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REVIEW: Alita: Battle Angel

The film is alright, about a strong a 6/10. Almost the best US life action adaptation of manga/anime to date but i was never bored with deliberately trashy Death Note, so it still somehow takes that "crown". Cameron ultimately sunk too much money into this project over 2 decades to do an actual adaption at this point. This film could first of all loose about 30 minutes and don´t get me started on the changes they made to Alita´s adoptive father Ido to make him more relatable. Basically everyone got reduced to a cliche. Gone is the R-rated content, the moral ambiguity, the slow roll out of the lore and so on. Everything is spoon fed and over explained to guarantee that every single market and demographic imaginable can follow along. The endless expositions is rather clunk too. The same goes to the occasionally bewildering sequel/prequel hooks. The strong visuals and some of the performances ultimately save the film, as a lot of passion went into this production. The often complex choreography and the mo-capped facial expression stand out too. The films further managed to nail the manga´s ultra detailed and out there look. Alita: Battle Angel is obviously twice the film Ghost in the Shell 2017 (the horror) or Fist of the North Star 1995 (shudder) are, so the standards for US adaptation are clearly moving forward but don´t expect anything more than a sub-PG-13 B-movie with a 200 mil budget.
The classic manga frankly deserves better and i say that as a fan of the adult targeted Rodriguez films. I will continue to wait for at least a 26 episode anime that adapts the original 9 volumes run. This film is a solid stop gat to that day but i don´t think that anyone will cry out for the full trilogy the producer keeps bringing up. I would watch a less cookie cutter and edgier sequel though. Especially if the bloated budget get´s slashed in half to reduce the bloated scope.

pretty good review for a film that seems to have a lukewarm reception at best. that being said, i made up my mind a long time ago - i am not supporting this film financially. hollywood is nothing but poison for anime. i'd rather they keep their hands off. not that that will ever happen, but i'm content enough knowing i didn't waste money encouraging it.

Had a chance to see the movie in theaters yesterday. Could certainly see that there was effort put into maintaining as much of the manga's story and atmospheric elements as possible compared to past Western adaptations of Japanese manga/ anime. Do have a few issues with it though...

spoiler[It felt like things in the scrapyards for the Alita movie were a bit more stable for the inhabitants compared to the manga. For instance in one scene, Alita and a number of the locals were happily playing a game of motorball in the streets. This is quite a contrast from the manga where things were more bleak and people are scraping by to live, while dealing with rampant crime.]

spoiler[
Was not a fan of the movie creating a romance between Hugo and Alita. The chemistry buildup felt too much like a puppy-love teen romance played up in many Western films and deviates too greatly from the manga as Hugo was too glued on his goal to make it to Zalam and Alita was the only one with any inclinations of romance for him.]

spoiler[
The tease at a possible sequel with the open-ended ending seems a bit too ambitious at this point. Granted, the film was a love project of James Cameron's that he wanted to get off the ground for years and it shows with the amount of effort he put into keeping the film as faithful to its source material as possible. But whether or not a sequel happens will come down to how much money the film makes in theaters and how willing 20th Century Fox would be to fund another Alita project.
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I'm actually impressed that this film did well despite that Cameron didn't direct but supervised. But good to see. I do need to take a look at the OVA, manga and the movie. So people really need to go out and spend some money to make this film big so they can make the sequel.

But great job.