Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Known in the 90's as Battle Angel Alita, I grew up aware of, and enjoying the anime this is based on quite significantly which, from memory, Alita: Battle Angel is quite faithful to - and more so I've been told, the manga, which I haven't read. I will say off the bat, the motion capture on Alita is second to none in this film. Credit to Rosa Salazar for embodying the quirky, wide eyed and at times, menacing traits of the character established in the original versions, but the expressions and movement here are a new standard for the technology I believe. You know she's still fake, but the line is very much blurred and it should be acknowledged.

Far from perfect, often clumsy (as with most of RR's work), and the plot is all over the place at times for sure but it didn't really matter as it has a good heart, strong messages of self belief and other obvious ones about discovery, relationships etc. Ultimately, I found Rosa/Alita utterly watchable and likeable and this was integral to get right for the film to be enjoyed and the balance of innocence, teenage rebellion and later on, power and emotion is achieved without making her annoying, dull or unrealistic. Again, credit to Rosa Salazar for her performance. Besides the smorgasbord of cyborgs on the display (played by some familiar faces) as well, Christoph Waltz is nicely cast as Cybernetics doctor/Hunter Warrior Dyson Ido. Jennifer Connelly is given little to do unfortunately.

The violence is suitably sterile and exciting as you'd expect (the Motorball sequences spectacular without overuse of slo-mo thank goodness) but it shies away from being gratuitous - something anime's are quite notorious for, but there is also still moments of subtle humour in the first half. Given the cast assembled here, it would have benefitted from a stronger plot that was more constructed/cohesive without doubt, but in terms of sci-fi action involving cyborgs and cybernetics, Alita: Battle Angel is a new benchmark - it looks incredible and given in this age where amazingly, 100 million dollar adaptations of Japanese anime films/manga strips are getting green-lit by Hollywood, being produced with the kind of love and passion required to do them justice, expectations should be realistic and this is one of the best efforts so far - the pros definitely outweighed the cons from someone coming in already familiar with the source material. Not quite as good as Ghost in the Shell in that regard, but I would definitely welcome a sequel as this - as an obvious origin story - leaves it wide open for.

#review #alitabattleangel #robertrodriguez #jamescameron #manga #rosasalazar #cyborgs #christophwaltz