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Saturday, August 17, 2019

'Alita: Battle Angel' Is the Benchmark for Future Hollywood Adaptations of Manga/Anime

Alita: Battle Angel is the Hollywood live-action film adaptation of the classic manga Battle Angel Alita.  It’s set in the year 2563, three centuries after “The Fall” – an interplanetary war that devastated Earth and left Zalem as the only surviving sky city.  Below Zalem is Iron City, whose industries work for Zalem.  Nobody from Iron City is allowed to go up to Zalem, except for the champion of the sport called Motorball.

In Iron City’s junkyard, which contains the scraps of machinery dropped from Zalem, the famed cybersurgeon Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) usually scavenges for cybernetic parts.  During one of his trips there, he discovers a disembodied female cyborg.  He brings her home, and outfits her with a new body.  When she awakens, she has no memories of her past and who she is.  She asks Dr. Ido to give her a name, and he names her “Alita”, after his late daughter.

Alita (Rosa Salazar), full of enthusiasm and curiosity, sets off to know more about the strange, new world she finds herself in.  As she learns more of the workings and secrets of Iron City, she realizes how treacherous life in it can be.  However, she also discovers that she’s more than equipped to deal with it.  Gradually, her experiences lead her to remember who she really is and her life’s purpose.
Alita: Battle Angel is easily one of the most visually pleasing films I’ve seen in 2019.  It’s absolute eye candy.  The visual effects are beyond outstanding, which bring about tons of gorgeous, elating action sequences and an utterly well-realized, immersive world.

Alita is an extremely likable character.  I admit that her character design weirded me out when I first saw the trailer.  But while watching the final product – the movie itself – I was never bothered by it.  It actually appealed to me greatly.  As it turns out, her anime-ized appearance actually meshes believably with its surroundings, co-exists impeccably with the non-anime-ized actors, and is logically justified by her characterization.  The stunning CGI involved and Rosa Salazar’s equally impressive performance work incredibly well together in bringing to life an aesthetically striking character with versatile emotional range.  Moreover, she has a compelling character arc and is a three-dimensional badass.  She’s now my frontrunner for Best Movie Heroine of 2019.

Unfortunately, the film’s plot is a bit all over the place.
I haven’t read the original 90’s manga, nor have I seen its 1993 two-part OVA adaptation.  As a kid, any affection I could spare for an anime about a cybernetic superheroine was already taken by Armitage III, and if any of it was left, Ghost in the Shell seized it.  Thus, I only knew of Battle Angel Alita by reputation.  Even so, it was apparent to me that Alita: Battle Angel’s script is a victim of studio interference.  From how its set pieces are composited and how its cyberpunk and character beats are manifested, the film feels like it’s made at its foundations by people who understand its source material – and anime in general, for that matter.  However, there are elements and executions here and there that are blatantly Hollywood.  The effect on the overall narrative is that it feels bloated and unfocused at times.

For me, the worst thing about the plot is the romance.  It’s an aspect which I can picture is a result of a studio executive saying at one point during production, “Hey, this movie needs a love story in it.  Romance sells tickets, you know.”  Alita’s love interest, Hugo (Keean Johnson), is a bland character, and though he doesn’t necessarily not have chemistry with Alita, their romance is simply the crux of several unnecessary, cheesy scenes.  I get that the romance provides some emotional core.  But this could have been obtained from other sources – like, from Dr. Ido and Alita’s father-daughter dynamic, which in fact has delivered more substantial moving moments despite playing second-fiddle to Alita and Hugo’s love story.  Romance is something the movie would have definitely been better off without.
That being said, the writing thankfully doesn’t become so messy that it ruins the film.  The flaws of its script are overcome by the merits of Alita’s journey of self-discovery, the development of Alita and Dr. Ido’s bond, and the fleshing out of its world.  And honestly, the spectacles and action are just too remarkably glorious – thoroughly satisfying the sakuga appetite of the anime fan in me – that they ended up making whatever concerns with the story a secondary thing for me.

Alita: Battle Angel ends being clear with its aspiration of jumpstarting a series.  I believe that it has done enough to deserve it – or, at least, a sequel.  Yes, it could have been better.  But, despite its imperfections, it has succeeded in doing the job of translating a manga/anime into a Hollywood blockbuster film with a generally favorable outcome.  In fact, it’s arguably the best example of such to date.  It’s a solid benchmark for Hollywood for its future anime-adapting endeavors.

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