The NERV and WILLE organizations battle each other, the former wanting to continue with a Fourth Impact to initiate an "upgrade" in human evolution, the latter trying to prevent it and restore Earth back to normal. Mari pilots an EVA robot that helps WILLE restore Paris back to normal. Shinji Ikari, Rei and Asuka go to live in a village, and participate in planting rice, or meet Misato Katsuragi's son, Ryoji Jr. A final battle of Evangelion robots is against Shinji's father, Gendo, who wants to start an "additional impact" to reunite with his late wife Yui. Plunging into an anti-universe, Shinji finds out more about Gendo's loneliness when he was a teenager, and his love for Yui. Using the Lance of Gaius, Shinji creates a "restart" of the world, cleaning it of misery. At a train station, Shinji is greeted by Mari, who has affections for him, and they both run away.
Nine years after the last film, "Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo", the director Hideaki Anno finally completed the 'reboot' film series with the fourth and final film, "Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time", yet 14 years after the first film, "Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone", one can safely conclude—it was not worth the wait. Anno's original '95 anime chef d'oeuvre simply cannot be topped, and the attempts to further explore or explain certain of its vague, confusing or abstract aspects won't give a satisfactory compensation. This final film didn't justify revisiting this story due to a lack of inspiration—the opening action sequence in Paris, covered in red plasma, where Mari's giant Evangelion robot uses the tip of the Eiffel Tower as a spear to attack and stab the energy consule of an Angel is brilliant and shows that Anno still has sharpness and ingenuity, yet all other action and battle sequences afterwards are just muddled and obfuscated. For instance, can anyone truly understand what is going on in the confusing battle sequence at around 80 minutes into the film?
The image of a "spaceship-scarecrow" floating through some red ether doesn't give you that much of a kick. The almost hour long sequence where Shinji, Asuka and Rei live in a village and plant rice could have easily been cut without losing much from the overall impact of the story. Some shocking moments are dubious, as well, such as the one where Asuka takes her eyepatch off and pulls a giant rod from her eye to transform her EVA. The only truly focused ingridient is the finale which becomes a psychological study of Shinji's dad, Gendo, showing him in a flashback as a lonely teenager, indicating that he himself experienced the same intergenerational trauma of isolation as did Shinji. The film poses the question: is it alright to let go and simply embrace someone you love, as was Gendo's relationship with Yui, so that life goes on, as imperfect as it is? This helps Shinji connect more with his estranged father, and is able to finally outgrow his own anti-social behavior and to start a new phase in his life, the one where he goes on to connect with other people and become part of society. This psychoanalysis has merits and amends some other flaws of the story, making for a good, personal, albeit uneven movie.
Grade:++
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