# Alita: Battle Angel Movie Meaning

Pros:
Sweet and very lively main character; high-quality computer graphics; exemplary 3D; excellent fight scenes

Cons:
Softened version of cyberpunk; the film is too cheesy in places; unjustified use of the talent of excellent actors
Genre fantasy, action
Director Robert Rodriguez
Starring Rosa Salazar (Alita), Christoph Waltz (Dr. Dyson Ido), Jennifer Connelly (Dr. Kieren), Mahershala Ali (Vector), Ed Skrein (Zapan), Keean Johnson (Hugo), Michelle Rodriguez (Gelda), etc.
Studios 20th Century Fox, Lightstorm Entertainment
Year of release 2019
Websites IMDb

It was no coincidence that the distributors released Alita: Battle Angel just in time for Valentine's Day. Instead of a dark cyberpunk story filled with hyper-violence and pretentious philosophical reflections, Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron, highlighting the romantic elements of the anime and manga of the same name, turned Alita into a fantasy version of Romeo and Juliet. Well, such a reading also has every right to exist, especially considering the falling in love of our combat cyborg in subsequent volumes of the manga. Moreover, a literal film adaptation of the manga would not even receive a rating of 18+, but some kind of 21+, and it would definitely not be worth going with... [there should be a gender-neutral definition of the subject of a romantic interest].

The original manga Battle Angel Alita, also known as Gunnm (銃夢 Ganmu, literally "Dreams of Guns"), was published in 1990-95. Considered canonical, the first two volumes, in fact, formed the basis of the Hollywood film adaptation, tell a fairly simple story of an amnesiac woman. a cyborg girl who, having become a hunter of criminals, crushes the skulls of bad guys. The author of the manga, Yukito Kishiro, was forced to remake his story to suit the customer’s requirements, so the first two volumes are not at all what the author originally intended. Subsequently, the tone of the story and the main character change, more social and philosophical motives appear in the manga... And more text, because, to be honest, in the first volumes there are often spreads without any lines at all, and the drawing style in them is quite careless.

Actually, the story that Yukito Kishiro wanted to tell from the very beginning starts from the sixth volume of the manga, but he could not finish it. Due to personal reasons, the author abruptly interrupted work on Battle Angel Alita in the ninth volume, finally adding a tearful happy ending. However, this did not stop him from returning to his favorite character six years later, launching a direct sequel to Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, canceling the last chapter and epilogue of the original manga. Last Order was published from 2000 to 2014 and has 15 volumes, versus 9 volumes for Battle Angel Alita. Right now, the continuation of the Battle Angel series Alita: Mars Chronicle (2014–), which already contains six volumes and tells, among other things, about Alita’s childhood, is being released. Taking into account the spin-offs, the manga about Alita and the world of the 26th century has been published almost without interruption for 27 years. There is also a two-part anime, Battle Angel Alita (1993), which is a toned down version of the first two volumes of the manga, with some new characters and storylines.

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Actually, the current Hollywood film adaptation is based more on the anime than on the first two volumes of the manga, although some episodes, the same motorball, are taken from volumes 3-5, and Alita’s memories of her past even refer to books 8-9. The anime itself is a somewhat simplified and lighter version of the manga, with a much lower level of cruelty and violence. In the film version, the amount of blood, brains and guts was completely “twisted” to almost zero, the world of the Landfill itself was made more comfortable for life, and its inhabitants - more humane, in the literal sense of the word. The fact is that in the original manga there are practically no pure people in the Landfill; everyone has one kind of cyber enhancement or another, from a banal replacement of hands to completely artificial bodies. However, I can’t say that this was to the detriment of the film.

So, the middle of the 26th century. The landfill is a city built on the waste products of the last flying city on Earth, Tiferes. All that is in the Landfill is garbage, literally falling from the sky. Life in the city is strictly controlled. Firearms are prohibited, flying is prohibited, and attempts to enter the sky city are strictly prohibited. Dr. Ido runs a clinic for the humans and cyborgs living in the Scrapyard and is looking for parts to repair its inhabitants. During one of these forays, he finds the torso of a cyborg girl with a still working brain, decides to revive her and give her a body. Alita, who received the name of the doctor's deceased daughter (in the manga it was a cat, and the whole story with her daughter looks too sweet), does not remember anything about her past, although her brain still stores the techniques of cyborg martial arts, forgotten three hundred years ago, during the Great war. Alita is a teenage girl who is re-acquainted with the world, with people, looking for her destiny and, of course, falling in love.

Perhaps one of the main differences between the film Alita: Battle Angel and the original manga is the character of Alita. Yes, in the first two volumes she is still a very naive, very correct girl, but overall she has the character of a rebel. She does a lot in defiance of everyone, including her father. By the way, in the original, the relationship between Ido and Alita is not only a father-daughter relationship; the doctor, like Pygmalion, also feels in love with his Galatea (in order to avoid accusations of promoting pedophilia, they decided to remove this line from the film). So, practically nothing remained of Alita’s rebellious character in the Hollywood version. She, like a pioneer or a fan-fiction character, is too positive, too correct, downright a “guest from the future” in a post-apocalyptic world. The only scene in which Alita decides to show herself is a fight in a bar, and it is simply beautiful, although we were clearly missing some characters from the manga, the same Koyomi, who is very important for the plot later.

In general, most of the canonical episodes and items from the manga and anime were transferred to the film very closely to the original. Even Dr. Ido’s ridiculous jet hammer, to put it mildly, the strange design of the administrative robots and Tiferes’ defensive crusher blades that look like they were pulled out of a video game. But Alita’s opponents are rather composite images of all the villains she had to kill over the course of 2,300 pages of the manga.

Initially, James Cameron himself wanted to make a film adaptation of Battle Angel Alita, who had been nurturing this idea for decades, but in the end the maestro, who is now busy with Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, gave up the director's chair to Robert Rodriguez, who ate the dog on spectacular action films. However, Cameron remained the film's producer and screenwriter. And although Rodriguez’s latest works are no longer as impressive as his earlier films, let’s remember at least the very weak Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, we expected explosive action from the author of El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City and Machete, and we got it.

The combat scenes in Alita: Battle Angel are simply excellent. The same bar fight, Ido and Alita’s fight with Gruishka and his gang, motorball scenes. The fight choreography is simply amazing to watch. Additionally, Alita is one of the few films in recent memory that was originally shot in 3D rather than converted after the fact. And you really feel it.

How does the budget invested in computer graphics feel? From the actress Rosa Salazar, who plays the role of Alita, there is almost nothing left in the film except rich facial expressions - she is more like a character in a computer game than a living actor. However, thanks to Salazar’s facial expressions and the efforts of the animators, the heroine turned out to be incredibly lively, pretty and extremely sweet. And although in the commercials it seemed that Alita’s exaggeratedly large eyes would make the character somewhat creepy (reminiscent of the notorious “uncanny valley”), in reality this allegory with the heroine’s youth and naivety is quite appropriate and even gives the cyborg girl additional charm.

The filmmakers managed to bring three Oscar winners into the picture, however, the way the authors used such wealth is somewhat discouraging. And although the incredibly talented Christoph Waltz is trying to extract at least something from his now overly sappy role (minus the romantic line, plus a completely unnecessary line with his wife), he, to be honest, has nothing to play here. As a character, Ido should be developed in the sequel, if one happens, but here he is assigned a very simple function of a father figure. Things are even worse with the characters of Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali. One could do without the first one altogether; it appears out of nowhere and disappears into nowhere. And the second one was turned from an independent and quite interesting hero, acting also in subsequent volumes of the manga, into a strange mobile phone, through which the main villain of the film, Dr. Nova, who remains behind the scenes (again, a character from the later volumes of the manga), communicates with Alita. It's a shame for Connelly and Ali, they really are very good actors and don't deserve to be used as furniture.

However, in the case of Alita: Battle Angel, you can turn a blind eye to problems with casting, crumpled storylines, overly sketchy characters, and the excessive sweetness of some scenes. For the fantastically beautiful picture, excellent action scenes and incredibly sweet heroine, this film can be forgiven for everything. I really want Alita, whose budget exceeded $170 million, to break even, and we would see the continuation of this story. Maybe a little more mature and serious.

# Conclusion:

Colorful, stylish action fantasy with elements of romantic tragedy