Alita: Battle AngelDiscovering the dark underbelly and sinister framework that makes up the world often comes at the expense of naivete and innocence. Alita: Battle Angel is a sci-fi action movie adapted from the cyberpunk manga, "Gunnm" (a.k.a. "Battle Angel Alita"), and is about an android called "Alita" (Rosa Salazar). Alita is given this name by a cybernetic surgeon (and part-time "Hunter-Warrior") named Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), after he discovers her in a scrapyard and rebuilds her from almost nothing. Alita tries to reclaim her memories as she navigates the perilous Iron City, which dwells in the shadow of a floating Avalon called "Zalem"--the mysterious city-state from where she was cast out like a fallen angel.
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The source material for Alita: Battle Angel was first published in 1990, and plans for a film adaptation had languished in development hell for almost twenty years--but the wait was worth it. The adaptation was originally the brainchild of James Cameron, who co-wrote the script for this film. (Alita: Battle Angel shares numerous motifs with Cameron's body of work, not least of which is the post-human dystopian future in which it takes place and multiple action set pieces and special effects of a massive scale.) Alita: Battle Angel is directed by Robert Rodriguez, who contributes his deft hand at merging jaw-dropping fights sequences with heartfelt human drama and quick-witted moments of levity to punctuate the film. Alita: Battle Angel boasts an impressive array of computer-generated special effects, experienced to the fullest when seen in 3D. Of note here are Alita's disproportionately enlarged eyes--a characteristic that marks her as someone who doesn't truly belong to this world and a self-aware acknowledgment of the propensity for manga characters to have exaggeratedly large eyes. More importantly, they act as a window to our protagonist's soul, and reflects this brave new world in her eyes, absorbing all of its beauty and squalor. The androids that roam the streets of Iron City include a cadre of bounty hunters--the Hunter-Warriors--who have a license to kill and are all very dangerous, with lots of bladed attachments and brutal weaponry rigged to their bodies. There is a relationship between how little flesh remains on these mercenaries and their apparent lack of mercy and humanity; the standout example is the cynical Zapan (Ed Skrein), who cuts down his prey with his beloved "Damascus Blade", reputed to be able to slice through anything. Some of the most impressive and exciting moments in Alita: Battle Angel come when Alita is convinced to compete in the popular Iron City sport, "Motorball", a brutal, futuristic cross between roller derby and hockey, where androids are shredded by the competition in high-speed collisions. These high velocity brawls are shot in such a way that makes the audience feel like they're right there on the track with Alita as she fights for her life against all manner of cybernetic monsters.
What differentiates Alita: Battle Angel from other action films is that Alita begins as an innocent into Iron City, which plays into the way that the mysteries of who she is and what she is destined to become unfold in the plot. She awakens in a bed at Ito's clinic with no memories at all. He names her Alita after his daughter, who was murdered after a strung-out cyborg patient and Motorball player raided his home for drugs. This pain compelled him to reconsider his past of upgrading Motorball competitors into killing machines, and the loss caused a rift between him and his wife, Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), who remains in the service of Iron City's Motorball kingpin, Vector (Mahershala Ali). Ito initially hides all of this from Alita, favoring to keep her insulated from the harsh realities of Iron City after failing in this with his daughter. While analyzing Alita's cybernetics, Ito comments that her brain is no different than a teenage girl, and the first act of Alita: Battle Angel is filled with moments of innocent charm and warmth. After she reawakens, she mistakenly bites into an unpeeled orange; after Ito peels it for her, she decides it is her favorite food--until a teenage boy named Hugo (Keean Johnson) buys her a bar of chocolate. Her guileless pleasure is obvious in these moments, and speaks to a simple way of life that is fated to be lost in the end. Hugo and his friends teach her Motorball, and they play an unsophisticated scrimmage in the streets; the scene has all of the authenticity of regular teens just playing sports for fun and healthy competition. Alita and Hugo's relationship flourishes, including when he gives her a ride on his single-wheeled motorcycle, and she wraps her arms around him, comforted by his kindness. Alita falls in love with Hugo, and literally opens her heart to him in a moment of pure selflessness. But Hugo--like so many others--has sold a metaphorical part of himself as a result of the hard way of life in Iron City, and recognizes that Alita's good spirit will only prove to be a liability if she doesn't steel herself against heartache. Both Hugo and Chiren have been taken in by the smooth Vector with promises of transit to Zalem if they do his dirty work; like Ito, Hugo keeps his secret from Alita not to hurt her, but to avoid inflicting upon her the same despair that they feel deep down. Alita essentially "grows up" over the course of the movie, starting as a teenage girl in a robot body, joining the ranks of the Hunter-Warriors, and ultimately becoming a Motorball champion. But with each transformation, something is always taken from Alita, and her warmth and innocence are constantly at risk of being sacrificed on the altar of rekindling her memories.
Alita has her first flashback of her past after she defends Ito from an attack by a massive cyborg named Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley) and his cronies--in essence, Alita "finds" herself in battle. Her memories are of a battle on the Moon, alongside other cyborgs similar to her. Ito shares with Alita that although she may have the mind of a teenage girl, her heart is a super-powerful engine, made from technology that has been lost since before "The Fall"--an apocalyptic war that left the world devastated, and took place three hundred years ago. Hugo takes Alita into the lands beyond the city where the wreckage of a space ship from The Fall rests, and she instinctively knows that there is a powerful cyborg body waiting there, just for her. Ito describes it as a "Berserker" body; he is reluctant to replace the body he originally gave her--which was intended for his daughter before she was slain--with something that would turn her into a deadly warrior, since it would mean returning to a past he had tried to put behind him. Alita continues to recall her past in fractured slivers from fight to fight, along with Ito's exposition. She learns that she was a combat warrior for the United Republic of Mars (or "URM"), and was a part of an attack force against Zalem, attempting to bring it crashing to the Earth; obviously this didn't happen. The mystery of what transpired from the time of these flashbacks and when Ito found Alita's body in the scrapyard below Zalem--which literally lords over Iron City--is exemplified in a mysterious antagonist called "Nova" (Edward Norton). Nova is the villainous puppet master in Alita: Battle Angel, taking possession of Vector and Grewishka at his whim to deliver orders to Chiren and the others to find and kill Alita while he looks on impassively from his perch in Zalem. Nova's motives for wanting Alita dead are unknown, but it can be inferred that they stem from Alita's interrupted mission to bring the gears of Zalem's tyrannical rule over the wreckage of the Earth to a grinding halt.
Recommended for: Fans of an exciting sci-fi action movie bound together with questions about what it means to be human, along with themes of losing your innocence as you grow up. Alita: Battle Angel contains numerous nods to the manga series, but even those who have never read the source material will be thrilled by the sophisticated special effects and deft balance of action and heart here.
What differentiates Alita: Battle Angel from other action films is that Alita begins as an innocent into Iron City, which plays into the way that the mysteries of who she is and what she is destined to become unfold in the plot. She awakens in a bed at Ito's clinic with no memories at all. He names her Alita after his daughter, who was murdered after a strung-out cyborg patient and Motorball player raided his home for drugs. This pain compelled him to reconsider his past of upgrading Motorball competitors into killing machines, and the loss caused a rift between him and his wife, Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), who remains in the service of Iron City's Motorball kingpin, Vector (Mahershala Ali). Ito initially hides all of this from Alita, favoring to keep her insulated from the harsh realities of Iron City after failing in this with his daughter. While analyzing Alita's cybernetics, Ito comments that her brain is no different than a teenage girl, and the first act of Alita: Battle Angel is filled with moments of innocent charm and warmth. After she reawakens, she mistakenly bites into an unpeeled orange; after Ito peels it for her, she decides it is her favorite food--until a teenage boy named Hugo (Keean Johnson) buys her a bar of chocolate. Her guileless pleasure is obvious in these moments, and speaks to a simple way of life that is fated to be lost in the end. Hugo and his friends teach her Motorball, and they play an unsophisticated scrimmage in the streets; the scene has all of the authenticity of regular teens just playing sports for fun and healthy competition. Alita and Hugo's relationship flourishes, including when he gives her a ride on his single-wheeled motorcycle, and she wraps her arms around him, comforted by his kindness. Alita falls in love with Hugo, and literally opens her heart to him in a moment of pure selflessness. But Hugo--like so many others--has sold a metaphorical part of himself as a result of the hard way of life in Iron City, and recognizes that Alita's good spirit will only prove to be a liability if she doesn't steel herself against heartache. Both Hugo and Chiren have been taken in by the smooth Vector with promises of transit to Zalem if they do his dirty work; like Ito, Hugo keeps his secret from Alita not to hurt her, but to avoid inflicting upon her the same despair that they feel deep down. Alita essentially "grows up" over the course of the movie, starting as a teenage girl in a robot body, joining the ranks of the Hunter-Warriors, and ultimately becoming a Motorball champion. But with each transformation, something is always taken from Alita, and her warmth and innocence are constantly at risk of being sacrificed on the altar of rekindling her memories.
Alita has her first flashback of her past after she defends Ito from an attack by a massive cyborg named Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley) and his cronies--in essence, Alita "finds" herself in battle. Her memories are of a battle on the Moon, alongside other cyborgs similar to her. Ito shares with Alita that although she may have the mind of a teenage girl, her heart is a super-powerful engine, made from technology that has been lost since before "The Fall"--an apocalyptic war that left the world devastated, and took place three hundred years ago. Hugo takes Alita into the lands beyond the city where the wreckage of a space ship from The Fall rests, and she instinctively knows that there is a powerful cyborg body waiting there, just for her. Ito describes it as a "Berserker" body; he is reluctant to replace the body he originally gave her--which was intended for his daughter before she was slain--with something that would turn her into a deadly warrior, since it would mean returning to a past he had tried to put behind him. Alita continues to recall her past in fractured slivers from fight to fight, along with Ito's exposition. She learns that she was a combat warrior for the United Republic of Mars (or "URM"), and was a part of an attack force against Zalem, attempting to bring it crashing to the Earth; obviously this didn't happen. The mystery of what transpired from the time of these flashbacks and when Ito found Alita's body in the scrapyard below Zalem--which literally lords over Iron City--is exemplified in a mysterious antagonist called "Nova" (Edward Norton). Nova is the villainous puppet master in Alita: Battle Angel, taking possession of Vector and Grewishka at his whim to deliver orders to Chiren and the others to find and kill Alita while he looks on impassively from his perch in Zalem. Nova's motives for wanting Alita dead are unknown, but it can be inferred that they stem from Alita's interrupted mission to bring the gears of Zalem's tyrannical rule over the wreckage of the Earth to a grinding halt.
Recommended for: Fans of an exciting sci-fi action movie bound together with questions about what it means to be human, along with themes of losing your innocence as you grow up. Alita: Battle Angel contains numerous nods to the manga series, but even those who have never read the source material will be thrilled by the sophisticated special effects and deft balance of action and heart here.