A Silver Screen Affair

Alita: Battle Angel

Alita : Battle Angel – Plasma Powered Arc Welding

2563 Earth is feeling the fallout of a large scale war known as “The Fall”, but life goes on. In the junkyard metropolis of Iron City, a scientist named Dr. Ido finds a damaged cyborg and gives her the name Alita, in memory of his late daughter. While recuperating, Alita spends much of her time with the neighborhood gang, of which she befriends a guy named Hugo. They play motorball (roller derby where everyone’s a pivot and the “panties” are a ball) together and Hugo shares that he dreams of getting into the sky city above Iron City known as Zalem. Meanwhile, Alita comes to learn that Ido is a Hunter-Warrior (bounty hunter) and of her own fighting skill when she follows him into an ambush one night. This sparks her own desire to become a Hunter-Warrior herself – much to Ido’s chagrin. Naturally , as they spend time together, Hugo and Alita would come to like each other. However, everything would come to a head as their secrets, namely Hugo’s connection to a local “entrepreneur” Mr. Vector, as well as Alita’s past and what that means to certain shadowy figures, come home to roost.

Cast

Alita (Rosa Salazar) – our cyborg protagonist.

Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) – Scientist, doctor, bounty hunter and caretaker for Alita

Hugo (Keean Johnson) – Alita’s friend, turned love interest.

Nurse Gerhad (Idara Victor) – Ido’s assistant.

Tanji (Jorge Lendeborg Jr) – friend and business partner of Hugo’s

Koyomi (Lana Condor) – Hugo and Tanji’s friend.

Chiren (Jennifer Connelley) – Ido’s ex wife and Mr. Vector’s assistant.

Vector (Mahershala Ali) – Local “entrepreneur”. Employs Tanji and Hugo

Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley) – Large cyborg that works with Vector and Chiren.

Desty Nova (Edward Norton)- Zalem scientist able to transfer his consciousness into others. Gives Vector and Chiren their marching orders.

The Gist

My friend turned to me multiple times during and asked me if what was happening on screen was “accurate”. I found myself saying “well, yes and no?” – A LOT. Alita: Battle Angel isn’t 100% accurate to the source material (which I’m going to consider the first manga series for the sake of this article), but that’s to be expected somewhat with the source material. You see, the movie draws heavily from the first two volumes and works in some small elements from the next few following volumes – if not also from the sequel series. Most of the early volumes in the manga are complete story arcs, so if we followed them religiously, we’d have three movies in one. Instead, the movie elects to engage in what I would call arc mixing.

This looks like the Ido and Hugo arcs playing out concurrently with Motorball and Desty Nova being used to help hold the whole thing together.

Truthfully, it all comes together to create a serviceable story. I’m at the point in my media consumption life that I don’t care so much about whether an adaptation is faithful so much as it it’s an enjoyable one – and Alita is definitely an enjoyable one. Being the squishy, flawed human being that I am, though, I did still get a temporary case of the wiggins as I realized that they weren’t going to be 100% accurate to the manga. But once I got over it, I did have a good time.

Alita’s relationship with Ido and Hugo are still as adorable and heartwarming as can be and, considering the fights are a large reason I read the manga, the motorball qualifiers were a welcome set piece.

The acting is good where it counts and Rosa’s Alita does a good job of portraying the wonderment, innocence and optimism of early manga Alita.

There’s definitely a departure from the manga as far as the designs go, but the onscreen designs are varied and eye catching. Furthermore, like Alita’s eyes, they work well together with the rest of the CGI landscape and don’t bother me nearly as much as I thought they would. They look a bit more gritty and less cartoony. The world they inhabit looks like a lived in metropolis with background characters showing various degrees of cybernetic “enhancements”. While the movie itself may not lean so heavily on it, the series as a whole made it clear that many of those enhancements were neither voluntary nor under happy circumstances, really driving home the “high tech, low life” theme that cyberpunk has come to be known for.

So there we have it folks, Hollywood finally did it. They made an anime/manga adaptation that isn’t likely to turn people’s stomachs, manga fan and general populace member alike. I’d implore you to go and see it. We bemoaned Dragonball: Evolution and GITS ‘17 so we owe it to the industry, and ourselves, to let them know when they do it right.

Okay, I tried. I really did. Why in the hell isn’t it just called “Battle Angel Alita”?