ALITA BATTLE ANGEL: An Incoherent, Emotionally Hollow Manga Adaptation That's Worth a See Just For The Stunning, Theatrical-Worthy Visuals

Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-fi, Romance

Produced by: James Cameron, Jon Landau

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez

Written by: James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis

Production Company: 20^th Century Fox

Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Keean Johnson    
Runtime: 122 minutes                                

SYNOPSIS: 

Broken, battered and deactivated, young female cyborg Alita (Rosa Salazar) is reassembled and brought back to life by cybernetics doctor-for-hire Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz). Waking up with no memory of her past, Alita sets out on a hope-filled, yet perilous journey to find out who she was, one that will also determine her present and future. 

REVIEW: 

In what is considered today to be the Golden Age for comic book movies, it would be strange to say that it remains a hit-and-miss genre. Whereas American comic book movies, superhero genre in particular, have found it easy to win over the mainstream audience’s heart, the same cannot be said for its Japanese counterparts, or in other words manga. Home-made live-action adaptation or animated adaptation of said manga certainly hasn’t been the issue. The real issue lies with the Hollywood live-action adaptation. 

Obviously, in adapting a source material that’s so inherent to the Japanese culture and lifestyle and making it more accessible to the Americans, it is hard to escape the accusation of “whitewashing”. Without any disrespect to manga, despite its huge following, it hasn’t yet proved itself to be the Hollywood juggernaut of Marvel or DC level. As the saying goes, when it comes to such a niche property, names sell. And so often, studios have to sacrifice faithfulness to its source material or cultural appropriateness for the sake of a sexier name, which upsets the fans. 

But perhaps the most fundamental reason why American manga live-action adaptation have failed: they haven’t been good enough. The Americans have certainly tried, but they just don’t understand what makes the original so beloved. Major titles like Dragonball Evolution (2009) and Ghost in the Shell (2017) were savaged by critics and fans alike for its failure to emulate the source material’s thrills and emphasis on sexier name, further compounded by their poor box office return. Even Hollywood’s recent manga adaptation Death Note (2017), critically as reviled, got a streaming service release instead of theatrical through Netflix.  Since Netflix rarely releases its viewership numbers, it remains inconclusive whether there is still a financial interest in Hollywood manga adaptation. 

Something about 2019’s Alita: Battle Angel, based on Yukito Kishiro’s manga, though is different. With almost little to no Japanese actors in its cast list, whitewashing remains an issue for Alita. But at least, there’s room for optimism since it has a prestige name like James Cameron fronting the project. In fact, this is one of Cameron’s post-Titanic (1997) projects, besides the obvious Avatar (2009). Why it took him almost two decades to get Alita over the line is similar to why he needed twelve years to finish Avatar: the technology. An ever-perfectionist, Cameron feels that the early 2000’s film technology could not realize Alita’s world the way 2010’s film technology could. By the 2010’s, it looks like Cameron is going to direct only Avatar movies for the rest of his life, and so, he limits his role in Alita to screenplay and producing duties, leaving the directing duty to Robert Rodriguez, another prestige name in the industry. In the end, could these two big names help spark people’s interest in Hollywood manga adaptation? 

One thing that both a James Cameron production and a Robert Rodriguez production always delivers time and time again is a visual experience that cannot be replicated anywhere but in the big screen. And their maiden collaboration Alita: Battle Angel is no exception. As strong of a word as this may sound, it would be a travesty to see this movie anywhere but in the theaters, or even see it in any format other than in the intended IMAX 3-D format. 

In the hands of reliable visual innovators like Cameron and Rodriguez, they help clear the path for Alita: Battle Angel’s smooth transition from comic book to the silver screen. Alita’s bonkers aesthetics is cinematically recreated with as much flair and imagination as Kishiro’s manga drawings that, wherever he is right now, he would have been proud of what this Hollywood adaptation had achieved. And even if the movie is eventually half Cameron’s vision, half Rodriguez’s vision, each of the filmmakers give 100 % to the project. Every shot suggests a filmmaking duo that actually cares about the source material. 

Yes, so much of Alita’s visuals are effects-driven than they are practical, but the effects coalesce with the real set so seamlessly that it is much easier to buy into the idea of a cyberpunk world where CG-made cyborgs and floating cities exist in the same universe as live action people. Highly detailed and beautifully rendered, not a moment goes by where the movie’s more artificial parts appear in any way fake when paired with the real parts. In fact, it cranks the level of childlike wonder and fancy up a notch as the world around the characters gets bigger and bigger. And when that happens, as far as thrills go, it’s so visceral that one can almost reach out and touch the world on display. All in all, it’s a reminder of what special effects should strive for. It’s about adding layers of believability into something that in theory is not real, in which Alita excels. 

But perhaps the movie’s finest technological achievement comes from the CGI of its lead cyborg character Alita. For quite a period of time, that wasn’t the case. Words like “creepy” and “distracting” often pop up in social media when the debut trailer first revealed the titular heroine’s live-action appearance back in early December 2017, particularly concerning her large bug eyes. In the final cut though, Alita proves to be a sight for sore eyes to see. It is going to take awhile to accept the CGI-crafted Alita’s appropriately angelic bug eyes and her baby-faced, anime character-like look into the live-action world. But once one does so, all that is left is to behold at motion capture technology at its finest. Fortunately, the CGI manages to steer clear from the uncanny valley territory, as it finds the middle ground between live-action realism and cartoon to realize Alita in ways that will sure stun its audience for all the right reasons.  

Beyond its special effects wizardry, another reason to see Alita: Battle Angel in the biggest screen is the action sequences. And it is only fitting that such an action-driven material are orchestrated by the two minds responsible for action movie gems like the first two Terminator movies and the El Mariachi trilogy. Watch those movies, and notice how both Cameron and Rodriguez’s filmmaking technique sort of contain the same visual spirit and energy as a manga. The action sequences in the aforementioned filmmakers’ repertoire are every bit of insane, nonsensical, stylish and exciting wrapped in one. And Alita’s balls-to-the-walls action wind back the years to the time when these filmmakers were making those kinds of action movies. Every scene is like flipping through a manga, a panel-by-panel recreation of its iconic drawings exhilaratingly interpreted for cinematic purposes. 

Look no further than the Motorball sequence, one of the signature elements in Kishiro’s manga. Fictional sports are almost a rare thing in movies these days, and with that in mind, it’s safe to say that Motorball in Alita: Battle Angel should go down as one of the best fictional sports in movie history since Quidditch in the Harry Potter series. Even with a PG-13 rating, it doesn’t need the literal bloods and guts to emphasize the brutality of a Motorball match. Motorball here is the true definition of chaotic, where one thing’s happening in the foreground and a million more in the background. True, it’s overwhelming, over-the-top, but who’s to say it’s not thrillingly effective? Every metal clash has the crunch of a real bone snap, spare parts flying like real limbs and explosions after explosions that blows rather than numbs the mind. 

But Alita: Battle Angel’s action isn’t all about sport. It’s equally effective in the basic close-quarter combat, like for instance in the bar sequence. Whether this sequence was Rodriguez or Cameron’s idea, it is up for debate. But stylistically, it’s the most Robert Rodriguez part of the movie. It’s got some of his tropes. Obviously, there’s the bar as the backdrop, and then in it there are outlaws who look like cyborg variations of characters from the Old West, a sleazy character describing in Western fashion how tough these outlaws are and an extensive, over-stylized bar brawl punctuated by slow motion editing. He doesn’t exactly own these tropes, but one cannot doubt that the overall look and feel in the bar sequence resemble things from his past work. And thankfully, Rodriguez fully commits to his Rodriguez-ism, which adds an extra layer of coolness to this whole sequence. 

A James Cameron-written movie just would not be complete without its strong heroine. Really, if there is anything to appreciate from Cameron’s work besides the visuals, it’s his constant success with crafting female characters that is worthy of role model status. For decades, Cameron continues to express the importance of having women who can be as invulnerable as steel and as vulnerable as any human being at the same time. Being able to shed a tear or being able to experience the world with childlike excitement is as important as being a gun-toting badass. These are traits that are so perfectly-drawn in Cameron’s heroines, whether by continuing another filmmaker’s legacy through Ellen Ripley in Aliens (1986) or inventing powerful women of his own through iconic figures like Sarah Connor in the Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1992), Rose in Titanic and, his latest so far, Neytiri from Avatar. 

By then, it kind of makes sense why Cameron would be attracted to Kishiro’s Battle Angel manga, a story which sees a female character take center stage. And in typical Cameron fashion, Alita is a female movie character that’s worth admiring as a badass and also worth caring as a human being. Even if theoretically Alita isn’t human, somehow, the way this movie fleshes her out manages to make the audience feel a genuine sense of humanity within her. Alita: Battle Angel once again proves Cameron’s golden touch when it comes to writing a female character. Like the way he does Ridley Scott’s creation Ellen Ripley justice, Cameron does Kishiro’s creation justice. Alita takes the meaning of as invulnerable as steel and as vulnerable as human to a literal level. Her body is literally all machine and spare parts, but her heart is undeniably blood and flesh. Even as her artificial body keeps on defying gravity with one insane roundhouse kick after another, her eagerness to try and learn new things and adapt to human life is as grounded and relatable as people with real bodies. 

And so, it is a missed opportunity for Alita: Battle Angel that a story with such an emotional potential like a heroine’s quest to be more human can ring so hollow. It is not as if the movie itself is completely bereft of such human touch. On paper, Cameron’s script actually promises a number of compelling threads that should be good enough to humanize Alita. One thread looks at Alita’s quest to be more human through a Pinocchio-esque story angle. Another thread looks at Alita’s quest to be more human through a Romeo & Juliet love story angle. One explores the familial relationship between a grieving father who builds an artificial child of his own from scratch to cope with past tragedy and his artificial child who longs to be a real child. The other explores the romantic relationship between a teenage boy and a teenage girl living under circumstances that don’t allow them to love each other. These threads are far from brand new, but the pieces are there to assemble a moving story. 

But it seems that Cameron is not that interested with this particular aspect, electing to scratch the surface rather than go much deeper. Alita: Battle Angel is a movie that assumes that just mentioning elements meant to give character more emotional depth in passing should be enough to make the audience care about their relationships. In this case, it’s a huge miscalculation. As a result, there’s not much weight to Alita’s familial and teenage romance relationship because the movie rarely spends time with them. The movie never really circles back to how these relationships help humanize Alita.

Safe to say, the moment everything makes way for the actions and explosions, they are quickly spat out and never referenced again. In fact, for the rest of the movie beyond the first act, Ido barely had any screen time together with Alita. If there is even one, their exchanging of dialogue is limited to basically emotionless action movie dialogue, just that and nothing more that should tug the heartstrings. 

But definitely Alita’s coming-of-age teen relationship with Hugo (Keean Johnson) fared worst. It’s a relationship that certainly had a bigger focus over Alita’s relationship with Ido, but it kind of feels wrong that what is in truth such a toxic, manipulative relationship can be played so sweetly, especially after the movie starts to gradually reveal who Hugo is behind Alita’s back, which should leave the audience with an icky feeling than actually romantic. At the same time, on an acting standpoint, there’s just not enough spark there between Salazar (33 years of age) and Johnson (22 years of age) to convince of their teenage love affair. 

And Alita: Battle Angel’s inability to take advantage of the story’s emotional potential leads to one of its biggest flaw: incoherent storytelling. Premise-wise, it is easy to tell that it is an Alita’s origin story, but dissecting the movie as a whole, what is this movie actually about? Sometimes, it’s a father-daughter Pinocchio story. Sometimes it’s a Twilight-esque love affair. Sometimes, it’s just corporate evil talk between Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) and Vector (Mahershala Ali). Sometimes, with its idea of cyborg assassins, it’s cyberpunk John Wick. Sometimes, with the Motorball sequence, it’s Rollerball. Sometimes, it’s the Goonies-style adventure through alleyways. Not to mention a tease for a future villain Nova for a future sequel (which is no longer a tease considering the longer screen time given). 

So many disparate elements are thrown onto the screen but the movie never attempts to make them feel like they’re connected. Heck, even Jennifer Connelly’s character Chiren, who the movie continuously sets up as an important character, gets thrown to the side. In the end, it’s a movie that is just there to set up sequels than actually make a cohesive story. Planning ahead is not necessarily a bad thing. Every movie today is essentially a franchise starter, and so, it’s not wrong to prepare from day one. But then again, a great franchise requires process. In every The Avengers (2012), there’s always an Iron Man (2008) and numerous other standalone movies to help lay the foundation. In Alita’s case, it hasn’t earned its Avengers yet. Alita is still at the Iron Man (2008) phase, a starting point that should have been more focused on a contained, character-driven story instead of a world building-driven one. If it makes enough money, then the story continues. If it doesn’t make enough money to warrant a sequel, then it would be sad if Alita’s cinematic adventure ends with an incomplete story. 

After playing second fiddle for most parts of her career, Alita: Battle Angel grants one of Hollywood’s most underrated stars Rosa Salazar her big break as the lead, and the actress makes a strong case for more opportunities to be the leading lady in future projects. Here, Salazar brings much-needed heart and charisma to the titular cyborg just as the performances and characters around her can at times be lacking in those two categories. She’s consistently magnetic in whatever aspects of Alita’s character, whether as a fierce bad ass warrior or a curious childlike presence so eager to explore the world. Her whole appearance might be mostly motion captured, but one should not discredit the live-action realism that comes with her physical and emotional work. She sells every punch and every roundhouse kick during close quarter fights, every tears and every smile during the movie’s most tender moments in ways that fully CGI actors wouldn’t be able to do as convincingly, which is a further proof of how it’s Salazar’s personality that made Alita work more than the motion capture technology. 

CONCLUSION: 

Alita: Battle Angel boasts the kind of cutting-edge special effects, mind-blowing world building and stylish comic-book action that make this a must-see experience, even if the messy narrative lessens its potential emotional impact. 

 

Score: 7/10