Alita: Battle Angel

So I think I was like a lot of people in the world that really had no interest in seeing Alita: Battle Angel in theaters, or at all really. It's not that it really looked bad, it just wasn't anything I was interested in putting any money towards at all. So I ended up watching it on a plane and while there might some benefit to seeing it on an HD screen, I am okay with the fact that I didn't spend any money on this movie.

A quick disclaimer, I know that its a manga and no, I have not read it.

Alita takes place centuries from now in 2500 something and the world has been ravaged by war. The elites live in a floating awesome city that everybody wants to go to while everyone else lives in a crappy city down below, lazily called Iron City.

There a mechanic by the name of Dr. Dyson Ido (played by Christoph Waltz) finds the remains of a cyborg girl an builds a new cyborg body for her. When she wakes up, she has no memory of her previous life and Ido calls her Alita (played by Rosa Salazar).

The majority of the movie is her trying to figure out who she is, discovering the environment she's living in, and unearthing the corruptness of villains in Iron City, mostly in the entrepreneur Vector (played by Mahershala Ali) and Dr. Chiren (played by Jennifer Connelly).

The number one thing I appreciate about this movie is how ham it goes. This movie did not do well at the box office so that adds a level of intrigue to this movie, but I think they thought this was going to be the next big Avatar film and you can tell in the effort they put into it.

Some of it works. The visuals are great and everyone really seems to be committing to their character no matter how small or big the role is.

But the plot is so absurd and it commits so hard that its a little hard to really be invested by the end of the movie because its just so ridiculous and ends up border lining melodrama.

I think a part of it is due to the fact that the movie is adapting a manga. Again, I haven't read the manga, or a lot of manga in general, but I do know that because of the medium, it is allowed to go a couple levels above realism just for the sake of being awesome.

Because of this, the action sequences were really cool. There is an element of this movie that definitely thought they were going to get a sequel, so I don't think it reaches the levels of amazing it could go or wanted to go, but even for this level, its pretty cool in how unique and brutal it can get, especially since the majority of the characters are cyborgs.

The other reason this works so well is because the environment seems lived in and really unique from a lot of other movie universes out there. When I say I haven't read the manga, I don't mean that in a bad way, in fact I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to actually read this manga if I ever found it.

It's a pretty interesting world with its own rules, or systems, and I think I understand why people were so bummed it probably won't get a sequel.

2019 was just a weird year for movies in general. Sure you have movies like Endgame and Rise of Skywalker that everyone is going to see. But I can't think of too many movies that people came out saying I know you haven't heard of this property before, but you have to go see this one.

The top thing about Alita was its uniqueness and just different style in an environment where everything feels very similar and people aren't taking risks. I don't think Alita is a very good movie, but I do like risks like this to be rewarded and bummed when it doesn't. So I have a confusing feeling towards this movie. It's ridiculous and has a lot of issues, but at the same time the ridiculousness paired with the uniqueness is really intriguing and while its not my cup of tea, I would have liked to see where this movie could have gone.

And I think the fact that this review is pretty short says something about how much was actually memorable about this film. I remember cool costumes, cool fight scenes, and how seriously it took itself. Everything else was kind of meh. It was definitely trying, but it just didn't turn that corner to make it really memorable.

But those are my thoughts on Alita: Battle Angel. What did you think? Is there something I'm missing that was super important from the manga or something? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!