Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

59% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 263 reviews)

Runtime: 122 minutes

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez

Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali

From: 20th Century Fox

Who knows, maybe I would think this was a better movie than Green Book...

I am posting this right after the Oscars as I presume people would rush here as soon as the awards ceremony is completed; as an aside, I better make some popcorn as this site and Twitter will have many hot takes the next few hours and I know many are IRATE at what just won Best Picture. I did not see most of the nominees this time but from all the bad buzz, I have to groan that what's apparently Driving Miss Daisy 2018 got the nod. "Vintage Oscars", I say. Anyhow...

Through all the trailers I saw for this movie in the past year (due to the release date being pushed back twice) I was totally meh on the movie as I had never heard of the manga until the film was made and I always noticed that the dialogue in the trailers was laughably cliché and eye-rolling. But, I heard strong reviews, my AMC A-List app will give me a free large beverage because my birthday was earlier this month,and if nothing else I was expecting to enjoy this visually. The viewing was on a Dolby Cinema screen, so I did it big.

The idea of seeing it that way in 3D was intriguing. When Dolby Cinema first started out I had heard the system did not allow for 3D movies, but apparently that was not entirely truthful. Scuttlebutt in a messageboard thread-so this can be taken with a grain of salt-says that AMC's have an exclusive deal with RealD to be the only way to experience that format at their auditoriums, and it requires special permission to have that format be used in Dolby Cinema, as of course Dolby has their own system... plus, special equipment is needed so not all DC's can do that even now. I was also curious as to how it compared to IMAX's system. I can say that it was different being given glasses which set off an alarm if you take them out of the auditorium, but the system does work very well.

I imagine that by now everyone knows the basic plot of how a cyborg girl named Alita is put together by Christoph Waltz and despite being in the junkyard, her core was actually a highly elite weapon and not only does he realize this, but so do the villains in this dystopian 26th century world which is full of robot tech and an Elysium-like world where the common folk live on the ground and the elites live high up in a floating city.

The dialogue isn't always great (although not every line in the trailer made it to the film), at times it looks as if parts of the overstuffed story are missing-an important character does a 180 on a big event and I am not quite sure as to why and the ending doesn't fully resolve the story by any means... yet I can still say that this is fine. Of course the movie looked great visually, and especially so in Dolby 3D. The action is a lot of fun to watch and thank heavens it was shot clearly so you always can follow what is going on. But the biggest asset is the cast, full of famous faces. I could carp about a performance or two but uniformly they were fine; I won't spoil the big names that made cameos. For not being familiar with Rosa Salazar beforehand, she did a great job as the titular Alita; she was mainly motion-captured and yet despite that handicap it was easy to like and root for that character through her journey.

I have no idea if this will ever get a sequel and we'll get a delivery on what was teased at the ending of this, but I was thankful this was better and more appealing to me than the trailers had led on.