Alita: Battle Angel

Based on the successful early 90s Japanese manga by Yukito Kishiro, Alita: Battle Angel bucks the long trend of Hollywood's streak of unwatchable live action adaptations of anime and manga.  If you want to make a fan angry, all one needs to do is mention past efforts like Dragon Ball: Evolution or Death Note.  And while the live action Ghost in the Shell wasn't terrible, it was also overly simplified compared to its animated counterpart.  Here, we get a film that is fairly accurate to its source material, both for better and worse.  It's not perfect by any means, but it's a huge improvement over what's come before.

This movie has been in the mind of producer and co-writer James Cameron for over 20 years, as he's been talking about bringing Kishiro's futuristic story to the big screen since around the time the original run of the manga wrapped up.  Supposedly, he didn't feel that special effects technology had reached the level to bring his vision to life until now.  However, due to his commitments to the upcoming Avatar sequels, he had to step away from helming the project, and turned the director's chair over to Robert Rodriguez.  It was a wise choice, as Rodriguez manages to capture the story and spirit of the original comic, while perfectly recreating Cameron's grand vision for a spectacle live action film.  This can be a stunning film to look at, with its futuristic landscapes and cast made up largely of human-like cyborgs that are a mix of CG and motion capture performances.  There's hardly a single shot in the film that does not contain some sort of digital effect, but it is never overwhelming, not even when the action heats up, and the robots start punching holes in each other or slicing their enemies in two. (Despite the PG-13 rating, this is a very violent film.  Were it not for the fact that all the violence largely happens to cyborgs and robots, this would have been a hard-R.)

The one thing I noticed throughout the film is just how beautifully edited it is.  In the early moments, the movie allows us plenty of time to take in the sights of the world the special effects artists and set designers have created.  We don't feel like we're being cheated, and we get to soak in a lot of the details.  Even during the more action heavy Second and Third Acts, the movie does not become jumbled or confusing.  One of my biggest gripes when it comes to going to the movies in recent years is how chaotic a lot of action scenes have become.  Filmmakers become so obsessed with filling every square inch of the screen with CG, effects and explosions, that sometimes the mind simply cannot process it all.  That never happens here.  All of the action has a flow, and we're allowed plenty of time to glimpse the action, so it never comes across as a failed tech demo.  When cyborg heroine Alita is forced to participate in a deadly sport called Motorball (which comes across as kind of a roller derby crossed with a hyper-violent video game), we are able to follow every action and movement up on the screen, and never become lost in the chaos.  This allows us in the audience to truly take in the craft that went into the complex visuals.

Where Alita is slightly less assured is in its script and storytelling.  The movie is largely based on the first four collected volumes of the comic, and it can feel like information overload at times.  There are so many characters, plot developments and ideas that it's easy to get lost, unless you hold knowledge of the earlier tellings of the story. (The comic was adapted into a two-part made for video anime in the mid-90s, which this film seems to draw a lot of inspiration from.) There is a lot of technical jargon in the dialogue, as well as scenes where talented actors like Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, and Mahershala Ali do nothing but spew exposition for the sake of the audience.  In all fairness, the movie never really becomes so convoluted that it can't be followed, but we definitely feel the sacrifice of some potentially interesting characters or ideas that don't get the attention they deserve, because the script by Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis and Rodriguez tries to fit so much material in here.  And when you get right down to it, the movie simply exists to tease sequels, as there's really no conclusion at the end.  Everything's left hanging open when the end credits arrive, and unless this movie becomes a runaway hit, we probably won't get a sequel to provide the answers this movie needs.  I'm not a fan of this approach.  I prefer it when filmmakers give us a completely satisfying conclusion, with the hint of more to come.

The movie can also feel derivative at times, and borrows elements from everything from classic Sci-Fi like Blade Runner, to 1975's Rollerball, and even Jack the Ripper.  However, you have to remember how old this story actually is, and how often and heavily Japanese manga writers and artists are influenced by American pop culture.  The same goes for Hollywood as well, as they have been taking images and ideas from popular anime for their Sci-Fi for years now.  That's always one of the core problems when it comes to adapting manga or anime into a big budget Hollywood film.  Both industries draw upon each other so blatantly and frequently at times that when the two come together, it can sometimes feel like they are cannibalizing each other.  That being said, the movie does offer enough unique sights and visuals, as well as action spectacle, that it's worth watching on the big screen.

What holds our interest throughout is the lead character of Alita herself.  Played by Rosa Salazar (from the Maze Runner films), Alita starts the film off as a scrapped cyborg torso found in a junkyard by the kind and haunted cyber physician Dr. Ito (Christoph Waltz).  He lives in Iron City, a poor community made up of people from different walks of life who survived an apocalyptic war 300 years ago.  There is a mysterious city that floats in the sky overhead, but no one on the ground is allowed to go up there.  Ito gives Alita a new cyborg body and activates her, even though she has no memories of who she is and what she was built for.  As Alita explores Iron City with Ito and the young human boy she starts to fall for named Hugo (Keean Johnson), she develops a strong sense of justice and what is right.  She also seems to hold incredible strength and fighting ability, which leads Ito to believe that she may have been a cyborg warrior from the city up above in the past.  Alita begins to have flashbacks to her past, and begins taking jobs as a bounty hunter of sorts, tracking down rogue cyborgs or humans who try to rob cyborgs of their parts and sell them for profit.

The movie follows Alita's journey from a child-like innocent, to a battle-hardened warrior who is willing to do whatever it takes to succeed.  Salazar (working through motion capture and CG animation) is able to create a believable and likeable heroine who is never quite real, but is always compelling to watch.  The big issue that comes with her character are her eyes, which have been enlarged with the aid of special effects to make her look like her anime counterpart.  This is a surprisingly easy hurdle to get past while you are watching the film, because Salazar is effective enough that we focus on her performance, and not on how she has been altered in post production.  Her character has a strong moral compass, and it comes through in the performance.  The only wrong note the filmmakers do with the character is that they make her nearly invincible in every single fight and action scene she's in, which lessens the tension.  Even when she's been reduced to almost nothing but a torso with a single arm by an attacker, she can still punch a hole right through her attacker's skull.

Even with the wrong steps that it occasionally takes, Alita: Battle Angel is compelling enough to draw its audience into its world, and to follow its complex and largely unresolved plotting.  The only question is will this be enough to warrant the sequel that it so obviously desires.  It will be a daunting task, as the source material is not too well known here in the US, and the movie has a budget reportedly of over $200 million, so it will take a lot to become a blockbuster.  Still, I will be hopeful.  I would like to see more of this world and of Salazar's interpretation of the main heroine.  It's far from perfect, but in my eyes, it's the best attempt Hollywood has made to adapt a manga into live action.

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