Alita Battle Angel, based on a popular manga, is a movie James Cameron has been wanting to do for years now. However, with him currently filming a gazillion (okay just 4) Avatar sequels, he simply chose to write and produce this movie, giving Robert Rodriguez the directorial reigns.
Positives – Rosa Salazar is great as Alita and the character of Alita is a total badass. Salazar brings a childlike innocence or naiveté to the titular character and beautifully captures the emotions of the character using performance-capture. If her character wasn’t likable, this movie would have fallen flat from the beginning. The visual effects are incredible, especially on Alita herself. She actually looked like a real character and the Iron City felt very much lived-in, as opposed to a very unrealistically clean city. With many of the city’s inhabitants having various cybernetic body parts, it could have gotten muddled easily and would have been hard for us to recognize ‘who is who’ but every cybernetic character had a unique design. You also got to give credit to Cameron and Rodriguez for the world-building. The fight sequences were intense and really fun to watch, at times. The most entertaining sequences in the movie were the “Motorball” scenes and a good way to describe ‘Motorball’ is that it’s a mix of Quidditch (from Harry Potter), roller skating, and car racing. And apparently, killing another participant is ok? Lastly, this is the kind of movie that needs to be seen on the biggest possible screen and if I might, I would recommend watching it in Imax 3d. I have always found 3d to be a gimmick and dislike it as much as the next person, but this movie really benefits from the 3d viewing experience.
Negatives – This movie is plagued with narrative issues. The filmmakers really try to do a lot – Alita and Hugo’s romance, Alita remembering her past etc. As a result, major storylines are resolved very quickly and haphazardly. The stakes are also quite low in the movie because even though Alita is a badass character, she is essentially invincible. Except for one fight scene, all the fight scenes easily end with Alita defeating her cybernetic opponents, and watching those scenes felt tiresome after a point. The supporting cast includes Academy Award winners like Christopher Waltz, Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali, but Connelly and Ali are mostly sidelined and don’t have much characterizations. They are set up as the primary antagonists but far too often, Ali’s character is “taken over” by another mysterious villain called Nova, which made Ali’s character feel irrelevant. This movie also suffers from pacing issues and is 15-20 minutes too long. I thought the movie was coming to an end at least twice, but instead it drags on and on…
Rating – While Alita Battle Angel suffers from narrative and pacing issues, it does a great job with the titular character and the incredible visual effects and actually ends up being a fun movie. 3/5
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