I think there were enough hints that we were going to get thrown a curve ball at some point. The Rebuild movies were never meant to be a retelling of the original.
But 2.22 is that curveball! It's the only movie that actually feels different from the show! It expertly plays on fan expectations with stuff like Asuka instead of Toji and the Third Impact and Kaworu being introduced so early in the Rebuild. It's what the show would have been had it followed the shounen undertones instead of the deep character trauma. 3.33 is basically the show without any compelling character development. Instead it's dumb people doing dumb things for dumb reasons.