I did not watch the original 26 episodes series but I watched in these days all Evangelion films, because of the high ratings: Death and Rebirth (a recompilation of the original series), The End (a rewriting of the End of the series, still considered one of the best Anime ever), and then the last three, 1 and 2 which reboot the series apparently without mayor changes, and 3 which goes in new territories. At first I will write about Evangelion in general, and then about this specific movie here. In all Evangelion the writer touched any possible demagogic stereotype and cliché on earth: father/son relationship, Oedipus complex, a bit of the typical Manga Style sexuality, cheap psychology, and a huge amount of very cheap esoterism with symbolisms of all kind. My opinion? A big omelet of everything, which finally means absolutely nothing. Wiki says that after the failure of his previous works (which he judged as childish) he wanted to make something "deeper". My impression is that he did not even try to BE deeper, rather just to SEEM deeper in order to impress the audience. And I am afraid that only the Naive could be impressed by such a confused mess.
I can still see why this show had success: Evas are cool, fights too, and there is enough mix of drama, action, teenage nerd sexuality in the typical Japanese style, and some sort of epic. I suppose that if you are younger than me and without any knowledge of psychology or esoterism, and a bit nerd, you may enjoy this works pretty much more than I did.
About this film: although it is almost a copy and past of the original series under many aspects, the graphics are of course better. This beginning catch the attention and creates enough wish to keep going on and to understand what is really happening in that fictional words and in the inner world of the characters. If I had not seen how it is going to evolve with the number 3, I would suggest this film nevertheless the esoteric omelet and the cheap psychology. Having seen the number 3, I must warn you that you may be disappointed. But I would still suggest the vision of this film. People have to make their own experiences, and chances there are, that as so many people enjoyed this series, many more will, no matter what I think of it.