Alita: Battle Angel (2019) - Review

I'm honestly amazed that 'Alita: Battle Angel' has even been released. It's a huge, $200 million blockbuster adapting an admittedly niche Manga novel that makes very little effort to "dumb-down" the story or characters for mainstream audiences. As someone unfamiliar with Alita outside of this film, I certainly appreciated how weird and hyper-stylised so many aspects of the film were. The general design work is fantastic all-round, and the story takes some interesting turns as it gradually unfolds. This is definitely an American version of 'Alita', and I'd be interested to know how this compares to the Manga, but it doesn't seem as out-of-place as, say, Scarlett Johansson in 'Ghost in the Shell' (2017). There are a variety of different characters played by a variety of different actors, and nothing at least feels too out-of-place to the uninitiated.

20th Century Fox have been hoping to sell this film as "James Cameron's next big motion-capture blockbuster", and its safe to say that the visual effects work is very strong throughout, it's just that there's a lot of it, and some scenes and moments seem to have had less attention than others. In many scenes, Alita will look as close to photo-real as possible, but towards the end can turn into a CG character in a CG environment with nothing real to interact with. I'm amazed how good Rosa Salazar is in a role that could've easily been so one-note. She embraces the material, and thankfully Alita is a likable and endearing character throughout. So much character is expressed between her performance and the final character rendering in the film that it really helps to enhance the character.

There's an interesting selection of characters in the film, but none of them are particularly memorable. Mahershala Ali is a great actor, but is mostly possessed by another big actor for most of the film (a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo if ever I saw one); while Jennifer Connelly has very little to really work with, and Christoph Waltz plays a father figure to Alita - a role I'd never have pictured Waltz for, but he does help to make the father-daughter scenes work well. All interesting casting decisions, but none of them too memorable in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps they should've given Ali a bit more of his own character to work with, because he's an incredible screen presence.

The film does feel quite messy, and at many points its difficult to tell where this film is actually going. It can feel quite episodic, and many scenes seem to have been cut to try and keep to a good pace: this film is just over two hours long, and packs a hell of a lot in that time. Ultimately the film's ending is where it somewhat falters. A drawn-out emotional moment feels almost completely superfluous, and a repeat of a scene a mere ten minutes earlier, and just looks quite weak compared to the rest of the film. The acting, visual effects, nothing works well and the scene just falters in what it sets out to do. Saying that, the film ends in a potentially interesting place, and the tease for a prospective sequel is more intriguing than most critics have given it credit for. I genuinely hope we'll get to see a follow-up just to see how much further the filmmakers will go with it. 'Alita: Battle Angel' is a flawed film, but a very impressive one nonetheless (I got to see the film in big old IMAX 3D, which was an experience in itself). 7/10