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Alita: Battle Angel Good
So I finally manged to see Alita: Battle Angel yesterday last Friday. It wasn't in a Dolby Cinema like my ill-fated attempt last week (because it's not playing on those screens anymore because of How to Train Your Dragon 3. RIP) but it still looked really good and I can only imagine what seeing it in 3D must be like.
(Spoilers for ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL under the cut)
So I'm not really familiar with the source material, but my friend who's read a chunk of it said it was surprisingly faithful all things considered. From what I can gather, the two OVAs from the 90s covered roughly the same scope of material, so I kind of want to watch them now to compare. That said, the movie did deal with a few Volumes worth of material, so there were some moments of exposition towards the beginning that felt kind of clunky simply because there was so much world-building that needed to be established before the story really took off.
Alita doesn't look as uncanny valley as she did in the early trailers (mostly because they fixed the ratio of iris-to-eye) and honestly I stopped noticing about five minutes into the movie. Going further, I've seen some edits online where they make her look more like Rosa Salazar does IRL and it looks WAY creepier and unsettling. The design is extremely faithful to the manga and honestly works very well in terms of the setting and the character arc, especially to highlight how Alita is different from the scores of other characters who aren't cyborgs but have artificial limbs.
The romance with Hugo is probably the... I don't want to say clunkiest... part of the movie. From what I can tell his character is the most changed in that they made the feelings between him and Alita mutual instead of having her pine for him, and I understand why they did it from a tonal and narrative standpoint. They don't seem quite willing to go as far as they probably should have to make him more morally gray, especially considering where the movie goes with that story.
Motorball is a plot device that doesn't get fleshed out too much but it looks really cool and dynamic (and will probably get fleshed out a lot more if Alita somehow gets a sequel). There are a fair amount of shots that are in close-up though, so I'm not sure how that translates in a 3D viewing experience. The combat looks REALLY cool though even in 2D on a regular screen.
Rosa Salazar is great in this and really the whole thing seems really well cast. The setting also doesn't feel as high tech and glossy as a lot of properties in the genre. It feels more akin to Original Trilogy Star Wars without the space travel in that everything is very mechanical and physical. There isn't any virtual reality twist and the closest we get to anything super glossy tech is a brief scene in a downed alien spacecraft.
Part of me wants to read the manga, but it is very long and still ongoing. This movie has also been novelized and has it's own prequel, so I may check those out of I have the time and inclination. Regardless, I hope this movie manages to turn a profit somehow, because I'd love to see this story continued on the big screen!
(Spoilers for ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL under the cut)
So I'm not really familiar with the source material, but my friend who's read a chunk of it said it was surprisingly faithful all things considered. From what I can gather, the two OVAs from the 90s covered roughly the same scope of material, so I kind of want to watch them now to compare. That said, the movie did deal with a few Volumes worth of material, so there were some moments of exposition towards the beginning that felt kind of clunky simply because there was so much world-building that needed to be established before the story really took off.
Alita doesn't look as uncanny valley as she did in the early trailers (mostly because they fixed the ratio of iris-to-eye) and honestly I stopped noticing about five minutes into the movie. Going further, I've seen some edits online where they make her look more like Rosa Salazar does IRL and it looks WAY creepier and unsettling. The design is extremely faithful to the manga and honestly works very well in terms of the setting and the character arc, especially to highlight how Alita is different from the scores of other characters who aren't cyborgs but have artificial limbs.
The romance with Hugo is probably the... I don't want to say clunkiest... part of the movie. From what I can tell his character is the most changed in that they made the feelings between him and Alita mutual instead of having her pine for him, and I understand why they did it from a tonal and narrative standpoint. They don't seem quite willing to go as far as they probably should have to make him more morally gray, especially considering where the movie goes with that story.
Motorball is a plot device that doesn't get fleshed out too much but it looks really cool and dynamic (and will probably get fleshed out a lot more if Alita somehow gets a sequel). There are a fair amount of shots that are in close-up though, so I'm not sure how that translates in a 3D viewing experience. The combat looks REALLY cool though even in 2D on a regular screen.
Rosa Salazar is great in this and really the whole thing seems really well cast. The setting also doesn't feel as high tech and glossy as a lot of properties in the genre. It feels more akin to Original Trilogy Star Wars without the space travel in that everything is very mechanical and physical. There isn't any virtual reality twist and the closest we get to anything super glossy tech is a brief scene in a downed alien spacecraft.
Part of me wants to read the manga, but it is very long and still ongoing. This movie has also been novelized and has it's own prequel, so I may check those out of I have the time and inclination. Regardless, I hope this movie manages to turn a profit somehow, because I'd love to see this story continued on the big screen!