Alita Battle Angel

Alita Battle Angel is the latest anime inspired flick to hit the big screen. Its an adaptation of the 1990s manga Gunnm, also known as Battle Angel Alita. Directed by Robert Rodriquez, written by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis, and produced by Cameron and Jon Landau. As you can see this is a multi-million dollar movie with James Cameron [of Avatar fame] involved. 

Alita Battle Angel reminds you of a lot of things. Avatar because Alita is acted out using a sensor capture suit, with big wide-eyed anime eyes, complete with a cyborg body, which is totally Ghost in the Shell. The actual city that the movie takes place in, Iron City is complete with neon signs, multilingual people, and different races. Very reminiscent of Blade Runner. Those are great things to be reminded of. 

Alita is found in the scrapyard by a paternal scientist named Ido, who gives her a cybernetic body that he was planning on using for his daughter [not weird at all!]. Alita is mostly cyborg but she has a human brain intact, giving her emotions. Hence, she's a lot like a teenage girl at first and gets a teenage boyfriend, who turns out to be a bad guy. Turns out this guy is apart of a youth gang that hijacks cyborgs and steals their parts, while they're still alive. Then his gang sells the parts to Vector [a guy who gets his fashion sense from the Matrix], in what they believe is the only chance to get to the utopian city Zolumn in the sky above Iron City. Sound convoluted yet? It is.

However, it is not the razor-blade addled cyborg fights or the intense violence of Motorball [basically death race, a futuristic sport where you throw a ball and try to kill your opponents, while racing on motorized roller blades]. Nor is it the fact that Alita learns that she was an ancient weapon used some 300 years ago in some battle, possibly fighting to destroy Zolumn [again convoluted]. 

The thing that makes this movie good, maybe even memorable for a few months [for me at least] is the sheer emotional appeal of this cyborg girl. Some people would find the emotional scenes in this movie to be corny. I did not. I was moved when Alita was trying to justify herself to her boyfriend, only for him to respond, "You're the most human person I've ever met." Their love was real in that scene. That shows that even a cyborg girl is capable of loving, and of being loved back. Very powerful indeed. 

Another characteristic moment was when she was talking to the boyfriend about going to Zolumn. She says, "I'll do anything to get you to Zolumn. I'll give you my heart. It's so powerful it can power the city for a whole year!" Then the boyfriend responds, saying "I can't do that to you. You can't just give people things. You can't be so naive." And the reality is that Alita is quite naive, she's basically like a teenage girl. 

The climax of the movie is when the love interest dies, killed by an unknown villain in Zolumn, [who like a characteristic anime character wears some cyberpunk googles that look really cool]. At some point Alita finds her 300 year old Erhm bodysuit and she discovers that she's a Battle Angel, an ancient weapon, which is the reason why she was able to beat the crap out of Hunter Warriors, cyborgs who do the policing in Iron City. The new suit has bigger breasts and a small waist. There's something of a feminist affect in Alita Battle Angel but for whom, and why? I can't really say. Some scenes have feminist overtones. Like when Alita beats up everyone in the Hunter Warrior bar and when her boyfriend says not to challenge them she says, "I'm gonna need you to step back." As if men should sometimes take a step back from women, that kind of thing. But the fact that her body suit is sexy and sleek, with the 'ideal' feminine traits, I think that is something purely for the male fanboy audience. Of which I am apart of [lol]. The one thing that I liked regarding Alita's physical appearance was her big anime eyes that never seemed to close, and that seemed to change during emotional scenes. I think they did a great job with those eyes. You can see Alita's soul through her eyes. However, I can also see the eyes in a negative sexual sense. Someone might say she looks like a sex doll. Or something.

Alita becomes a Hunter Warrior and a pro Motorball player in her attempt to get to Zolumn, to discover more about the world, and herself, I presume. The movie ends much better than it starts, on a cliffhanger. Rodriquez and Cameron believed that the world would catch Alita fever. While I don't see that being the case [most of my friends haven't seen it], I do think they had something here with this movie. It may not even be as good as Ghost in the Shell [it lacks the maturity that Ghost in the Shell had] but I think that the little bit of pathos utilized here was good enough for me. However, I'm a fanboy that has watched years and years of anime, so I'm a bit biased. 

I'll definitely watch the anime version sometime soon.