*SPOILERS AHEAD
American filmmaker Robert Rodriguez directed the highly anticipated Alita: Battle Angel, which was released on February 14th. Written and produced by James Cameron, both prestigious filmmakers adapted Yukito Kishiro’s Japanese manga series ‘Gunnm’ into this sci-fi blockbuster, which was originally published in the years 1990-1995 in Shueisha’s Business Jump magazine. Cameron spent over a decade trying to visualise and master this project to bring it to the big screen. With movies like Avatar and Titanic behind him, this adaptation had very high expectations from the beginning. Although Cameron handed the role of directing the film to Rodriguez to bring it to life, there was no doubt that this film had the potential for greatness.
Alita: battle angel is set in a post-apocalyptic future, which tells the story of a female cyborg whose half body is discovered in a junkyard by a cybernetics doctor called Doctor Ido who helps rebuild her to her current and big-eyed self. With no memory of her past life, Alita is determined to discover who she is, how she got to Iron city and what part of her past is worth remembering. The two worlds depicted in the movie is Iron city, where Alita is rebuilt by Doctor Ido and Zalem, a floating city in the sky ruled by a mysterious and immortal scientist called Nova. Since Alita was found in the junkyard that is directly connected to the city of Zalem and used as their dumping grounds, it’s Iron city that she must embark on this quest to find her answers and the potential connection she once had with this ‘unreachable’ city.
Alita Is thrown into a world of conflict from the very beginning of the film. First, there’s the toxic relationship between Ido and his ex-wife and now turned rival, Dr Chiren played by Jennifer Connolly. Then there’s the powerful, yet ambiguous character Vector played by Mahershala Ali who works alongside Dr Chiren sponsoring successful motorball players by stealing and killing other cyborgs for their weapons and body parts. Alita’s friend and newfound lover, Hugo is also caught up in his own mess and Alita discovers he’s not as innocent as she thought. As the movie progresses and Alita starts to slowly discover who she is, she is constantly hunted down and set as a target throughout the film. The closer she comes to her destiny, the more danger her life and the people she loves lives are also at risk.
There are a lot of questions that seem to be left out or simply blurred throughout the film. The answers to Alita’s forgotten past seems to be based around a war that took place 300 years previous known as ‘The Fall.’ Once we discover that Alita was built as a warrior and in fact fought in this war, the question of how her body was only discovered 300 years later comes to mind, especially since we find out she is made from one of the most powerful cyborg technologies ever created, surely her body-parts were worth more than being thrown into Iron city's dumping ground? Also, for a movie based around a female protagonist, her relationship and infatuation for Hugo seems out of character in my opinion.
Saying all this, the film definitely gives its viewers and science-fiction post-apocalyptic world fanatics a reason to rate the film in all its glory, action, emotions and visuals, (especially Alita’s CGI bug eyes). We get a sense of what it means to be human in a character as complex and un-human as Alita, by the mere fact that she can connect to humans on a deeper, emotional level and bring about hope to a divided and broken world. Her relationship with her human male friend, Hugo and doctor Ido who she eventually calls father is especially exemplary of this. Although there’s no definite sequel in the mix, casting A-list actor Edward Norton as the villainous Nova gives a sense that there must be and hopefully a sequel worth watching.
WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW: