They steered away from the TV series from the start, remember that Zeruel got earmarked as 4th angel, 2 others also got shafted, namely the orbital mental one along with the quick re, no wait, not 15, there were 17, so they lowered the number by 4, which means lava, fast evolution one, orbital mental beamer and the energy whip one, while the rest were pretty much the same or completely different to their counterparts, the most important ones were pretty much the same.
If I squint real hard, I can sorta call that middle empty part of the movie as a very irritatingly slow synchonization training, with zero encouragement from the peanut gallery, infact, quite the opposite, what with all the suffering and horror and breakdowns.
I wonder if the ships entry plug works same as the Eva one, namely if the crew does everything mentally while the controls serve as props.
The way they are going 4th movie will be fully animated in cheap CGI with xbox hueg lego blocks for objects.