User blog comment:VikingFyre/Visual Impact vs. Substance/@comment-7706473-20130919071400/@comment-7706473-20130920093119

I GOT MY DRINK ON, LETS DO THIS!

... All right, it's just still tea. So I'm a lightweight w/e. This is a heavyweight subject matter, so I felt I had to get in the right frame of mind before delving into it, ehehe. First - I must agree with you that for most viewers, End of Evangelion is... Unpleasant. But I feel it'd be intellectually dishonest of me to continue without mentioning the next thing.

I. Love. End. Of. Evangelion.

I love it because the reasons I, personally, watch Eva - not to watch Humanity overcome horror from beyond time and space and yet oh-so-close, but to watch people break down. I don't want Shinji to overcome his depression and issues with his hilariously abusive father, I want him to sink further into a milieu of self-hate; and I savour that journey. So having established that I am a fairly horrible human being -

End of Eva was a bad, er, ending (while still simultaeously being something I enjoyed) because it didn't even try to tie things together into a way the fans understood or could understand; it didn't seek to conclusively end anything, or give resolution for most characters. While I could (and probably am the only person to) find the ending optimistic - and needlessly so! - it doesn't flow with the rest of the show proper. What most people remember are the visuals - and that ties back into the large point.

To my mind, this is part of the problem both of the 'Rebuild' series, and most television/anime/cartoons/episodical things in general. Even if the creator starts out with a meaningful or semi-meaningful message or melange of ideas, over the course of the series they'll get stretched out - dragged through the nightmarish colon of the televisual production spectrum. The end result is then a hopeles hodgepodge of half-baked ideas, loose plot threads, and the like.

... I actually think, tying this back to anime, anime series from the 80's were better about this, probably because the studios hadn't grown as huge and monolithic as they are now. But I think the eighties - for all of it's many, _many_ flaws - was a time where producers tried to combine linear stories and non-linear storytelling devices with a few major successes.

Now, there are still movies that let the viewer walk away THINKING being prodced today; but they are few, far between, and very subjective. It is easier for big studios to produce a product that pre-packages whether you will feel happy or sad, shocked or content.

My issues with A Serbian Film - for example - are that the message is actually conductive to the kind of worrysome national memory that is so endemic to the greater Balkans. It is very easy, I think, for the viewer to walk away from that piece thinking 'how tragic and ruinously we Serbs prey upon each other - we've never done that to anyone else...'

Visual tricks are easy though. Showing people something shocking or something violent - it's easy. It's much more difficult to write engaging dialogue, or hire engaging actors - to focus on the plot or the message or just telling a good, continuous story that doesn't derail. That being said...

I'll get back to you about Prometheus (haven't yet seen) and Re-Take (haven't yet read), and leave you with this closing thought. It's clearly not impossible to produce something beautifully visually and artistically valid; or even something shocking and artistically valid. What do you think ends up being the thing that makes directors and producers swear, take a swig of some strong dwarven ale, and decide to make something pretty - but ultimately soulless, whether it is marketed as an 'art' film or a the latest blockbuster?