‘Evangelion 1.0’ updates ‘Godzilla’
By: Janos Gereben
Special to The Examiner
September 11, 2009
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| No ‘Angels’: “Evangelion 1.0” is an animated film about superdestructive mechanical monsters. (Courtesy photo) |
SAN FRANCISCO — “Evangelion 1.0,” opening today in the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, has already earned more than $22 million in Japan.
The “Neon Genesis Evangelion” TV series, from which it sprang, did even better. (Amazingly, against the fairly recent American genre of action animation, Japan’s anime goes back almost a century.)
Another characteristic of Japanese filmmaking is the constant presence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the form of indestructible monsters in the mold of Godzilla.
“Evangelion 1.0,” directed by Hideaki Anno, the original creator of the series, is an apocalyptic action anima about superdestructive
mechanical monsters, called “Angels,” who must be stopped by “mankind’s last hope.”
That would be a 14-year-old boy, called Shinji (with the youthful voice of 40-year-old Spike Spencer). He is a morose, diffident youngster trying to deal with gross neglect from his hostile father, who happens to be the head of the secret military organization NERV, which is expected to stop the monsters when the combined Japanese and United Nations armies fail.
In a sequence improbable even in the comic-book world, a resourceful teen girl (actually a NERV lieutenant colonel — go figure), takes Shinji to the secret base, where the boy is unceremoniously and reluctantly made the pilot of the counter-monster monster.
Shinji takes to monster-fighting like a fish out of water, but still wins the encounter ... and the movie begins.
Between bouts of mechanical-monster warfare, and impressive visuals of a metropolis that is retracted underground in a matter of minutes, there are vague subplots about the boy and his father, the puzzling, suggestive relationship of Shinji and the sexy, bullying teen lieutenant colonel, and so on.
The dialogue is poorly written, the characters are unattractive, the constant brooding and psychological/physical suffering are just tiresome.
There are different kinds of anime, and if you expect “Evangelion” to be similar to Hayao Miyazaki’s works — such as the complex and beautiful “Spirited Away” and the current “Ponyo” — you will be disappointed.
“Evangelion” has more in common with the nonstop bang-bang genre of “Transformers.” (“Ponyo,” not so incidentally, grossed eight times what “Evangelion 1.0” took in.)
MOVIE REVIEW
Evangelion 1.0
One and a half stars
Written and directed by Hideaki Anno
Rated PG-13
Running time 1 hour and 38 minutes
