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Feb 14, 2019 · Alita: Battle Angel is a futuristic sci-fi adventure that follows a cyborg heroine as she discovers her past and fights for her future. Find out what critics and audiences think of this visually ...
- (331)
- Robert Rodriguez
- PG-13
- Rosa Salazar
Feb 15, 2019 · With so much background and story to cover, maybe “Alita” would have benefitted from a “less is more” approach. But considering its estimated budget of $200 million, “Alita: Battle Angel” is an awe-inspiring jump for the man who first burst onto the film scene with a movie that cost around $7,000. The visual bonanza cooked up by ...
- Robert Rodriguez's latest is an eye-popping spectacle that doesn't quite live up to the iconic manga.
- Alita: Battle Angel Gallery
- Verdict
By William Bibbiani
Updated: Apr 21, 2020 5:42 am
Posted: Feb 13, 2019 8:00 pm
The iconic manga Battle Angel Alita tells a story about the distant future, when a teenaged cyborg is found on a giant scrap heap, and discovers who she is - and who she wants to be - through one amazing action sequence after another. It’s an astounding work of fiction, and it’s now an astounding-looking motion picture, which crams so much plot into one film that there’s practically no room for the actual point.
The film, renamed Alita: Battle Angel, stars Rosa Salazar (Bird Box) as Alita, the amnesiac cyborg who views this dystopian world with wide-eyed wonder. Christoph Waltz co-stars as Ido, the kindly cyborg repairman who repairs Alita and becomes her surrogate father. Ido wants Alita to find her own destiny, free of the baggage that comes with her high-tech body. Nobody seems to know where she came from, why she’s so advanced, and why she’s an expert in a long-lost cyborg martial art.
There’s enough story in Alita: Battle Angel to fill several movies. Over the course of just one film, Alita investigates a serial killer, becomes a bounty hunter, falls in love, joins a deadly professional cyborg sporting league, and uncovers the truth about her existence. Along the way she runs afoul of the sinister Vector (Mahershala Ali) and his scientist Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), who run the “Motorball” races and dabble in kidnapping, mutilation and illegal scrap.
Alita’s relationship with Ido is also emotional and warm, but poor Christoph Waltz gets sidelined with half the film’s exposition, so his character doesn’t get explored very much. He’s Alita’s mentor, father, doctor, professor, and conscience, and that’s a tall order. Fortunately, Waltz plays the part beautifully, and the image of the two-time Oscar-winner wielding a gigantic rocket-powered pickaxe never stops being fun.
Alita: Battle Angel is a major about-face for director Robert Rodriguez, who spent most of his career bucking the studio system in favor of low budget, imaginative independent projects. But despite his renegade attitude, he knows how to make a conventionally satisfying studio film. What’s more, his flair for eccentricity and taste for outlandish action makes Alita feel like an honest attempt to produce something exciting and new, in a climate where many other giant CGI spectacle films often seem homogenized and familiar.
Alita: Battle Angel is Robert Rodriguez’s best film in many years. It’s an ambitious, impressive, visually spectacular production with great performances that make its strange world seem real. It’s a shame that, by trying to adapt as much of the original manga as possible, the filmmakers left out most of the intelligent commentary that made “Alita”...
- William Bibbiani
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Alita: Battle Angel is a tonally chaotic mess. Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4.0 | Sep 1, 2020. Matt Cipolla Film Monthly. Alita's problems overflow when the action tapers, and a lot of this ...
Feb 14, 2019 · Jan 28, 2022. Big eyed fighting girl in the uncanny valley city of the future. There's a much more interesting backstory hinted at, but much like the world building it isn't explored in any satisfying way. Instead we get robot wars fistfights and a cringe love story between a human being and some spare parts in the shape of a pre-pubescent girl.
- (49)
- Robert Rodriguez
- PG-13
- 2 min
8/10. An Above-Average Anime Epic. zardoz-13 6 March 2019. Warning: Spoilers. "Sin City" director Robert Rodriguez's manga-inspired, post-apocalyptic, science fiction, cyberpunk, origin epic "Alita: Battle Angel" is a spectacular, but predictable fantasy extravaganza set in the dystopian future of the 26th century.
Feb 12, 2019 · By Manohla Dargis. Feb. 12, 2019. At one point in “Alita: Battle Angel” — another dystopian fantasy that reminds you of just how visionary the original “Blade Runner” was — the cyborg ...
