First, the story. I mean, I knew about major plot points like the timeskip, but was surprised how bare the descriptions were. Well, this explains everything. The movie barely has any plot. All we get between flashy battle sequences and piano scenes are two few minutes long information dump (one between Shinji and Kaworu and second between Shinji and Fuyutsuki). Besides that, there is nothing.
The structure of the movie is ABHORRENT, and while I may be using hyperboles in some parts of this post, here I am completely serious. I've never seen anything that had as terrible structure as 3.33.
First we get a prologue (?) that takes up ONE THIRD OF THE ENTIRE MOVIE. It features a ton of anime stereotypes (even including joyful bantering between crew!), a ton of flashes, flashy explosions, flashy this, flashy that and a whole lot of nothing. Shinji escapes from Wunder and while half an hour has gone by we know absolutely fucking nothing.
Then, the second third of the movie is a string of abrupt nonsensical homoerotic adventures of Shinji and Kaworu. They just make no sense and are so loosely connected. Basically one goes from another, but there is no rhythm (oh the irony, considering half this part is piano playing) to them, no structure. They just jump from one after another.
Finally third movie. Oh yes, another impact. There is a lot of wicked imagery just for the hell of it, as if Anno wanted to simply kick it up to eleven. It doesn't make sense either. I mean, a field of skulls, nice, but that's about it. In 2.22 at least the impact was interesting, here just nothing happens, and why should we even care when there is seemingly nothing at stake. For all we now Earth is inhabited by NERV and a bunch of shallow characters on Wunder. Then it's abruptly ended and bye bye. We wasted 1.5 hour and it seems the plot has not progressed at all. Even the end implies that status quo has been upheld and nothing has changed from the beginning of it. Only SEELEE's plan has been foiled. Somehow.
I think there is one point at which 3.33 makes sense. That's at 00:50 when Shinji is taken to the surface and says "Nothing makes sense". Because nothing does.
Even the characters are shadows of their former self and everybody is incredibly mind-crushingly DUMB. I can't think of a single decision made by any character throughout the movie that wasn't just idiotic.
Wunder is filled by a bunch of anime characters. The entire crew makes a genius decision of NOT TELLING SHINJI ANYTHING and being extremely pissed that he doesn't understand that he f'ed up. Just freaking tell him, this is Shinji, he will go into catatonic state and you will just seal him somewhere, hell.
Thanks to that Shinji jumps onto the first EVA he sees that wants him. Suddenly all character development from 1.1 and 2.22 is lost and Shinji is even whinier than his series counterpart.
Then nobody does nothing, there is a bunch of shouting at Shinji, and finally we're at the body of Lilith. Kaworu understands that the spears were (somehow) a trap. But no. SHINJI WILL GET THEM. HE WILL PULL THEM OUT. FOR KAWORU. Kaworu shouts at his dumb ass to stop for 2 minutes but Shinji pulls them out for Kaworu. For some reason.
Instrumentation starts. EVA-02 suddenly gets a ton of new superpowers. Misato devises a GENIUS STRATEGY of stopping Instrumentality. BY RAMMING EVA-13 THAT IS BECOMING, BY ALL OUR EVA KNOWLEDGE, AN EQUIVALENT OF GOD WITH WUNDER.
SHE TRIES TO DESTROY A GOD BY RAMMING IT WITH A HUGE FLYING FORTRESS.
THEL HELL.
Ok I'm babbling now. I just can't get my mind around it. This movie is so dumb that while writing it I'm gradually losing ability to form sensible criticisms.
At least we get (sort of) more confirmation that this is indeed a sequel not a remake.