Much like The Meg, I’m just amazed that this movie finally exists. Based on the manga (Japanese comic book), James Cameron bought the rights to make a Battle Angel film back in 1998, 20th Century Fox registered domain names for the film in 2000 and the movie was officially announced in 2003 with Cameron set to direct. The film was repeatedly delayed as Cameron decided to spend the rest of his life making Avatar movies until directing duties were handed over to Robert Rodriguez in 2016 with Cameron still attached as a producer. The film was supposed to come out last summer, then was delayed to Christmas and then finally released on Valentine’s Day, making it the perfect gift for that special someone that likes mediocre science fiction films.
It’s hundreds of years in the future and a doctor (played by Christoph Waltz) finds a robot (played by Rosa Salazar), repairs it and names it Alita. She makes some friends, learns to play a sport called motorball, gets a boyfriend (who I guess doesn’t mind fucking metal) and finds out that she was once a warrior in the Great War that decimated the world. Presumably, this war was fought by somebody over something. Anyway, there is a floating city in the sky (not sure why) that everyone wants to get into (not sure why) and the motorball champion gets to go up there. Because that’s a reasonable system of government.
This feels like a prequel to a movie that doesn’t exist. I never read the manga and the film seems to assume that I have, as pretty major plot points (such as who people are and what they do) are given little explanation. I only know who the villain is because the movie tells me that he’s a villain, but I don’t see why he’s a villain. At one point, his assistant (?) quits and says she “can’t do this anymore.” Do what anymore? What the fuck do you people do? Alita becomes a hunter-killer (basically a government-sanctioned bounty hunter) and I still don’t understand what they are supposed to be hunting and killing. Several people/robots are out to kill Alita and I’m not sure why. I couldn’t tell when the film was nearing the end because there isn’t an arc to it and it didn’t feel like it was going anywhere (and it didn’t).
Alita feels like the opening village in a role-playing game: you find some items, learn the basics of fighting, get a hint of the broader story and then set off on the real adventure. Problem is that Alita never gets out of that opening village. The filmmakers made two assumptions here. First, they assumed that people would have some familiarity with the source material and, therefore, major parts of the story wouldn’t require explanation. Second, they assumed that this would be the first film in a series. Well, I don’t know shit about the source material and, judging by the box office, we are never getting a sequel to this. So instead of just making a solid, self-contained film and hoping for the best, we now have a movie that is basically just a two-hour setup for a series that we will probably never see. The very end even reveals a big-name actor that would be the villain in Alita 2. I’m sure he will still get a paycheck for the sequel that won’t get made while I won’t be reimbursed for paying to see a setup for the film that won’t exist. Alright, I have an A-List pass, but I paid for the Junior Mints and Icee.
That being said, I didn’t hate this movie. Unlike other big-budget movies where I had no idea what was going on (Fantastic Beasts, Mortal Engines and Warcraft come to mind), at least I wasn’t bored by this. The film looks incredible and I was honestly not looking forward to it because of the heavy use of computer effects. But I have to admit, the effects and the world of the film look gorgeous. Even Alita’s big-eyed look, something that was the source of much derision from the trailers, looks far better than I expected it to. The performances are also solid. Waltz is a great actor and Salazar makes Alita surprisingly endearing considering that she is acting under a cloak of computer effects. Given the performances and the care that went into creating this world, I just wish that the script actually went somewhere and told me what the fuck was happening.
Considering the 21 years that it took to get made, Alita is a disappointment. But it’s also not without some merit. Watching Alita is like talking to a really pretty, stupid girl. She never quite manages to make a coherent point, goes on and on and you fade in and out of listening. But you don’t walk away because she’s nice to look at and you keep hoping that she’ll eventually say something resembling a rational thought. Then she stops and you realize that you just spent two hours hearing about the mittens that she bought for her cat and….I lost my train of thought. Whatever. That’s Alita.
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