Alita: Battle Angel

[Heladys]

Pretty good time at the movies. While the "anime girl eyes" ensure you don't forget Alita is a CGI character, apart from that you completely buy her performance as a real live character, except the way ridiculous fight moves which hold true to anime stylings. They damn near sidestepped the uncanny valley.

If you've seen the anime you largely know what to expect and should probably enjoy yourself. If you aren't familiar with the anime, who knows what you'll think.

[Dr Assbandit]

I really enjoyed it except for some small issues.

Normally the blend of CGI and real scenery or actors is pretty jarring to me but except for a rare couple parts this movie honestly did an amazing job at blending the two. I think we can except a lot of good stuff from James Cameron going forward with whatever techniques he's employing.

The actions scenes were amazing, action packed, and I think just the right lengths.

Alita as a character grew on me and her voice-actress with motion capture did an amazing job with all the small subtleties.

That being said the pacing of the movie felt off to me for some reason and certain character's development seemed too rushed. Also the dialogue was in many places just humorously bad, which sort of made it good I guess? I don't think that's a positive merit but it has a lot of quotable one-liners that are just so bad that they are good.

Movie left too many questions unanswered but I get the feeling they were left so open-ended for the specific reason that they will be explore in the sequel/s.

All in all I definitely had a great time with it.

[Usagi Senshi]

I can't go see every movie and I've been waiting since 2003 (LOL at ADV's Evangelion movie concepts that year, or was it 2004) for this one. Making a pass but it will be one of the rare live-action BDs I will buy.

I will watch it in theater if it gets another run down the line though.

Next movies I'll be seeing will be Shazam, Pikachu, and Avengers.

[Gallahadd]

Well, I think I have an answer for one of your questions. The others have been answered fairly well as for why she wasn’t buried under 300 years of other trash... it seemed to me like she was dropped fairly recently. Just because she’s 300 years old, doesn’t mean she was junked 300 years ago. Could be she was junked and dumped recently, and we’ll find out what she’s been doing since then in the (potential) sequels.

[Florena]

The last 20 minutes or felt a bit rushed but all in all I really enjoyed this movie. I don't know the source material so idk how much was changed, but on its own terms this was a solid sci fi action movie.

[Unholyground]

Everyone hates everything lol.

[Asphyx22]

Considering I watch more Anime than anything else these days, I feel like I should give it a go.

I'm seeing it again in IMAX 3D. Really happy a movie like this came along. I don't want to over-hype it, but for me, this movie felt like a gift from the heavens.

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I can't go see every movie and I've been waiting since 2003 (LOL at ADV's Evangelion movie concepts that year, or was it 2004) for this one. Making a pass but it will be one of the rare live-action BDs I will buy.

I will watch it in theater if it gets another run down the line though.

Next movies I'll be seeing will be Shazam, Pikachu, and Avengers.

You've been waiting for this film since 2003 but won't go see it in the theater? Are you a masochist haha? To each their own, but I highly recommend it. The movie is best viewed on the big screen and was a blast for me personally.

[Ivanstone]

Watched it last night. Its good but I have some reservations. I've read the original manga and watched the OVA.

Roughly speaking the first two acts were really good but its almost like they ran out of time and/or money to give it a proper ending.

Probably the biggest problem I had was the final fight between Alita and Grewishka. I figured that a director of Rodriguez's calibre would be able to give a fight scene more thrilling than that of the original comic. Turns out he didn't. Also Grewishka was a little more sympathetic in the original. Grewishka also didn't slurp a single brain! WTF?!?!?

I get why they wanted to include motorball in the movie but it added more screen time without advancing the story. The OVA adapts roughly the same story but focuses more on the early parts of the manga and provided a more coherent story because of that. The film tries to adapt more chapters and suffers a little because of that.

Final quibble: Vector does deal in body parts with Zalam. However Chiren doesn't have a brain. Zalam citizens have a dirty little secret.

[KainneAbsolute]

-Why don't the cargo tubes take people? it's handwaved in the movie, but last I checked, people can actually ride a cargo lift, I've done it. technically speaking, full replacement cyborgs are like 80-90% cargo anyways.

-If you have spacecraft capable of landing troops, why drop them on the ground and then have them run up a booby trapped gantry tube?

-Shouldn't alita have been buried under 300 years of junk?

-Why is hugo retarded for the entire third act? Seriously, he sees these people every single day, telling them he's out of the apparently not illegal "ripping dudes limbs off" game can wait.

-What exactly is wrong with the badlands? during their little excursion nothing seemed to actually be wrong besides it not being a city. plants are growing, there aren't any monsters, nary a respirator in sight.

-What exactly are the "factory laws" and for that matter, what do the factories actually do?

-What was "I don't stand idle in the presence of evil" it's dropped like some kind of massive character defining moment, but it has zero build up and is never brought up again.

-If the hunter warriors are effectively the law enforcement then what are the centurions exactly?

-How does the bounty system actually work and why can it be gamed so easily, for that matter, why wasn't hugo also blamed for his friend's vivisection?



all questions that have no good answer provided in the movie.

I watched the movie but I will answer with facts of the manga (however I dont if they will keep it if there is a sequel):

1. The tubes are controlled by the factories and robots and it wont allow people in. Also the tubes are designed to transport cargo and not people. In the manga the cargo are materials, food and living organs. Not cyborg parts.

2. Salem/Typhares have special defense mechanisms. I wont spoil them.

3. With time the mountains of garbage also fall apart. In addition, part of the people of Iron City live from recycling scraps.

4. Yeah, I was capable of hide or go directly to Vector and ask for help.

5. In the manga there are other towns and people. However there are slavers and warlords.

6. The factory exports products to Salem/Typhares. The products are food, materials, organs, etc. The factories sustain Typhares. The laws are dont stop the production, reduce any meaningful event that might alter production and dont allow anyone to reach Typhares.

7. It is a phrase she remembers of her life in Mars.

8. Centurions are there to enforce the hunters, defend the city and snipe anyone trying to reach Typhares (like flying). In the manga there arent call Centurions and their appeareance is different.

9. You register as a hunter and they scan your brain. The factories identify criminals and you deliver their head (the ones they consider dangerous for production). You can steal the victim of another hunter or kill another hunter.

[Laerrus]

We saw it on Friday. I loved it so much that I have ordered the hardcover box set of the original comics on Amazon and I also plan on adding the movie to my collection when it comes out on Blu-ray. Cyberpunk and other forms of Dystopian Sci-fi are some of my favorite genres of entertainment media. Blade Runner, Ready Player One, The Fifth Element, Akira, Ghost in The Shell, I love them all.

The fucking critics have destroyed this movie to the point that it is going to struggle to do well at the US box office, but I hope that word of mouth spreads by the casual viewer on just how good this movie is so it gets profitable enough to warrant a sequel. I want to see the rest of the story on the big screen damnit!

Alita: Battle Angel currently has a 95% likability on Google as well as a 93% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes.

[prwraith]

All the anime fans i've spoken to IRL were not impressed.

[Techno-Druid]

Whether the other characters have big eyes or not doesn't matter. She has big eyes cause it's anime. It looks normal in anime. It doesn't look normal on an actual person.

That's the point, she doesn't look like a real person because she is not, she is a cyborg meant to veer into uncanny valley so we can contrast her human thoughts, emotions and actions with her appearance.

[Usagi Senshi]

I'm seeing it again in IMAX 3D. Really happy a movie like this came along. I don't want to over-hype it, but for me, this movie felt like a gift from the heavens.

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You've been waiting for this film since 2003 but won't go see it in the theater? Are you a masochist haha? To each their own, but I highly recommend it. The movie is best viewed on the big screen and was a blast for me personally.

Maybe, I'll double check times for next Monday at the new theater that opened nearby. The old one was 25 minutes away and not worth it to drive to constantly.

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All the anime fans i've spoken to IRL were not impressed.

As an anime fan since 1991, most anime fans have shit tastes, including me.

[SirCowdog]

7. It is a phrase she remembers of her life in Mars.

It's actually not something she says until the Motorball part of the Manga. And AFAIK it's not tied at all to any memory from Mars(which are, at that point in the manga, only memories of training Panzer Kunst.

9. You register as a hunter and they scan your brain. The factories identify criminals and you deliver their head (the ones they consider dangerous for production). You can steal the victim of another hunter or kill another hunter.

Again, in the Manga stealing another hunter-warrior's bounty is specifically stated as being against the factory code(as stated directly by a factory drone).

Killing another hunter-warrior is less clear. Murder is still murder, but Zapan gets away with kidnapping Ido, and Alita gets away with chopping Zapan's face off, neither had any attention from the factory.

When Alita "steals" the bounty of Hugo from Clive Lee of the White-Hot-Palm, she gets away with it because the method she used to kill him was indistinguishable from being randomly struck by lightning. There's no evidence or witnesses. But later, when Zapan tries to steal Hugo's head, he's doing it right in front of Factory Drones(which is when they state the law and aim Factory weapons at him).

I highly recommend reading the manga. You'll see that while the movie comes really close, it misses the mark in some pretty important ways. To me, the movie REALLY just felt like a modern CGI version of the 1993 anime and OVA(which I also thought weren't really the same story).

Also....PG-13? Really? I get so tired of good films being turned into bland formulaic garbage by this. Instead of Bladerunner levels of dark and depressing, we get a shiny, sunny love story with some random action thrown in? Uhg.... "Iron City" wasn't a nice place with kids playing soccer(sorry...motorball) in the streets. It was a dark, dirty place where people struggled to survive and life was cheap.

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All the anime fans i've spoken to IRL were not impressed.

For good reason. The movie was a TERRIBLE representation of the manga, and a sugar-coated remaster of the Anime/OVA.

It was the same thing that happened to Ghost in the Shell. It looked the part, but the director and producer of these movies clearly didn't understand the source material.

[prwraith]

As an anime fan since 1991, most anime fans have shit tastes, including me.

I can only agree with this statement for people who like attack on titan.

It's a bad manga, it's a bad anime. The plot is terrible, the characterization is terrible, and the dramatics are terrible. And anybody who enjoys it should genuinely feel terrible.

But also we all have pretty weird tastes as to what's "good". I myself have watched every single episode of prince of tennis and enjoyed the whole trip

[SirCowdog]

Maybe, I'll double check times for next Monday at the new theater that opened nearby. The old one was 25 minutes away and not worth it to drive to constantly.

Do yourself a favor and wait for it on Netflix or something. And maybe get it on sale.

I really don't understand the high scores people are giving it. But maybe they never read the manga, so don't know how this missed the mark. That's the only thing I can think of. And honestly, if you aren't familiar with the source material, it's not that bad of a sci-fi movie with action and a little bit of a cheesy love story thrown in.

[Asphyx22]

Do yourself a favor and wait for it on Netflix or something. And maybe get it on sale.

I really don't understand the high scores people are giving it. But maybe they never read the manga, so don't know how this missed the mark. That's the only thing I can think of. And honestly, if you aren't familiar with the source material, it's not that bad of a sci-fi movie with action and a little bit of a cheesy love story thrown in.

It's completely fine if you did not enjoy it, but I doubt people "missed the mark". It's getting a lot of praise from anime fans that have read the manga and people who haven't alike. The video below pretty much sums up how I felt.
I REALLY hope this film does well enough so we can get a sequel.

[SirCowdog]

It's completely fine if you did not enjoy it, but I doubt people "missed the mark". It's getting a lot of praise from anime fans that have read the manga and people who haven't alike. The video below pretty much sums up how I felt.
I REALLY hope this film does well enough so we can get a sequel.

I mean the movie itself missed the mark.

On the surface it's perfectly fine. It just isn't the same story as the source material. That's why I compared it to the Ghost in the Shell movie in my other post, because it suffered the same fate.

I guess I just really wished they would have had the courage to go R rated and given us the dark, harsh, and violent world that the manga was set in instead of the sunny PG13 movie we actually got.

On top of that, they tried to cram too much into one movie, which further hurt the overall quality. It forced them to cut some prerty important corners, like Hugo's backstory and reason for wanting to go to Zalem, and Gruwishka's(Makaku in the Manga) reasons for being such an a-hole. They also rushed Alita's memories of mars, causing all sorts of problems for future movie content.

[KainneAbsolute]

For good reason. The movie was a TERRIBLE representation of the manga, and a sugar-coated remaster of the Anime/OVA.

It was the same thing that happened to Ghost in the Shell. It looked the part, but the director and producer of these movies clearly didn't understand the source material.

Yeah. Its not like the surveillance of the factories is perfect. Its really loose.

And Iron City in the movie its not so bad to live. In the manga is horrible and depressing. Thats why motorball, the colisseum and I speculate the bounty hunters exists: to free all the tension and violence of its dwellers.

Iam surprised they didnt do the chambers where you can see motorball through the eyes of the competitors. I wanted the scene where the man ask the champion of division 2 to cut his hands.

[SirCowdog]

Yeah. Its not like the surveillance of the factories is perfect. Its really loose.

And Iron City in the movie its not so bad to live. In the manga is horrible and depressing. Thats why motorball, the colisseum and I speculate the bounty hunters exists: to free all the tension and violence of its dwellers.

Iam surprised they didnt do the chambers where you can see motorball through the eyes of the competitors. I wanted the scene where the man ask the champion of division 2 to cut his hands.

They also changed Alita's entire reason for pursuing a Motorball career. Now it's all about revenge and getting to Zalem to fight Nova? Uhg.... How is that going to mesh with Jashugan?

It's a butterfly effect. They changed important things in this first movie that end up having massive repercussions later on. All so they could cut corners and fit a PG13 rating.