Review of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) by Davrosdaleks1 — 18 Feb 2019

To summarize Alita: Battle Angel simply and succinctly: This movie is totally amazeballs!

This may be the best looking film of the decade. It is truly an impressive world. It manages to duplicate the distinct look of the manga. This movie takes place in a futuristic dystopia, but it is kind of a fun lawless Wild West-type instead of the many dystopias today that take themselves too seriously. There's sort of an 80's pop sci-fi aesthetic to the whole thing. There are a lot of cyborgs in this and they're all so unique-looking. Alita's engraved porcelain-ish body is a particularly nice touch.

But what about the story? It is really well-balanced in both action and drama and light and dark. There are moments of wonder and human kindness in this, but also moments of darkness in a dog-eat-dog world.

This is an R-rated manga that was transformed into a PG-13 film. But considering that a lot of violence is between cyborgs, director Robert Rodriguez does a surprising job of making this a violent affair.

Though you never see her real face, Rosa Salazar's wonderful mocap performance makes it through for the computer-animated cyborg Alita. She effortlessly has the character switch from childlike innocence to a determined warrior. The movie made a lot of furor over the internet in its decision to give Alita big ol' anime eyes. The backlash after the first trailer was enought that Rodriguez had them look smaller. (Fun fact: the eyes actually weren't shrunk. The pupils were widened.) To be honest, the eyes never really necessary and they didn't really need to make Alita CG. However, I got used to the look real quick. (The CG is so good that she really feels like a person.) Alita is supposed to be different from everyone else, even other cyborgs, so being the only one with big eyes kinda helps cement this.

Christoph Waltz does a great job in a tenderr but world-wise role as the cyber-doctor who finds Alita and takes her in. He's been typecast in villain roles for far too long. The father-daughter relationship between the two, albeit a bit rushed, is a core of the film.

Rodriguez and fellow screenwriters James Cameron, yes that James Cameron, and Laeta Kalogridis tackle a certain number of chapters from the manga and really try to squish in every bit of content than maybe they needed to. Admittedly, this works pretty well for most of the film. Exposition is surprisingly natural here. However, the ending is a smidge rushed. It is an emotional one, but it could have been stronger and the need to tease a sequel, while producing a striking final scene, doesn't help either. There are two main cyborg villains in this and as much as I liked both of them, this could've been a smoother product if one of them was cut.

Despite my criticisms, I really love this movie. Highly reccomended.