Summary:
A cyborg without memory searches for herself and her place in a violent and chaotic world.
My Thoughts:
I love the character of Alita as if she were a real person, mostly because I’ve been with her on her journey for so long now. Alita is older than I am now, first entering the scene through Yukito Kishiro’s amazing cyber-punk manga series Battle Angel Alita in December of 1990. The initial series is over two thousand pages long, but that only begins to tell Alita’s story. After Battle Angel, the story continues with Battle Angel Alita: Last Order (around 5,000 pages in that story- I’m less than a third of the way through), and is still being told in Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicles (still in its infancy). To me, she is infinitely more compelling than any of the characters in the Marvel Universe (Spider-Man is the only superhero that comes close). Alita is a strong female protagonist with a thoughtful mind, a samurai-like code, a mysterious past, and a knack for getting herself into trouble in a world that feels amazingly fantastical. Alita is everything I want in a continuing series, and it’s why I’ve followed her on her journey for this long.
For many people, I’m sure this movie will be completely middling, and that’s fine. For me, this was a chance to see one of my favorite heroines finally grace the big screen, a chance to see the Berserker body and the fabled panzerkunst fighting style. No, this movie isn’t amazing; there are plenty of issues with it. If I were to show this to some of my fellow TMM reviewers I’m sure they’d groan and poke fun at me for giving this 4/5 Stars, and I could completely understand that. For most people this will be a 3/5, but if I’m honest with myself, I enjoyed this too much to give it anything less than 4 Stars.
Go somewhere else if you want an unbiased review. I freaking love Alita.
“This is just your body. It’s not bad or good. That part is up to you.”
After finding a cyborg core in the scrapyard, Doctor Ido (Christoph Waltz, “Inglorious Basterds”) fixes up the cyborg and brings her back online. The cyborg Alita (Rosa Salazar, “Bird Box”) is unaware of who she is and where she comes from, but she is determined to find out. She navigates the scrapyard fighting dangerous bounty hunters, hunter-warriors, and the mysterious Vector (Mahershala Ali, “Green Book”) engaging in frenetic motorball matches, and developing a crush on a human named Hugo (Keenan Johnson, “Emperor”). But as Alita discovers more about herself, she realizes that she might be the one who could bring balance to the world.
First, I love this story and the world in which it’s told. This is a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk universe- sort of like “Blade Runner” only far grungier and the people are far more adrenaline fueled. The world of Alita is a marvelous place, and Cameron and Rodriguez do an amazing job of flushing out the little details that give that world its charm. To the casual viewer, strange background characters like some of the motorball players or the patrons of Kansas (the bounty hunter bar) might just seem like random background dressing, but for me, I was thrilled to see glimpses of characters from the stories we skipped over for time’s sake. We might not have gotten to watch Umba upgrade Alita’s motorball body and work with her to make it perfect, but he was in the background. Those sorts of details are huge draws for a person like me, because it’s obvious the people that made this movie are just as big of fans of this story as I am.
I think one of the biggest reliefs when I saw this movie (I’m not going to lie, I expected to be completely disappointed) was the fact that this film keeps with the spirit of the manga. Rosa Salazar straight up is Alita. I don’t think they could’ve cast her better. In the manga, Alita dances along the border of a sweet-natured innocent teen and a merciless and bloodthirsty killer. I was nervous that they would dumb Alita down, make her a giddy laughing, absent-minded teenager in order to make her more likeable, but they didn’t. Alita is exactly as I wanted her to be. The writers go so far as to include Alita reciting parts of her code (“I do not stand by in the presence of evil.”), and that too sort of worked for me (it felt cheesy, but I couldn’t help but smile).
I will admit, the film has plenty of problems. Some of the problems stem from the fact that this is just a huge world, and unlike the manga where we have thousands upon thousand of pages to develop this world, the time that the film has is finite. As a result, there are a lot of expositional info-dumps. We listen to characters explain backstories of wars in years past, of the city of Zalem, of the scrapyard, of how certain cyborgs came to be… it improves the richness of the world in some aspects, just by showing how deep the thought for this world goes, but it also slows up the pacing and it feels like were getting a history lesson at times.
If you’re not a fan of CGI, then you can probably skip over this film because 80%-90% of it is CGI, including a good portion of the characters. The CGI looks incredibly polished, nigh flawless, but it’s also very stylized. Even before this movie came out, there were complaints about Alita’s eyes and the uncanny valley effect. Yeah… I can understand a person feeling like Alita doesn’t look quite human- that’s the point. I mean, she’s a cyborg, she’s supposed to look almost human but not quite. For me, this adds to how great Alita looks, but a few of my friends have already stated it would be hard for them to get past that. Again, as a fan of the series, I love that Alita looks EXACTLY like she does in the manga, so for me, character design was a bonus not a flaw.
My biggest problem was Keenan Johnson, who plays Hugo, Alita’s human love interest. He is pretty darn awful in this film. I honestly was stuck wondering why Keenan was cast in this role until there was a scene when he takes off his shirt, and the female half of the audience collectively swooned. Keenan has the personality of a cardboard box that’s been left out in the rain. Where Rosa exuded energy and life into every scene, Keenan was a black hole that sucked that life right back out again. I wish they would’ve cast someone with a little more life, but he was only a small qualm with an overall really entertaining film.
Verdict:
I’ve already admitted this film will not be a 4/5 Star movie for most people, but for me it is. If you’re a fan of anime shows, you’ll probably enjoy this; that seems to be their target audience in the states. It won’t be a movie that will blow you away, but it might sweep you up into the world and get you interested in Alita’s story, which doesn’t end here. The end of this movie teases a sequel (and there are some really bad@$$ things to come if we ever get that sequel). I hope we get that sequel. I don’t know if we ever will, but I hope we do. This might not be a perfect adaptation of the series, but it’s far better than I hoped for, and for that I am very grateful.
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