Sometime in the mid to late 90s, I was in the local comic book store, and saw the cover art for a manga called “Battle Angel Alita” by Yukito Kishiro. The cover art on the Viz Media Graphic Novel immediately drew me in; a broken mechanical girl with angel wings. I flipped through the pages, and enjoying the art, I added it to my stack of purchases. So began my fanhood for Alita. There was an unremarkable anime movie made, but the comics were still my favorite representation of the character.
There has long been talk of an Alita movie tied to James Cameron, but it had been in pre-production hell for just as long. Cameron, like me, read the manga and fell in love with the story. He bought the rights to make a movie and wrote a script. Cameron had the vision to know that he couldn’t make the movie he wanted with modern technology though, so it was shelved. Finally, with the production of Avatar, Cameron knew that Alita could be produced to match his vision. Unfortunately, with the success of Avatar, James was tied up with the planned sequels, with no breaks to make an Alita movie in the near future, and this is where his friendship with Robert Rodriguez came into play. Friends with Cameron for many years, Rodriguez knew of the Alita movie sitting on the shelf, and wanted a crack at it himself.
Which brings us to now and the release of Alita: Battle Angel. Alita is found in the Scrapyard by Dyson Ido (Daisuke Ido in the manga) as a damaged cyborg body with a human brain in hibernation inside. Ido gives Alita a new body, but when she awakens, she has almost total amnesia. Through the course of the story, she and Ido are targeted for revenge, Alita falls in love, and is faced with hard decisions.
The movie has been described as an adaptation of the first four volumes of the graphic novels, but is really just the first two mashed together, with the Motorball game of the third and fourth novels dropped in briefly. There areentirely new characters, like Jennifer Connely’s Chiren, and some twists on the original plot. Some work well, while others leave me questioning the need. Rose Salazar is wonderful as Alita. Some people will be unsettled by her larger than life CGI eyes, but this is meant to be evocative of the original art, and a manga trope in general. Ed Skrein really manages to bring Zapan to life, and knowing the character’s story arc, I am interested to see if he returns in possible sequels. The movie is left open for sequel territory, especially with five more volumes of graphic novels of the original story, and several volumes of new story that has come out in recent years.
My one complaint is that I feel that they should have stuck with one volume for one movie, at least for the first two movies, but the love arc from the second graphic novel helps to humanize Alita for the viewing audience more than just her being a naïve, amnesiac, young girl…and that’s probably why it was included.
In all, I think it is a good movie, and about as good as an adaptation of a story as you can expect. I couldn’t help but compare the movie to the manga, and I think that keeps me from saying it is a great movie. I have a feeling I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t read themanga first, but such is the case for many things. If you love the source material, a TVor movie adaptation will typically fall short. There are a few exceptions, like season one of Game of Thrones, and I think Alita: Battle Angelis one too.
