Alita: Battle Angel: Discussion Thread

[PerrySimm]

Good cyberpunk action YA. A touch of romance (though perhaps not quite enough for the weekend it opened). Decent worldbuilding, maybe even a little too willing to give Mook #2 character development. And there's extra layers of mystery going on with Christoph Waltz and Jennifer Connelly.

[MissKittyFantastico]

I'd enjoyed the early trailers, but there was something about the later trailer (the one that showed a bunch of Motorball) that made me think 'Wait... something's not lining up.' Saw it anyway, wanted to like it... really didn't.

Not that there weren't positives - acting was strong (except Keean Johnson, he had an uphill battle with his role anyway, but he didn't shine, I thought), and the effects were faultless, to the point that I quickly forgot Alita wasn't a physical actor. Honestly after a couple of minutes I'd forgotten her eyes were big, even, that's just what she looked like, and it was real (to the point I got to wondering afterwards, did they really even need all that?) Maybe a couple of very brief bits where I was looking at the motion of her face and wondering, but that may've been more me than the effects - I'm not great with faces.

But god damn did that script suck. It hit Hugo the worst, since he couldn't at least half-way act his way out of the hole - and I except Zapan a bit, since he was such a cartoon Ed Skrein clearly had a blast and that was fun to watch, although that didn't help the story any - but characters and world both, nothing stuck. They had some interesting ideas, but everything was just so poorly executed, nothing made it through intact - Alita's naivete was undercut such that it just looked like stupidity when it flared up, Hugo as said was a black hole (I hate people who talk during films, but it was an effort not to say "Was that it?" when the film finished, just because I couldn't fathom how the scene with Alita and him on the cable was supposed to be an emotional climax), Vector was so stilted I had trouble recognising him as the same actor who'd been electric in Luke Cage, and Grewishka was just baffling in that they couldn't have made him seem more 'unthreatening comic relief mook' if they tried, yet he kept being given antagonist actions nothing about his presentation had earned. I don't know what the manga's like - I assume better - but that screenplay was just awful. Like Star Wars Episode III awful, and at least that gave fair warning from the previous two movies.

So, yeah, disappointing - Avatar set it up, but Alita really bolded the "but that was a long time ago" that's mentally been added to "Cameron's the guy who did Terminator and Aliens" in my mind. I mean, I'm not trying to hate on it, I went in pretty optimistic (just had the guy at the anime shop tell me it was awesome earlier that day)... that's just how I felt about what I saw.

[Admiral X]

This is probably the best Hollywood adaptation of something manga/anime-based that I've seen so far. It's also a pretty good movie in its own right. Only real drawback for me is the PG-13 sanitization of it. I'm also really disappointed that this movie is not making much money. Probably means there won't be a sequel after all. :/