Here's what you need to know; born into the cyberpunk dystopia of Iron City, Alita longs to know the truth about her past, who or what she is. But while searching for that truth, she finds herself in the sights of a sinister and mysterious puppet master, one who knows the truth about what she is and would rather she never knew, because Alita isn't a normal girl, she's the most dangerous weapon on Earth.
Above all else, I'm surprised that this film hasn't been given its lashings for the hideous crime of whitewashing, I mean, it's an adaptation of a Manga, which is Japanese, and yet the film isn't very Japanese at all, so where is the backlash this time. You know that I'm taking the piss, the whole idea of whitewashing is something I've always found rather pathetic, and while the striking visuals and cyberpunk setting gave me some real Ghost in the Shell vibes, I actually really liked the way Alita: Battle Angel looked, then I saw that Odeon were giving away exclusive promotional material on the film's opening weekend, and I was sold. That promo poster has, in fact, taken the place of my framed IT promo poster, but does that reflect the film's quality, or do I just really like film promo material, let's find out.
Alita: Battle Angel grabs you right out of the gate with its presentation, usually I talk about characters and story first, but it has to be said, this is probably the best CGI I've ever seen. The setting of Iron City is wonderfully brought to life with a beautiful blending of practical and computer effects, and an attention to detail that rivals the visual fidelity of Avatar. Very much like the setting of Ghost in the Shell, Iron City is a beautifully realised world, one that's believable and lived-in, with old world ruins scattered about below a massive flying city, and reminders of what people in this film call "The Fall," an apocalyptic war that left the Earth in ruins. You also don't get much of a look at that flying city, which I feel really adds to both the mystery and inaccessibility of the place, as well as the reality of the city below, as if Zalem (the flying city) is some kind of mythical, heavenly place, one that literally hangs over the consciousnesses of everyone in Iron City. So the film has gorgeous scenery, but none of that matters if the star of the show has doll eyes, right? But once again, the CG in this film is insane, and in particular, the CG used on Alita's face is Grand Moff Tarkin levels of good, it took some adjusting to seeing a woman with eyes as big as oranges, but once I did, I had no trouble at all believing that I was looking at a real human face, it was weird, but in a very good way. And, like Ghost in the Shell before it, Alita: Battle Angel goes nuts with the Cyberpunk; with most of the people of Iron City walking around with cyborg limbs, and a bar full of cyborg bounty hunters, one of which being Francis from Deadpool, or rather, his shit eating face on a robot body. The film's visual effects team really had fun with the film's presentation and design, and it is gorgeous to look at from beginning to end.
Ok, now we can talk about characters and story, and where the film's visuals and storytelling work very well together. Let's start with Alita, who is absolutely adorable; from her very first scene, to her first interaction with Ido, to going outside and seeing Iron City for the first time, it's just so sweet, and the film completely nails getting you to like Alita. It's here where her eyes become an important piece of visual storytelling; as Alita has no idea who, what or where she is, and is seeing everything for the first time, she is innocent, completely and incorruptibly so, and has trouble understanding the world for the dangerous and misleading place that it is, which is reflected in her design. Her big eyes reflect the child-like innocence of her mentality, as well as reflecting the notion that the eyes are the window to the soul, which Alita has in abundance thanks to her SpongeBob levels of optimism and innocence. But it doesn't stop there as later in the film, when she gets her hands on a new, more powerful robot body, that body takes on more mature feminine features, reflecting her development and growth from sweet, innocent girl to a more mature woman. Alita really is the heart and soul of the film, she is intolerably cute; a ray of light on a dark, dystopian world, and being the meanest weapon in the world and not even knowing it, she is a badass. There is a lot of mystery to her character; you learn a lot about her, but even more things about her and the world are left unexplained, which makes me hope that this film doesn't flop, because Alita and her world are things I'm dying to know more about, but what you do get is very intriguing, and it's something that I'm not going to spoil. There is a risk when making a character that's practically unstoppable, especially a female character; but what stops Alita from falling eyes first into Mary Sue territory is her emotional journey, as she starts out as an innocent, playful and adventurous spirit, before slowly realising that she has far more power than she thought, and that with that power, and this is the important bit, comes responsibility. At that point it's less about who and what she is, and more about how she fits into the world around her, what she does with the power she has.
I know this will piss a few people off, but she's basically a better version of Wonder Woman; an unstoppable tank with a warrior's spirit but a childish and simplistic outlook, whose ark becomes learning the ugly truth about the world around her and learning to accept that truth, only this is cooler, because Cyberpunk. And like Wonder Woman, Alita gets a love interest, and here's where the tables turn, because this guy is no Chris Pine. I get what they wanted to do with this character, and on paper, it works very well as Hugo is effectively Alita's introduction to the real world, with all its beauty and all its horrors. The pair have some really good scenes together too, like when Alita tries Chocolate for the first time or when he introduces her to Motorball, but when the film tries to show that they love each other, it felt less that they were in love, and more that a young, dumb girl was in love with a pretty boy. There is an emotional conflict that Hugo faces, that being his love for Alita and his under the table dealings with the film's villain, the issue is that I just never bought that he was in love with Alita, it was a bit cheesy, just a bit. What I had a much easier time buying was Alita's relationship with Ido, the doctor who rebuilds her. Without going into spoilers, Ido's motives for rebuilding Alita are pretty heavy, and those motives blossom into an adorable father-daughter relationship, only one with the added spice of the father being a badass bounty hunter and the daughter being a cyborg super-weapon. Ido's desire to protect and shelter Alita is one of the film's most human elements, and I loved the relationship the two of them had, far, far more so than Alita's and Hugo's mutual crush. Then there's the film's villain, Vector, who is just one of Nova's puppets. This is one of the areas where the film really slips in my opinion, because Vector isn't a very threatening villain at all in this film, despite being a shady, sinister, black glasses wearing villain, the film's efforts to set up a sequel completely undermines any villainous presence that he has because he is constantly overshadowed by a bigger fish, this film has a puppet master, one who never speaks and who you don't see until the very end, and for all the build-up Vector gets, he's nothing more than a puppet in the end, and that's kind of weak.
Something that Alita: Battle Angel does unbelievably well, as I've already said, is worldbuilding; with a beautifully realised dystopia filled to the brim with little details and some of the best CG ever produced. But this isn't just apparent in the beauty of Iron City and Alita's face, in fact it's most apparent in the film's action sequences, oh boy. Alita's action sequences are crazy, and awesome. And there's a few on offer in this film, including a pretty sweet bar fight, a completely badass Motorball sequence that was way cooler than I thought it would be, and a few throw downs with this big cyborg mother fucker that were also super cool. One good thing about everyone in the film being a cyborg is that the film can be as violent as it wants and not have to worry about all the blood, and holy shit this film is violent; People are getting decapitated, ripped and sliced limb from limb, blown up, crushed, stabbed, but it's all BBFC friendly because the blood is blue. That makes the handful of scenes when the blood isn't blue rather extreme in comparison, especially for a 12A, but you know me, when have I ever complained about a film being too violent, I complain when it isn't violent enough. The film's action sequences are an interesting thing in this film, as they should be, they're all fast, violent clashes of metal, but they're all very exciting and fun, there's just one problem. You'd expect a film like this to have some kind of epic final showdown to end the film on an epic note, but it doesn't and in that regard, the film's ending is a little anticlimactic. There's the awesome Motorball sequence, but then the film winds down for some reason, giving us a brief fight with a room full of spider tanks that was over way too soon, and an even briefer final fight with the big guy. The film's ending really doesn't do it any favours, setting up a sequel that, if the track record of American Manga and Anime adaptations is anything to go by, will probably never happen. It does kind of suck that the film made the decision to not only set up a sequel, but promise one by deliberately leaving its story open at the end. Alita: Battle Angel's ending would make me excited for a sequel if I had any confidence that a sequel was coming, but I don't and so the film just feels incomplete in its finale which, for some reason, features a time jump, and doesn't provide any substantial emotional payoff, just a promise that next time will be awesome, a next time that we'll be very, very lucky if we get the chance to see.
It's the loneliest feeling, not to know who you are
Alita: Battle Angel is, you guessed it, not a perfect movie, in fact it's very far from perfect, it gets a lot of things wrong, like its main villain and romantic subplot, not to mention its anticlimactic and unsatisfying ending that will probably never get the payoff it needs. But here's the thing, I loved this film, I can look past even its most glaring issues because at the end of the day, I love Iron City, I love the film's visual effects, I love its action sequences, and I adore Alita. She makes the film, her character and her relationship with Ido, and the mystery of what she is that gradually unfolds over the course of the film. A film can be flawed, a film can make mistakes, but at the end of the day, if the film is fun, and if it has the feels, I'll probably like it, and Alita: Battle Angel nails both of them. I cannot wait to watch it again, and it's definitely worth watching.
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