Review of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) by Kester — 16 Mar 2019

Recent movie releases were not cutting it for me. I was mildly disappointed in all of them for similar reasons, and so I went to watch Alita: Battle Angel, hoping for something more out of recent movie releases. I wasn't counting on it to be honest, so I started with a negative attitude.

I got everything I wanted and more.

Alita does what Captain Marvel wanted to do. It gave us a strong female heroine who kicks ass. It gave us a person confused about their identity, but wanting to do good. However, where Captain Marvel got bogged down in the scope of itself - trying to do too much in too little time - Alita doesn't. It does more, actually, and fits it in nicely with the time it has. I don't even think Captain Marvel is a bad film either, Alita just does it better.

It asks questions like what it means to be human or female to begin with. Could humanity ever war between planets in our solar system? Can you love just the brain of a person? Then, after all that? It practically kicks those questions out of the way in epic battles and a whirl of a romance. Alita doesn't bother itself too much with the MANY philosophical conundrums of the movie, it sweeps through these problems, and moves along as much as it can. Its characters don't question these things too much, but rather accept them as part of their world and continue on with their lives. For some this may make it seem cheap. For myself however this made the world feel real, engaging, vast, and fresh. You'll feel like Alita has only scratched the surface of exploring an incredible new world of science fiction when you leave the theater. That is world building done right.

Furthermore, from its first scenes onward, Alita builds its characters properly, starting with the basics and moving from there. It doesn't try to be too extravagant, but it also doesn't give us bland and boring one dimensional people of cardboard. Almost every one of them has multiple motivations, faults, and desires which are demonstrated, giving us excellent characters to follow through the film.

And follow them you do, through awesome and beautiful sets and through incredible actions sequences. The CGI does its job of making the cyborgs never look completely human, while also making them look believable real, and this comes together for some jaw dropping action sequences that you half to see on the big screen.

So go and watch it, you'll have a world to explore, a heroine to cheer, and a spectacle to watch. Alita : Battle Angel delivers it all, and it is worth every penny and more.