, idk what's going on" and "...that's it?!?!" i suppose that's an achievement in its own right, but it doesn't make for a satisfactory ending. i think anno feels the same, considering he made the rebuilds. this movie pissed me off, and it's likely it'll piss you off too. yet even after all that, i still can't bring myself to say "not recommended". there are still glimpses of the eva we're used to among the random ass bullshit we're subjected to in this film. plus, having an in-universe explanation for what the hell happened in eps 25 and 26 is cool, if only so you can argue with people on the internet over it. perhaps it's only the fever-riddled ramblings of a guy with too much time on his hands, but i still think this is a movie you need to watch if you're an eva fan. will you like it? ehhhhhh... but i think it's worth finding out for yourself.
