- [Jacki] Alita: Battle Angel is
Robert Rodriguez's best film in many years.
It's an ambitious, impressive, visually spectacular
production with great performances
that make a strange world seem real.
It's a shame that by trying to adapt
as much of the original manga as possible,
the filmmakers left out most of the intelligent commentary
that made Alita so powerful in the first place.
This is a classic story.
And it's been turned into a film that's merely
very entertaining.
(dramatic music)
The story, set in the distant future,
follows a teenage cyborg
who is found in a giant scrap heap
and discovers who she is
and who she wants to be
through one amazing action sequence after another.
There's enough story in Alita: Battle Angel
to fill several movies.
Over the course of just one film,
Alita investigates a serial killer,
becomes a bounty hunter,
falls in love,
joins a deadly professional cyborg sporting league,
and uncovers the truth about her existence.
Along the way, she runs afoul of the sinister Vector
and his scientist Chiren,
who run the motorball races
and dable in kidnapping, mutilation, and illegal scrap.
- (grunting)
- [Jacki] These events cover roughly
the first four volumes of the manga.
And although the filmmakers tried to fit
all those pieces together,
the film has a very episodic structure.
It's almost like binging the first third of a TV series
and then stopping suddenly.
It crams so much plot into one film
that there's practically no room for the actual point.
The existential crisis at the center of the original story
in which Alita struggles to figure out who she is
and where she comes from
gets resolved quickly because
everything has to be revealed in exposition dumps
in order to get the next amazing action sequence.
- (grunting)
- [Jacki] So the film plays less like powerful sci-fi story
and more like a kick-butt, Hollywood blockbuster.
Although Alita: Battle Angel falls short
of its intelligent, philosophical source material,
it's still an incredible production.
This is a vibrant, detailed world of cybernetic citizens
in fascinating locations,
simultaneously realistic and completely over the top.
It's a kind of wonderment that makes movies so magical
in the first place.
You are transported to another incredible landscape,
full of bizarre and trigi-minutia.
Alita is a wonder to behold.
(thump)
And at the center of it all,
Rosa Salazar gives a phenomenal performance as Alita.
Though assisted by CGI limbs and artificially enhanced eyes,
she imbues Alita in warmth and humanity.
Alita's relationship with her father figure, Ido
is also emotional and warm.
But poor Christoph Waltz gets sidelined
with half the films exposition.
So his character doesn't get explored very much.
Fortunately, Waltz plays the part beautifully.
And the image of the two-time Oscar winner
wielding a gigantic rocket-powered pickax
never stops being fun.
- Alita, run!
- [Jacki] Director Robert Rodriguez's flare for eccentricity
and taste for outlandish action
makes Alita feel like an honest attempt
to produce something exciting and new.
In a climate where many giant CGI spectacle films
often seem homogenized and familiar.
(dramatic music)
Although Alita: Battle Angel doesn't reach the artistic
emotional and thematic level of the manga,
it's a noble attempt to translate Yukito Kishiro's work
into a cinematic medium.
In filmmakers zeal to put as much of the manga
on screen as possible,
they left out the quieter moments
that gave all these amazing incidents a greater meaning.
But everything that did make it into the movie,
is at least incredibly cool.
That's what we thought of Alita: Battle Angel.
For more movie reviews,
check out what we thought of the Lego Movie 2
and Glass.
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