Battle Angel Alita leader did Hollywood finally get anime right?
So what's up guys Foxen here!
After the controversial ghost in the shell live action movie last year, Hollywood is
still at it again, but forget about that.
More important was Alita better or worse? If You've been around a while
You heard me bring up Alita quite a few times in the past whenever live action anime comes
up.
So let's dive deep into this.
Could live action anime have a win here?
By the way just a quick disclaimer.
I have not read the original Manga or seeing the anime.
In fact, I didn't even watch any of the trailers for the battle.
Angel Alita..
Alright so getting into the story of Alita for this, I think it's pretty much as you expect.
It starts off with his broken down robot girl being found in the dumpster. Slowly
you get to see a progress from this blank broken girl into this warrior lady.
The setting for Battle Angel Alita is very futuristic type of world 500 years
into the future.
It really reminded me of this weird Combo of terminator mixed with ghost in the shell
with a little bit of Altered carbon and a bunch of YA movies thrown into the pot
somehow is still ends up feeling fresh. For the actual story.
I'm not going to give anything away here, but let's just say that there are some beats
in the story that you're going to call from a mile away.
Although to give the movie credit for every one of those obvious plot points
you do get a nice surprise around the corner.
Some of you will like that.
Some of you will not.
At this point, I should really just say that battle Angel Alita is a mixed bag. For a huge
positive for battle angel
Alita I have to say the world building, and I really cannot emphasize this enough.
I did mention this being some futuristic type of world.
You hear about this huge war that took place hundreds of years ago.
There was a mention of this Mars army.
Most of the world is in this terrible mad max state.
You got a floating city for the rich.
Meanwhile everyone down below lives in this dump.
Yeah, that is a lot and slowly themovie reveals this stuff piece by piece.
Now switch into a negative.
The dialogue in this movie. I just have to admit that a lot of stuff from the villains
and people around Alita isn't bad, but it's also not that great either.
Every now and then you do get some great lines that are dropped.
Although for every one of those there are some low grade lines from the cast, especially
Alita. On the bright side
they do make excellent use of their one f bomb and the bitch line. Switching it up to a positive.
The movie actually taking its time.
I actually had a double check because this movie has a two hour run time.
It really felt like the movie didn't rush through things.
By today's standards
The movie is in long at all, but it didn't actually feel much longer and for me that
was definitely a positive.
It didn't feel really slow.
I was fully immersed in this world and I really didn't want to leave from it.
All right, so switching it up to a negative Alita herself, at least at the beginning,
just putting aside what Alita actually said from the moment that she wakes up, every
single thing that comes out of her mouth sounds extremely forced.
I don't know if the actress was told to do that on purpose, but it almost felt like she
read the line one time and that was it.
I don't know if I just got used to it or Alita got better as
she went along. Thankfully
that's mostly the only at the beginning. Switching it up to a positive, which is really
the Combo of the action, the kills and this anime like experience as you seen them from
the trailers.
There is a ton of action here.
Shout out to the bar scene and also a tell ton of kills. Let's just say that they get
away with a lot of gruesome kills just cause these quote unquote humans are mostly robotic.
Like man, that is a lot of robot mutilation and yes Alita is often on the receiving end
too. For the action itself
It seemed very anime like especially when you have this little girl kicking a lot of
Cyborg ass. A lot of these guys being several times her size.
That was definitely fun to watch.
Next up switching it to a negative, let's just say that a lot of the stuff here in this
movie isn't exactly explained, which I could see this being a problem for a lot of people
and to be fair there is a lot of stuff going on in the background partially due to this
being part of this grander ongoing story.
Even though I do put this as a slight negative for me it actually had a good balance.
Sometimes I do like some explanation, but rather I would like what this movie did, which
would have hints dropped here and there.
Then thinking over it and reaching my own answer for inclusion.
In other words, at least for me, the balance in battle Angel Alita worked. Switching to
a positive
Alita herself
I gotta say that I really liked her character, although sometimes I did find her frustrating.
She really starts off as
this blank slate this very naive little girl. Slowly.
She started learning about this world as you do too alongside her becoming this futuristic
badass in is high tech slum world. Next up a negative for this
let me not go into extreme detail and just say this in battle Angel Alita don't be of a certain
group of people or Cyborg or even 1% men for that matter.
This is definitely a cruel, cruel world.
Next step up positive which is actually the CG in the movie.
I was surprised when I found out that this movie had a $200 million budget.
To be fair, you actually do see that on screen.
I never really noticed a scene where the CG looked low quality and you do see a lot of
the budget in the work in the action scenes which like I mentioned, there are a ton.
My only slight complaint about this is that I wish they had spent like a million less
here and put that into the actual script
instead. I have a couple of highlights in this movie that are just weird, weird stuff
that happens.
For example, and not going into the exact details, but let's just say that Alita
shows her love in this symbolic way. For this scene
I'm like, what the hell are you doing Alita stop it.
You shouldn't be doing that.
If you've seen the movie or we'll see it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Next up, I do have to address the elephant in the room, which is Alita's look.
I'm sure you're wondering about those huge ass eyes of hers.
Is that distracting?
To be honest, I'll just say that you get used to them really quickly.
Although I do have to mention those huge eyes did make Alita
seem a lot younger and perhaps a lot more naive, especially at the beginning.
Some other Times due to those eues Alita just gave off
this is very creepy
look.
It just screamed obsessed girlfriend look. This story for battle Angel Alita feels
like this near perfect foundation as an intro to this world and just something to continue
building on.
So overall, is this a great anime live action movie? To be honest Ithink there's way too
many issues to go there yet.
At least right now for me it's below great but still above
good for me.
I'll just say that if you are at all interested in, I highly recommend checking it out, especially
if you're an anime fan.
However it does this break the curse of anime being made into live action?
For me personally in general, I would still rather not see live action anime, but if we
are going to do it, why not just go the TV route?
Ironically, part of the reason that Alita works is that most people going out to see
the movie never seemed the original.
You don't have that comparison in mind. Either way
At this point Alita is most likely going to bomb.
So I do expect us to set back a lot of live action anime projects.
Movie projects like the live action attack on Titan or my hero academia movie, which
is too bad.
I'm actually ready to return to this world.
Although going back to the Avengers level budget of 200 million Alita is definitely
not making 400 million to break even. For a while this was James Cameron's passion project.
I really just wish that he stopped screwing around with his alien smurf people to have
really given Alita a fighting chance.
I guess my other option is to just check out the Manga.
Have you seen battle Angel Alita?
Did you love it or hate it?
What worked for you and what did it?
If you haven't seen it, are you planning to see Alita now?
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