Ah, Evangelion... never has anime fandom seen such a "fuck you" from a creator The original show is well worth checking out (avoid all the reworked re-releases), if only for a) how much weird religion stuff they tried to toss into a giant robot show (and it's Japanese trying to interpret Judaism, which is fun), b) how dysfunctional everyone is, and c) how much the budget affected things. Not only do you have lots of off screen speakers and long moments of silence, but network outrage over the amount of violence got the last two episodes scrapped with no money to redo them, meaning what made it to screen is lots of text and voiceover. Oh, and the creator had a nervous breakdown iirc.

You did see the aliens by the end of the season, and I recall a peace envoy of some sort. S:AaB is the perfect example of a bad studio compromise: the creators wanted to do a WW II series about marines in the Pacific, the studio was willing to fund a sci fi war series. So, we got WW II in space.

Hmm, maybe they were reptiles. Honestly can't remember, and the book is hiding on me at the moment.

As for the mustache-twirling, this is why you're doing a remake. You're taking what didn't work in the original, and improving it. Unless you're saying biological aliens can't be alien enough in a modern series, so it's robots or nothing.

In other words, they're so alien they to humans appear to just be inherently genocidal maniacs — like, as an in-born character trait — or their motivations look dumb

Although the fighting cylons weren't human, so it wasn't too much of a budget thing. But, yes, in the past shows like War of the Worlds gave us human aliens so they didn't have to do any special effects. That had the it-could-be-anyone paranoia as well, and it's just something I'm tired of (same thing with rogue government plots like they did in Jericho. Please, try something new like having it be an actual war)

They were a blank slate any remake could do what they wanted with. They were lame in the original because once it was decided to retcon them into robots there was nothing more to do with them. Come up with an alien civilization with damned reasonable reasons to destroy all humans.

Stephen King makes a comment to that regard in 'On Writing'. The ending of the first draft is naturally going to be deus ex machinas, you just then go back and set it up in the second draft so nobody notices. When your story is released as it's written, however, you're not going to have that option...

The mention of the Turtledove books on aliens and WW II reminded me of a rather strange anime, 1993's 7 part series from Pioneer 'Alien Defender Geo-Armor: Kishin Corps' (or Kishin Corps to its friends). A section of the Japanese army in China is fighting these aliens during WW II using mechs, and end up fighting the evil Nazis who are trying to ally with the aliens. Oh, there's evil Japanese officers trying to gain alien tech, but the balancing act of Japanese good, Axis bad is hilarious.

The main problem here is script more then direction, although we can still blame Shyamalon for it. Structure it differently using these visuals, and even actors (for the most part) and it can work.

So, to answer your question, it's probably that he just only had two good stories in him.

We're talking about the difference between being able to hit a baseball with a bat when you know the pitcher in front of you is going to throw to you, and being able to do it when a ball is thrown randomly from any direction. I'd say possible often enough to be impressive, but even the best hitter would miss enough for it to really come down to luck.

I have to comment on the whole Catching Arrows debate This is the listing from Mythbustersresults.com for episode 109:

"The Mythbusters first tested the speed of an arrow and showed that an arrow maintains its speed as far as 70 feet because of its aerodynamic design. Then they brought “The Arrowcatcher” Anthony Kelly onto the show and had him perform various tests. Anthony proved that he could catch tennis balls traveling at 85 miles per hour (breaking a world record in the process). They then had him try and catch an actual arrow, and Anthony succeeded in catching an arrow. However, at Anthony’s request, the arrow had been fired below full strength and directly in front of Anthony. The Mythbusters decided to redo the test by firing arrows at full strength from multiple directions. This time, Anthony had much more trouble and could only catch the arrows when he knew which direction they were coming from. Since Anthony was unable to catch the arrows in full combat conditions, the Mythbusters considered the myth busted."

It does come back to what exactly the myth was they were testing, but I'm sure if someone pointed them towards an Asian who could do better they'd give the myth a third go.

Depends on what you're referring to. The characters actually grow and change, there's an actual well thought out plot with a beginning, middle and end... It's not a monster of the week show, if that's what you're asking (like Ben 10 tended to be). I do think the show doesn't hit its real stride until season 2 when Toph and Azula show up, but season one sets up oh so many things that pay off later. You have to give it a few more episodes at least.

(Avatar may also have the distinction of being the only kids show where it's acknowledged that one teen couple is screwing like rabbits when the camera's not on them)