While everyone tries to play catchup before the Oscars, it’s been a lackluster year at the box office so far in 2019. M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass exceeded expectations to the tune of more than $100-millon thanks in large part to an almost complete lack of competition throughout January. Looking to capitalize on the slow season, Alita: Battle Angel delivered lots of action and a surprising amount of heart but it still wasn’t enough to rescue the worst President’s Day weekend in 15-years.
Based on the Japanese cyberpunk manga by Yukito Kishiro, this story finds us in the year 2563…300 years after “The Fall” which essentially wiped out the majority of humanity. What’s left exists only on Zalem, the last of Earth’s sky cities, and Iron City, the slums below the floating marvel where the rest of the world’s population has congregated. It’s a colorful place where cybernetic modifications are commonplace and those survivors do whatever they can to get by. Dr. Dyson Ido roams the scrap heap below Zalem for spare parts and there he finds the partial remains of a highly advanced cyborg. When Alita awakens, she remembers nothing of her past and sets out on a journey of self-discovery as she tries to unearth the mysteries of her past and carve out a path for her future.
James Cameron has always been the type to go big or go home and it was he who had the film rights to the story. While originally slated to direct, those duties were passed on to Robert Rodriguez but Jim stayed around as a producer and to help him write the screenplay alongside Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island). I’ve always been partial to their R-rated features but they’ve all managed to do very well outside of the “adults-only” space. However, from the outside looking in, it appeared as though Alita was having something of a crisis in tone.
Up until two weeks before the film’s release, it still wasn’t rated which prompted AMC theaters to withhold advanced ticket sales until a firm rating was established. With the Disney takeover of Fox still looming heavily on the horizon, it seems as though the filmmakers desperately wanted a PG-13 rating and eventually that’s what they got. The story is decidedly adult and thematically this is a pretty heavy film at times. In watching it, you can see where Stephen E. Rivkin and Ian Silverstein trimmed as much as they could to broaden the appeal. In terms of making this story accessible, this is probably as good as it was going to get. However, I’ve always been partial to Rodriguez’s and Cameron’s R-rated work so I would be very curious to see what an unrated version of Battle Angel might look like, especially since the source material is considerably darker. There was a lot of material to condense into just over two-hours and much of the foundation for what we did get to see actually seems like the much more interesting stuff so, hopefully, we’ll get to see some of that get elaborated on down the line
Rosa Salazar was a good choice for the lead role. Her relative anonymity was important in getting the audience to let their collective guards down. If this were someone who’s a household name (like Scarlett Johansen in Ghost in the Shell) there would have been a lot more in the way of preconceived bias. The visual effects created a breathtaking world for the story to unfold but didn’t really change much about her appearance other than the enlarged eyes (and an entire CGI body) that are clearly indicative of the Japanese manga origins. For all the marvelous digital rendering that was done, there is still something about the mouth that the artists just can’t quite get. With all the close-ups of Alita, it’s Salazar’s eyes that tell the story. She’s incredibly expressive and you get to see a wide range of emotions throughout her character arc. If the 33-year-old actress wasn’t a household name before, she’s certainly going to be now.
A trio of Oscar winners, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, and Mahershala Ali all lent their considerable name recognition and brought the requisite venerability to their respective roles. Waltz, playing the aforementioned Dr. Ido, had a nice paternal relationship with Alita. His character has very particular motivations that are laid out but he manages it well. Waltz has a history of stealing scenes and it’s hard to deny his on-screen charisma, no matter the role. Connelly plays Chiren, a moody and semi-goth rival surgeon to Ido and also his ex-wife. She is always good but wasn’t featured enough and there’s no room in the story for their relationship to have its due. I would have really liked to see her in the primary villain role but she passes that off to Ali who plays Vector, a powerful businessman who guards the line between Zalem and Iron City. He’s greedy and power hungry but knows his place in the hierarchy which makes him dangerous. It’s a cerebral role and Ali played it with all the patience of a man who’s in absolutely no rush. Completely calm and cool. His relationship to Alita is mostly a peripheral one as well, serving mostly as a middle man. Honestly, these are three very interesting characters even without Alita being part of the equation and they got rushed through in order to make way for the human/cyborg romance angle. Maybe there was more that got left in the editing room but that trio needed to have more screen time and broader arcs.
The casting team of Beth Sepko, Mary Vernieu, and Michelle Wade Byrd got a lot of big names in the right places and added veteran supporting talents like Ed Skrein (Deadpool, Game of Thrones) and Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen, A Nightmare on Elmstreet) to come in as two of the secondary villains who plague Alita on her quest. However, Keann Johnson was out of place as the main love interest. He seemed like he’d be more at home in young adult fiction properties and that whole story angle messed with the overall flow. His acting wasn’t particularly poor but he’s just kinda boring. As generic of a Disney Channel white guy as they could have found and that didn’t really fit in with the image of Iron City that was being portrayed. His chemistry with Salazar wasn’t especially strong, although she sure seemed smitten with him, and their romance was one of the weaker elements of the film.
Hollywood adaptations of manga and anime have been and will continue to be problematic. When taking on a property such as this, whitewashing allegations certainly weren’t far behind. After what happened with Ghost in the Shell the filmmakers had to be fully aware of the potential beehive they were walking into. Kishiro’s original story was set in a world that wasn’t exclusively Japanese and provided a bit more flexibility. People aren’t going to pay to watch this movie simply because of that but it could dissuade a certain percentage of the potential audience. Whether you care about that or not, Alita was still enjoyable enough with reasonable expectations. However, whether or not we’ll ever get to see some of the more interesting elements of the story play out remains to be seen. The movie has strong appeal globally with foreign markets contributing almost $100-million since the release date but a lackluster opening weekend domestically returned less than $30-million. This was all set up to be a franchise. Hopefully, the returns are good enough for Disney take the plunge.
Recommendation: Fans of the manga will likely be more critical of this cinematic endeavor but, if you like action movies in general, this was entertaining. Sci-Fi is a very specific itch to scratch but Cameron knows the mold very well and delivered a nicely packaged story, even if the story itself isn’t the strongest element. IMAX-3D was maybe a bit much since the disparity between the CGI and the real world becomes more sharply apparent but IMAX would still be the preferred way to watch.