Review of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) by Nbmtx — 14 Feb 2019

First off, I really do think the eyes make this movie. They added a certain fantastical element that allows the film to pull off certain dramatic flair (cheese), and being able to do so is pretty dang important to the film overall. If you have/had a normal young girl doing all this cool stuff, your disbelief might naturally kick in. In my opinion. (As a matter of fact, one of the cheesier scenes shown in the trailer was probably a favorite non-action scene, for me).

On that subject, it's action scenes were really cool and had pleasantly over the top showmanship to them. I saw this movie in 3D, which normally isn't my thing, but if you're going to watch a movie in 3D, a James Cameron movie's usually a pretty safe bet.

I thought it's scenario/screenplay was really good. It had lots of things faithful to the manga, and LOTS of changes, but I thought it's screenplay (and everything it changed) worked well as a movie. Yeah, a decent bit of stuff was missing from film that was in the manga, but I'm totally okay with getting a new experience, as well as knowing the differences for myself. I saw a few critics say that it was toned down for ratings purposes, and while that's true, it still had plenty of gore, IMO. It didn't seem to be lowered via gore, but instead by the removal of other "mature themes" that apply to both characters like Ido himself, but also interactions between other characters, like between Alita and Makaku (Grewishka in the film).

Kinda wish they'd thrown in the Farm and Deckman hiring propaganda as an easter egg somehow. And also the physical registration bit at the Farm that made Alita say "but I can't afford to get any dumber" (in the Manga).