Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Review

122min

Genre:     Action, Adventure, Romance, Sci-fi

Director:  Robert Rodriguez

Cast:       Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson…and more

Writers:   James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis, Robert Rodriguez… and more

-Synopsis-

When she’s rescued from a scrapheap in a dystopian future city by a scientist, a young cyborg with extraordinary abilities struggles to find her place in this brave new world, while unravelling the mystery of her origins as she’s hunted by shadowy figures and the mastermind who controls it all—in this Hollywood adaptation of the popular Japanese cyberpunk manga series.

If there was a list of filmmakers who could afford to live large and never work again, James Cameron would surely be near the very top, having spent much of the last decade since he re-introduced 3D to the film industry in record-smashing style with his groundbreaking work in ‘Avatar’, enjoying life and exploring the world’s ocean floors.

Now the visionary director returns with a vengeance, taking a detour from developing four upcoming ‘Avatar’ sequels to team up as writer/producer with director Robert Rodriguez for a long-time passion project—adapting Yukito Kishiro’s 90s cyberpunk manga series for the big screen to once again mesmerise audiences with an intricate CGI-powered new world adventure, and introduce a new cinematic heroine to global audiences . . . with decidedly mixed results.

Rosa Salazar stars as amnesiac ‘Alita’, a teenage-looking cyborg restored by cybernetic scientist ‘Dr. Dyson Ido’ (Christoph Waltz) after he finds her in the junkyard of the post-apocalyptic ‘Iron City’, a dangerous, multicultural makeshift metropolis shadowed and lorded over by the hovering ‘sky city’ of ‘Zalem’—the last remnant of a technologically advanced era. But her rebirth becomes complicated when she falls for young scrapper ‘Hugo’ (Keean Johnson) and discovers her mysterious and phenomenal combat abilities, while powerful and shadowy Iron City figures ‘Chiren’ (Jennifer Connelly) and ‘Vector’ (Mahershala Ali) take an ominous interest in her, as a powerful puppet master above pulls the strings—and with the key to unravelling it all lying in a past she must fight to unveil.

If you’re looking for a feast for the senses then look no further because ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ is every inch the James Cameron tentpole event film. This sci-fi adventure epic is impressive in scale, big and bold, meticulously crafted and designed to dazzle, while conceived to have plenty of scope for growth, not to mention boasting sequel and series potential. Already masters of mocap thanks to their work on the ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’ trilogies, and everything in between, the folks at Weta Digital pull out all the stops with the stunning photorealistic digital effects, not only creating a grimy bustling new world where technology meets necessity and limitation, but also further transforming motion capture into full performance capture, and taking an evolutionary leap into emotion capture.

Such is the case with all the wonderfully realised cyborgs they help the actors to create, in a city where they come in all shapes and sizes; from slightly modified humans and mighty gladiatorial athletes, to dangerous criminals and fearsome bounty hunters—all conceived with a DIY cyberpunk aesthetic, as are most of the impressive production designs in the film. But the most important creation is Alita herself, seamlessly blending Rosa Salazar’s own features with a big-eyed synthetic design which stays true to the original manga, while giving her the extraordinary physical abilities which make for some phenomenal fight scenes and action sequences which stick in the mind.

So it’s clear the film looks the part, but it takes a mighty stumble when it comes to the most important part, the narrative. ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ follows in a long line of dystopian sci-fi which deals with man’s folly in a technologically advanced future defined by struggle, robotics and artificial intelligence, but unlike the more memorable examples of the genre, this adaptation lacks anything particularly profound or thought provoking to say, or the finesse with which to say it.

Instead  Cameron & Rodriguez weave together an underwhelming but timely and socially relevant, female-centric story of identity, empowerment and belonging which mostly misses the mark, while providing the cast with enough tropes and unconvincing relationship dynamics to largely squander the talents of formidable actors like Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali. The story itself is a potpourri of well established sci-fi and dystopian future tropes, and yet another variation on the ole ‘chosen one’ theme—but most egregious is the film’s central puppy love story, wrapping the whole movie around a soppy ill-conceived romance which takes you out of the spectacle and undermines the entire film, while sacrificing any hint of real charm or humour.

The total package then is another big Hollywood CGI-heavy blockbuster which dazzles but struggles to captivate and fails to make us feel much, and the second stylish but underwhelming Hollywood live-action adaptation of a beloved cyborg-set Japanese manga in two years after ‘Ghost in the Shell’—proving perhaps more visually ambitious but less thematically engrossing than Rupert Sanders’ 2017 film. And for a film which revolves around a character with a shiny synthetic exterior but a real deep human core, it’s ironic that ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ comes off like a polished shell without much underneath.

Ultimately it leaves us entertained but less than excited for what promises to be another big studio series, if not a full cinematic universe, but only time and box-office results will tell if James Cameron has spawned yet another valuable movie franchise, or if he’ll have to make do with five years of undoubtedly hugely lucrative ‘Avatar’ sequels.

The Bottom Line…

A fun and mesmerising sensory experience with major story issues, ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ proves an underwhelming big screen blockbuster experience for discerning and jaded 21st century audiences who’ve seen it all, stumbling over too many questionable narrative choices and struggling to do justice to the manga source material—ultimately doing just enough as a standalone cinematic experience but not enough to memorably launch a series.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Set in a near-future where man and machine have become one; a crime-fighting cyborg leads a counter-cyberterrorist unit against a dangerous and shadowy hacker who targets individuals and crucial systems at the heart of society, only to discover the truth about her past and the organisation which conceived her—in a big-budget Hollywood adaptation of the hugely popular Japanese Manga.

Directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk and Takeshi Kitano among others.

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