A project that has been well over a decade in the making, Alita: Battle Angel is based on a 1990s manga and anime that centers on a cyborg teenage girl trying to remember her past. Unfortunately, Hollywood’s less-than-optimal track record in adapting from these mediums holds stronger than ever. Though writers James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis had years to develop their script, and eventually brought Robert Rodriguez on board as director, Alita is a muddled film that packs in action at the expense of substance and relies on Cameron’s worst storytelling impulses.
While the sets and fight sequences are complex and occasionally impressive, the over reliance on computer generated characters and locales are frequently distracting and at times unbearable. It doesn’t help that the titular character is hidden behind layer-upon layer of uncanny CGI. Played by Rosa Salazar, it’s impossible to tell if any good acting went into the performance of Alita—whatever Salazar is doing has been bulldozed by the animation of her mo-cap work. When the character smiles, the effect is like nails on a chalkboard for the eyes, so awkward and unreal that it sets the teeth on edge. When Alita feels strong emotions, her exaggerated features turn her into a sentient emoji. If she were part of an animated feature this wouldn’t seem out of place, but among average real-life humans, there’s simply nowhere to hide.
Set in the 26th century, Alita: Battle Angel is a story about parents and children, and about the intensity of young love… but both plots fall flat, and only serve to bring the film down. Christopher Waltz’s Dyson Ido finds Alita’s head in the scrapyard beneath Zalem, the floating city of the privileged, and he gives her a cyborg body that he had originally designed for his now-dead daughter. Alita spends the film trying to recall a past that was cut short three hundred years ago, and in doing so, gets into professions and activities that her new surrogate father figure would just as soon she left alone. If this had been a story about a young woman coming into her own, trying to discover her place in a world that she’d been absent from for centuries, we might have had some interesting fodder to tie the action sequences together. But it’s not about that, not really. The focus is more on Ido’s inability to handle the idea of losing another daughter, and increasingly about Alita’s relationship with a very boring boy named Hugo (Keean Johnson).
The film seems to think that the over-the-top teenage romance is a selling point, harping on Alita’s intensity as she reacts to her very first love. But Hugo is practically a non-entity for all that the film feigns interest in his negligent charms. There appears to be some notion buried in the narrative that the emotionality of teenage girls is a true power, that Alita’s extreme feelings are part of what makes her formidable. But that idea dies on the vine—it’s clear that the real things that make Alita formidable are her awesome fighting skills and killer training. Functionally, her emotions only serve to let her make bad decisions when the plot needs her to, and the end result is always her having to kick someone’s ass again.
The cruelty of the script is so overt that it aligns better with some of the more gruesome ’80s SF films. That isn’t to say that Alita is the natural successor to the likes of Total Recall or RoboCop, but it treats its characters with the same brutality, particularly in action sequences. While that’s no great surprise coming from a director like Rodriguez, the affectation used to come off as a stylistic choice in his films—here, it’s played largely for cheap shock value. Sometimes that shock value is so poorly rendered that it skirts into comedic territory, as when Alita uses the blood of a murdered dog as form of eye black or war paint.
Because the film is often thoughtless in how it treats characters, there are many concepts that are hurtful or downright offensive in the story’s construction. Ido created a cyborg body for his daughter because she had some unnamed disease that left her confined to a wheelchair. She was killed by a motorball player that Ido kitted out for games; the man charged at her in his escape, and she couldn’t get away fast enough because she’s in a wheelchair, making even her death as ableist and cheaply-written as possible. Ido also has an assistant named Nurse Gerhad (Idara Victor) who is always at his elbow, constantly aiding him—but the script only permits her two or three lines, leaving the one prominent black woman on screen in a position akin to set dressing. Jennifer Connolly doesn’t fare much better as Dr. Chiren, Ido’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of their dead child, whose costume choices all come off as absurd, unsubtle metaphors in relation to each scene she’s playing. And there’s the sheer number of times that random characters touch Alita without her permission, which begins to grate once it’s clear that the film has no intention of addressing it.
There are people who seem to be enjoying their time on the screen despite these constant misfires. Mahershala Ali is clearly having a ball playing the manipulative Vector, and gets a final scene that steals the movie out from under everyone with a wink. Ed Skrein’s Zapan, a hunter-warrior who’s in love with his own visage, exists primarily to be as ineffective and hot as possible—his pristinely rendered CGI’d caboose is the focus of half the shots he appears in, and Skrein hams it up for all he’s worth. Hugo’s friend Koyomi (Lana Condor) doesn’t get the opportunity to say much, but she’s captivating whenever she’s on screen.
None of this begins to take into account how much the film refuses to explain, and how little it makes sense when viewed as a whole. We never know why Alita—a warrior from a centuries-old army—would have the brain of a teenager. We don’t know how that brain survived in a scrap heap for hundreds of years. We learn practically nothing about the floating city Zalem and what goes on there, making it hard to understand why so many characters are dangerously keen on finding their one-way ticket up there. And while it’s likely that many of these questions are being saved for a potential sequel, they prevent the film from finding a unique voice among other action films of its kind.
After over fifteen years of development, we should probably just be glad that this one is out of Cameron’s system. It’s nowhere near as visually immersive as Avatar, but its script is just as bluntly written—leaving it with very little to recommend it.
Emmet Asher-Perrin thought that the Rose/Jack Titanic redux at the end of the movie was just hilarious. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I sooooooo want Alita to be good, but the trailers and TV spots aren’t working.
The eyes… too deep in the Uncanny Valley. No one else in the movie has giant anime eyes, just her. They really just do not work.
I loved the original manga; my parents brought me back a Business Jump! manga from a brief stop-over in Japan, and of all the stories in it, I snagged on that one. The weird, over-the-top cyborg designs really worked for me. It was a bloody, gory comic, with great action sequences. I was glad that in the ’90s Viz Media translated the manga so I could find out what was actually happening.
I’m sure the movie will be terrible, but I’m still going to be there.
The acid test: Is this better or worse than Johannson in the Shell?
Re: Alita’s manga-style eyes — with the release of the first trailer a year ago there were a lot of uncanny valley comments, and the reported solution (by Cameron and his CG team) was to make them bigger, moving them into cartoon territory. Sounds like this doesn’t solve the problem for everybody.
FWIW, the city of Zalem isn’t floating — it’s hanging from an orbital beanstalk. These are usually depicted in fiction as being anchored directly to the ground, but that’s not strictly necessary — with a beanstalk, the weight is suspended from orbit (the same visual SF usually forgets that the upper end needs to be geometrically wider than the groundside end). In the manga, there was a connection, but it was severed during the Terraforming Wars, hence its ragged appearance.
The city does have several anchor lines (“factory tubes”) that splay out to the sides, but they’re used to deliver goods upward from Scrapyard City; they’re not load-bearing.
I seem to be one of the only people who likes Alita’s eyes. I don’t think they’re creepy, I think they’re beautiful. When I watched the trailers, every time a shot of her face came on, it made me smile involuntarily. I always have liked women with large eyes, and this is just amplifying that.
And BonHed, since Alita is a cyborg — and evidently one from an earlier generation than the other cyborgs in the film, from what I gather — it makes sense to me that her face looks different from the other characters’. If anything, I think it’s quite plausible that androids would be designed with caricatured, doll-like features, both to distinguish them from live humans and for the sake of idealization.
I went to a screener of it last night, and have to say that as much dislike as I’ve seen it get in terms of accessibility to the mainstream, most of the picture is pretty much pulled straight from the 1990’s OVA that was made, aside from some small changes that (I think) make the storytelling better. I have been a fan of the manga *since* the 90’s (the original series, the newer one is still ongoing) and have to say that while I was pleased overall with the film, I think it’s not going to do well in markets like the Americas and Europe. I also don’t think Cameron needed to make her eyes bigger. :P
Japan and China, who have had Gunmetal (the original manga name) as a mainstay of society are likely going to make this a huge hit though. I know Avatar killed it over there, and I think this will do well over there, too.
Possible, possible… maybe if the rest of her face wasn’t so realistic, it might work better as a doll-like appearance, but I just cringe when I see them. I’m keeping an open mind about it. I mean, I’m sure it will be terrible, but I liked Sucker Punch (also terrible), so who knows
@6/saberpilot: “Gunmetal”? So far as I know (having first encountered the anime as a fansub in the 1990s), the original Japanese title is “Gunnm” — in romaji, anyway. “Gunmetal” would make thematic sense (and more pronounceable to boot), but Wikipedia claims the kanji title is 銃夢, read as “Ganmu”, made from the kanji for “gun” and “dream”. (Hey! I recognize that kanji. It’s #5 in the NHK World “Easy Japanese” program.)
I haven’t seen the movie yet, so please no spoilers. If I remember correctly the “Alita trying to be a normal girl but she ends up killing anyway” trope is actually how it happens in the manga. Ido struggles and tries to give her a normal life, but eventually fails. Alita always tries to get her life in order but due to her knowledge of a particular fighting art (and her body later on) she always ends up on the “wrong” path. The manga is after all quite dark (ohh Hugo….).
Christopher Waltz’s Dyson Ido …
Minor nitpick: the actor’s name is Christoph Watlz.
All these reviewers. Did lord of the rings, the hobit or star wars prequels get so much backlash that each movie was not self contained and not part of an overall bigger story with sequels built into the structure. Its so stupid that people want to be spoonfed everything. The original manga was just so. Too many people used to episodic nature of things.
People need not be sheep. If you had interest in seeing this movie go see it.
People complain of endless reboots or endless sequels. But when presented with something new, they dnt want it. Edge of tomorrow comes to mind. Such an amazing movie that everyone in hindsight realised bombed for no reason.
And as far as adaptions go. Why do people hate without knowledege of tge source material. If its adapted closely people say why dis this happen. They change too much, they say they didn’t honour the source.
I think as a reviewer people need to do a bit of research not just rely on wikipedia. Does not hurt. Otherwise what are you basing your reviews on?
Anyway. I urge people to make up their own minds. Dnt be swayed by so called ‘critics’.
@PeterErwin:
no, the article had it correct, it is Christoph Waltz
Torsten @12
Yes, there’s a tag for “Christoph Watlz” at the bottom of the article, but: the second sentence of the 3rd paragraph (still) reads “Christopher Waltz’s Dyson Ido finds Alita’s head in the scrapyard beneath Zalem, the floating city of the privileged, and he gives her a cyborg body that he had originally designed for his now-dead daughter.” (That’s a direct copy-and-paste.)
I thought the eyes were okay – on the assumption that the wholly human characters in the movie would notice and react to that. Sounds like they don’t. Oh.
@14/cecrow: Presumably the human characters in the movie are used to the existence of cyborgs and androids; Alita is hardly the only one. So there’s no reason they’d be shocked or confused by her oversized eyes any more than by any of the other inhuman attributes displayed by her and the other cyborg/android characters.
Edge of Tomorrow was an abominably bad movie which completely butchered the best aspects of an excellent sci-fi novel, most particularly by neutering the original tragic ending in which Keiji had to kill Rita to end the time-loop and finally defeat the mimics and replacing it with “and then he woke up and everything was fine!”
I had the privilege to watch Alita: Battle Angel and it was truly fantastic. I am not sure what you were expecting from a two-hour movie, which was its only downfall. This type of movie is obviously not your personal style, and that is understandable, however, once this is available to the American public they are going to eat it up demanding more. I would be willing to bet real money on its success. The real tragedy is that there wasn’t more to watch.
As best I can recall, in the excellent 1993 anime, Battle Angel, Alita had big eyes because she was young (and female), and that was the artistic convention. (I’m not familiar with the manga.)
Did the filmmakers come up with a reason why CGI Alita has big eyes? Can she see infrared, or in the dark? Mind you, if you’re designing a cyborg assassin from scratch, you might make her as kawaii as possible.
I thought Edge of Tomorrow was very good. However, a movie adaptation of anything will tend to disappoint those familiar with the original work. It’s better to see the movie first.
I’m going to see it a second time to see how it all sits. There’s so much to be visually dazzled by, I’m still a bit unsure how to process the story. For one thing, this seems to be quite a true-to-tone adaptation of the manga, and so there is an obviously cartoonish sensibility to the characters and plot development, which worked for me as I was expecting it.
What I really like about the film was blurring of ethics and intentions as “body” “machine” and “soul” are scrambled. While a little too pretty to be real body horror, the film does creep around both sides of the uncanny valley in a way that satisfies the filmmakers intenions I think. Several characters that might appear human are ultimately proven to be Frankenstein puppets, while others retain a strong sense of heart like our heroine. I really enjoyed Alita as a character, her goofy innocence, righteous indignation, and awe inspiring strength all intertwined. Her fight scenes were freakin awesome.
Perhaps not a perfect film, but I think its virtues outweigh its shortcomings, and it is really fun to watch.
The movie was fantastic! It’s refreshing to see a dark haired woman, played by a woc I might add, as the lead and most powerful, the one who the entire movie revolves. The world itself was beautiful and multilayered, as were the characters. It wasn’t cheesy and the plot held up pretty well. I’m almost certain there will be a sequel.
Shame on your Tor.com for publishing this biased review and scaring away dozens of potential viewers before the movie even came out. Because of this rude review, I almost didn’t see the movie. I don’t agree with any of the points made here. And hey, it’s getting a little annoying when writers on this site want to be ‘woke’ for the sake of it. Complaining about how they treated the differently abled daughter is silly, when the ENTIRE MOVIE is made of differently abled people, who’s limbs have been replaced with machinery. I loved that part and it’s the future I hope for. But please, keep dismissing the existence of one minority category (the poc here) to stand up for another.
@20/Nora — You’re quite right: it is a terrible review. I didn’t notice so much the first time I read it, because I was hurrying on to the comments, where you usually find the more interesting observations. Also, I hadn’t seen the movie yet. It’s good, especially in IMAX 3D.
Here’s a particularly choice passage: Dr. Ido’s daughter “couldn’t get away fast enough because she’s in a wheelchair, making even her death as ableist and cheaply-written as possible.” Are we being “ableist” when we build wheelchair ramps?
The review also wonders how Alita survived 300 years on the scrap heap. A more attentive viewer would realize she was probably there no more than a few hours.
So where did she spend those 300 years? We don’t know: what we’re seeing adapted on the screen is just a small fraction of the nine-volume manga.
One thing I like about Alita is she’s not entirely a nice person. Her first reaction is always to fight; we understand why, of course, when we learn who she really is. Her ardent emotions fall into place when we realize, as far as she is concerned, she is feeling them for the first time.
To the best of my recollection, the filmmakers closely follow the story arc of the 1993 anime. I was worried they might change the ending. However, they don’t credit the anime, just the original manga, Gunnm.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
I agree that this review is terrible. I got to the end of the review and I had to wonder if the reviewer had even watched the movie I’ve now seen twice. Or if they just made a snap judgment based on the trailers and synopsis.
The movie makes plenty of sense if one pays attention to the details and the explanations that are given and uses one’s brain. If one were to apply a little thought one could take Ido’s words explaining to Alita about her heart being powered the way it is (pre-“the fall” technology now lost) to explain how her brain could survive several hundred years, which it clearly has from the flashbacks we are treated to as Alita’s memories.
Also, when the Berserker body becomes Alita’s, Gerhad says something like “She’s older than you thought,” referring to Ido’s earlier comment about a “teenage girl’s brain.” So the very first sentence of the review is in error, which should have been realized by even a single viewing of the movie, had one been paying attention to more than just the special effects. I actually think they did just a little too much explaining in the flashbacks.
As for the blood as “war paint,” how’s that for “insensitivity??” Why is it that it’s always OK for everyone to denigrate Native Americans and not even realize they’re doing it while whining about how someone in a wheelchair can’t move fast or how many speaking lines a minor character who does not even appear in the manga (at least not during the time which the movie covers) and only appears in the “movie prequel” novel as far as I know at this time. I’m working my way through the Deluxe Edition of the manga but I made myself watch the movie first. We all know the book is always better than the movie! Again, had one been paying attention to the explanatory flashbacks, one would have realized these marks of blood represented something important to Alita. She does not stand by in the presence of evil, as she states. This is not shallow, nor something a teenage person is likely to commit to with mortal intent.
The reviewer writes “The cruelty of the script is so overt that it aligns better with some of the more gruesome ’80s SF films. … it treats its characters with the same brutality, particularly in action sequences. While that’s no great surprise coming from a director like Rodriguez, the affectation used to come off as a stylistic choice in his films—here, it’s played largely for cheap shock value. Sometimes that shock value is so poorly rendered that it skirts into comedic territory, as when Alita uses the blood of a murdered dog as form of eye black or war paint.”
The setting is a brutal one where the strong prey on the weak. This should have been obvious. Again, I have to agree with other Commenters, wondering if the reviewer was remotely familiar with the source material let alone bothered to actually watch the movie closely. There was nothing funny about the little dog, whose relationship with Alita had been set up throughout the movie, being murdered by a sociopathic cyborg. And there is nothing funny about standing up to evil with courage and integrity. No, Alita is a very deep character actually. Which brings me to…
The eyes. I don’t understand what the problem is with Alita’s eyes. In the manga Alita is not the only character with big eyes. Most manga and anime female characters have large eyes. It’s called “visual style.” And if one were to pick up BATTLE ANGEL ALITA and just look at the first renderings of the main character, Alita, one will instantly realize that Alita’s eyes, in particular, are exceptionally expressive. 98% of Alita’s emotions are communicated to the reader through her eyes. I was impressed with how they rendered the micro-expressions of Rosa Salazar’s face and performance. It was more convincing than I expected with only a couple spots where it was a bit “wooden.”
That’s enough. Short version is this; if you generally like Science Fiction movies you will probably enjoy this movie. Especially if you like movies that don’t insult your intelligence and that give you the option of either enjoying at face value or digging deeper for further meaning.