How Do You Solve a Problem Like Alita?

If James Cameron is to be believed, the technology that he pioneered to create Avatar was so that he could make Alita: Battle Angel, based off the popular manga (Japanese comic) series Gunm (Alita: Battle Angel is its subtitle). However, Avatar got too big, and now the 800 sequels that he is writing and directing are taking up all his time, so he handed the job over to Robert Rodriguez. Who I will say did a commendable job, but the movie has its flaws.

Alita: Battle Angel is about a young cyborg (Rosa Salazar) that is pulled out of a trash heap by an old scientist/doctor named Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz). She doesn’t know who she is, or why she knows how to fight so well, but she is determined to find out, and maybe kick a little cyborg butt along the way.

Apparently, Rodriguez needed to comb through 600 pages of Cameron’s notes to turn Alita in to a shoot-able script. It suffers from being chopped down. There is a forgettable and pointless boyfriend (Keean Johnson), and it doesn’t have a complete story arc. The movie establishes Alita in the world and then gives her an objective. Then it ends. Fans have said this movie is true to the source material, and that makes sense, establishing the world, the characters, and the rules are usually what volume one of any comic books series is for, but I don’t think it works well for a movie.

Those two issues aside, the rest of the movie is pretty good. The cast is fantastic. I mean it has Christoph Waltz, Mahershala Ali, and Jennifer Connelly. It also has whatever a Keean Johnson is, but it makes up for that with a Casper Van Dien. Rosa Salazar as the star is more than able to hold her own with all that talent, and it looks like she will have a bright future, but the real star of a James Cameron movie is always the effects, and Alita: Battle Angel has them in spades.

Everywhere you look there is something cool to see in Alita. It is full of awesome moments, and I am sure that it will end up in a lot of Blu-Ray collections so people can show off the advanced features of their TVs. It does fall in to uncanny valley at times, but it is mostly able suspend your disbelief.

Alita: Battle Angel is a fine opening movie to a series, but the problem is that we have no idea if Alita 2 is going to happen. It was an expensive movie to make, and its returns have so far been the minimum to show a profit. Plus, Disney is in the process of gobbling up Fox, so Alita might end up back on the trash heap. Its best hope is that James Cameron wants it to happen, and James Cameron usually gets what he wants. As it stands by itself, it is a passible action movie, with great special effects. I had fun, but don’t expect Alita to be a game changer.

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