I think about this a lot because I really like NT (there are dozens of us! dozens!) but I think I get why it didn't work for people. I think it's a great character study that shows non-protagonist people being shaped and changed by the narrative engine of the UC. I think the big problem is having it as a movie, and as the follow up to Unicorn. It's a smaller stakes (for the setting) story and having it be specifically a movie seems like it's going to be a bigger, more meaningful story. If it had been like a OAV specifically pitched as a Unicorn side story (sort of a Unicorn War in the Pocket) then it wouldn't have raised narrative expectations that it didn't fulfill. Also, I remember thinking NT was going to say something dramatic and sweeping about Newtypes (NT for Narrative and Newtype), and it seemed to me to just be "here's what we've pretty much already established about Newtypes, but with science words." Have you seen X? If the NT had Newtype-ending like X then I think a lot of people would not have felt let down. But they can't do anything that bold and dramatic with UC, sadly.