224.
Alita: Battle Angel
7.5/10
I decided to experience this movie in a new way. I was invited to watch the premiere at a nearby Odeon, which included watching the stars arrive live on a blue carpet, representing Odeon, interviews with the stars and even a pre-filmed questions and answers segment. All in all, I think I was at the cinema for around 4 hours. It was a pretty decent experience to gear the audience up for this. This film has been a long time coming and to put that into perspective, James Cameron had to choose between making this and turning his attention to Avatar. We know the choice he then made, moving this idea onto Robert Rodriguez, taking more of a backseat. This would be the last movie before 20th Century Fox merged with the Powerhouse of Disney. We are about to fitness a few familiar faces of Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, hot property Mahershala Ali and the lead role of Alita played by Rosa Salazar. Let's dip in and see if this was worth the wait from is transformation over from the Manga series.
The Earth is 300 years in the future and after a massive interplanetary way, the world is a complete shit hole. Dr. Dyson Ido, played by Waltz, is going through a scrap yard and after finding a broken down cyborg with an intact human brain, he takes it home, gives it a new body and names it Alita. Growing up, she is treated as a daughter, befriends a fella called Hugo, who isn't far from the love interest in this story and all of this is new as Alita has no memory of her past life.
The Earth is 300 years in the future and after a massive interplanetary way, the world is a complete shit hole. Dr. Dyson Ido, played by Waltz, is going through a scrap yard and after finding a broken down cyborg with an intact human brain, he takes it home, gives it a new body and names it Alita. Growing up, she is treated as a daughter, befriends a fella called Hugo, who isn't far from the love interest in this story and all of this is new as Alita has no memory of her past life.
This is always going to lead somewhere deeper and darker because they made the point of the forgotten memory really early on. In the meantime, Hugo's way of taking Alita's mind off things is to introduce her to Motorball, which is a battle royal tournament, played up in the wealthy sky city of Zalem. Thing is Hugo a little bit of a prick. He steals parts from cyborgs for the tournament owner named Vector, played by Ali.
Now one night, Alita becomes a little too curious and follows Ido as he creeps about, she thinks he is the one stealing cyborg parts. Once she sees he is being attacked, she instinctively fights back to protect him, kicked ass and making one retreat underground. Ido reveals himself to be a 'Hunter-Warrior'. Altia believes that if she carries on fighting, it may help her remember who is actually is. The cyborg that retreated heads off to Vector's place to be fixed by Dr. Chiren, the estranged wife of Ido. Keeping up? Alita can't help but wander off and in a crashed ship, finds a crazy cool cyborg body that she wants to use. Ido recognizes this as a berserker body, an army trooper from Mars during the great war. Just as a standard spoilt brat, Alita storms off and takes matters into her own hands. She signs up to be a Hunter-Warrior, then moves onto recruit people in a seedy bar to attack the Cyborg from earlier. Zapan, another bounty hunter, provokes Alita and she kicks the shit out of him. Before she knows it, the cyborg she's been looking to fight shows up, upgraded and ready for battle. She ends up being cut into pieces but not before putting up a fight and even with just a torso, one arm and a plucky attitude, she still manages to get a decent blow to the guys head.
Now one night, Alita becomes a little too curious and follows Ido as he creeps about, she thinks he is the one stealing cyborg parts. Once she sees he is being attacked, she instinctively fights back to protect him, kicked ass and making one retreat underground. Ido reveals himself to be a 'Hunter-Warrior'. Altia believes that if she carries on fighting, it may help her remember who is actually is. The cyborg that retreated heads off to Vector's place to be fixed by Dr. Chiren, the estranged wife of Ido. Keeping up? Alita can't help but wander off and in a crashed ship, finds a crazy cool cyborg body that she wants to use. Ido recognizes this as a berserker body, an army trooper from Mars during the great war. Just as a standard spoilt brat, Alita storms off and takes matters into her own hands. She signs up to be a Hunter-Warrior, then moves onto recruit people in a seedy bar to attack the Cyborg from earlier. Zapan, another bounty hunter, provokes Alita and she kicks the shit out of him. Before she knows it, the cyborg she's been looking to fight shows up, upgraded and ready for battle. She ends up being cut into pieces but not before putting up a fight and even with just a torso, one arm and a plucky attitude, she still manages to get a decent blow to the guys head.
With an 'F Bomb' and stab to the eye, she is quickly helped by Ido and Hugo, along with a fellow hunter she is carried out, with Ido apologising for putting her into the situation and finally putting her body into the berserker armour.
Having now fallen in love with Hugo, Alita wants to earn the money to be able to send him up to Zalem. She has a trial in Motorball, hoping for the prize money but things don't go to plan. With Hugo having seconds thoughts about his secret job, he decides to quit but Zapan is back, killing the cyborg stealers and the cyborg, framing Hugo along the way. Now Zapan is being sent by a higher power than Vector. Someone called Nova fleets in and out of peoples bodies. He seems a very high society figure from Zalem, but we are yet to meet them in person. With Hugo begging Alita for help, she leaves mid-battle and goes to save him from Zapan. This evil cyborg mortally wounds the boy but Dr. Chiren appears from nowhere and offers to attach Hugo's head to Alita's life support. Zapan is watching on a sees through the trick and still attempts to stop Alita. He wants the bounty that has been placed on Hugo but he guards stop him, leading to Alita stealing his blade that she has long wanted and slicing off half of his face.
Having now fallen in love with Hugo, Alita wants to earn the money to be able to send him up to Zalem. She has a trial in Motorball, hoping for the prize money but things don't go to plan. With Hugo having seconds thoughts about his secret job, he decides to quit but Zapan is back, killing the cyborg stealers and the cyborg, framing Hugo along the way. Now Zapan is being sent by a higher power than Vector. Someone called Nova fleets in and out of peoples bodies. He seems a very high society figure from Zalem, but we are yet to meet them in person. With Hugo begging Alita for help, she leaves mid-battle and goes to save him from Zapan. This evil cyborg mortally wounds the boy but Dr. Chiren appears from nowhere and offers to attach Hugo's head to Alita's life support. Zapan is watching on a sees through the trick and still attempts to stop Alita. He wants the bounty that has been placed on Hugo but he guards stop him, leading to Alita stealing his blade that she has long wanted and slicing off half of his face.
Hugo was always promised by Vector that he would get him up to Zalem. Ido, who has now attached Hugo to a cyborg body, reveals that this was always a lie. Most of the background and stories in this move tends to be a lie. The only way to get up to Zalem is too be a Motorball champion. On finding this out, Alita loses her shit once again and heads to the factory owned by Vector to confront his lies. By this time, Chiren is in a few cases as she has been harvested for her organs. Vector summons that everlasting Cyborg from the beginning named Grewishka but Alita's new body now makes easy work of him. She forces Nova to come to her through Vector and after this superior figure threatens her family and friends, she fatally stabs Vector.
Returning home, Hugo has left to climb one of the cargo tubes to Zalem and after a quick chat, Alita convinces him to come back. This doesn't exactly go to plan though. Defense rings slice the boy in half. She tries to grab him as he falls but his arm starts to break off and after a thank you, he slips below the clouds.
The movie ends after moving months into the future. Alita is now the star of Motorball, looking to make her way up to Zalem the only way she knows how. She wins the latest race, pointing her sword towards Zalem. Above, we finally get a glimpse of the onlooking Nova and with a smirk on his face, we see it's, surely it's not, yep that's Edward fucking Norton. Where'd he come from?!
This movie had many good points but it didn't go without some bad features too. From the first trailer, the graphics and idea of this movie had drawn me in. It looked beautiful and sometimes this means that the rest of the movie suffers if all of the eggs are chucked into one basket. It lived up to all expectations and watching the movie in 3D only enhanced this. The story itself was intriguing and stayed that way until the end. There were a couple of twists and turns and even if you could guess that characters were going to switch sides for one reason or another, it was still cool when this came to fruition. A major downfall was that it seemed to be too much of a story. There was a lot of fit into two hours and this felt rushed at times, with too many side stories taking place. If you missed one thing by taking a toilet break, you may have been buggered to catch up for the next scene. Finally the acting, we know Waltz is going to be cracking and this was no different. Playing the protective father role before knowing this was a lost girl who needed answers. Moving onto Salazar, mind the pun but the acting was a little robotic. Now I don't know if this was intentional and I'd like to think it was, otherwise it was a little awkward. The movie ends with the potential of a sequel but with the underwhelming success of the first installment, unfortunately, I don't know if it will happen. The movie made a decent wedge of cash but will the outcry be there from the fans?
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