Welcome back to Sound Off!, a semi-regular column where members of Speculative Chic gather together to chat about the latest BIG THING in entertainment. This time, dive into the uncanny valley and discuss Alita: Battle Angel, which premiered in the United States on Thursday, February 14, 2019.
Sound Off! is meant to be a reaction, but not necessarily a review. After all, while we are all individuals, even mutual love of something (or hate) can come from different places: you may find everything from critique to fangirling to maybe even hate-watching.
Now, join Howard Kleinman as he talks about Alita: Battle Angel. [Note: Spoiler-free!]
Howard: There are two ways I could’ve approached Alita: Battle Angel:
The first way I could have viewed the film is as a fan of the manga and anime Battle Angel (OAV) for over twenty years. This fan wanted a hard R-rated film that fully embraced the bleakness, moral complexity, and apocalyptic vision of the original story. This story isn’t a happy one, heroes are deeply flawed, villains have understandable motivations, and who is right or wrong can often get quite blurry. The law of unintended consequences is brutally in play and the people we loved suffer in unexpected ways.
The second way I could have viewed it is a person who understands that Hollywood is a business and that the only way an Alita movie was getting made was with certain compromises that softened the material and removed some of the moral complexity in exchange for eye-popping visuals, bloodless violence, and the kind of crowd-pleasing moments of the sort the manga gleefully subverted.
To my credit, I went into the movie as the second type of viewer and had a blast.
If there’s any justice, Rosa Salazar’s performance as Alita should make her a major star. She carried the movie ably, with strong, relatable emotions. I cheered with her when she succeeded, got choked up when she was sad, and applauded when she did something cool, which happened frequently.
The movie was helped tremendously by the strong direction of Robert Rodriguez, who brings a kinetic exuberance to nearly every frame of the film. The production design was exceptional. Iron City felt like a real place someone could visit with a distinct architectural feel. This is important because the location is almost a character in the manga, and it breathed beautifully on film.
But Robert Rodriguez made his name as an action director and his experience shows with several tremendously entertaining fights, and a couple of sequences featuring motorball, a sort of roller derby/demolition derby that dominates much of the second half of the movie.
I will always be able to reread the manga at some point, and, on some level, I will always long in vain for a film that does it justice, but the movie that we did get is tremendously enjoyable and I would love to watch it again.
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