The pieces are all in place for Alita: Battle Angel to set up a compelling multi movie series. The Spy Kids Director paired with the Terminator visionary behind the scenes, a story based on a popular Japanese manga series, and a strong visual effects team usually means something special is created and captures the imagination. Alita does set up its world very well. Does it execute its vision? I really don’t want to disappoint Alita’s big emoting eyes so… yes?
Battle Angel takes place in the 27th century. At this point, many cities have been built above the Earth. However, those cities were destroyed by “The Fall” which destroyed all but one final city: Zelem. Under Zelem is Iron City, where a poor populous tries to survive with what’s left of the Earth’s resources. In the garbage dump from Zelem, Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) finds a cyborg with a human brain alive and intact. Ido resurrects her and gives her a new body, naming her Alita (Rosa Salazar). Alita can’t remember anything from her time on Zelem, waiting for her memory to be triggered by events. Once she meets Hugo (Keean Johnson), Alita learns how to play a sport called Motorball, which starts triggering her memory. Those memories lead her on a path to Zelem, which means she has to use the untrustworthy services of Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) and Vector (Mahershala Ali) to try to get up to Zelem, where no one has transferred in over 300 years.
Alita’s world building is the reason to see Battle Angel. The set design is great. The effects designers clearly loved District 9, so the large majestic shots show a giant spaceship looking Zelem stuck above Iron City, occasionally dropping scraps out of the bottom. In one image, you see one of the main themes of the story: the haves and have nots. The original manga series has roots in steampunk, which means Austin Texas is a great place to shoot the scenes in Iron City. Alita’s hometown has a desert feel meaning scarcity of resources, plus a machine like futurism due to the proximity to Zelem, where machine innovation is the key to success. Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron also do a terrific job setting up Iron City’s society. There’s a dog eat dog element to living there, so cops are replaced by bounty hunters, opting for killing instead of imprisoning. Finally, the cyborg creations are clearly the most fun for Rodriguez and Cameron, finding different fun ways to create killing machines using hook hands, buzzsaws, and any insane steampunk cosplay you can think of provides a rich environment for Alita to play and learn in. All the movie has to do is set up a reasonably compelling story and it would be amazing.
The story sets up something all right. Now, if you’re between the ages of 10 and 15, and this is the first sci-fi movie you have ever seen, Alita’s story will totally work for you. The script is working at a pre-teen/early teen level, resorting to many cliches and simplicities to simply move the story forward quickly. The biggest mistake the story makes is withholding information for too long. Dr. Ido and Hugo especially have layers to their characters that take too long to resolve, only for the story to rush the resolution in the final 20 minutes of the movie, which makes several time jumps and forces Alita to have to make lots of life altering decisions. Most importantly, because these decisions are rushed, we don’t believe for one second some of the bonds Alita forms with people in the movie, making the audience more confused than gripped with tension. Alita herself is not as compelling as Rodriguez/Cameron think she is either. The dialogue they give her makes her feel more like an idea than a character. I cringed when a human had to explain to the cyborg Alita that she was the most human person they had ever met. It’s telling that the most compelling characters – Dr. Ido, Chiren, Nova a literal Dog the Bounty Hunter – are the ones that say the least: the script is that juvenile.
I do however hope Alita makes enough money to warrant a sequel. There’s enough world building here to learn the mistakes of this film and rebuild a new story on the fly if there’s a sequel, especially because of the big reveal at the end of the movie. Hopefully Alita’s big eyes get something truly special to behold next time.