Alita: Battle Angel, A Manga Adaptation That Doesn't Suck

Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro, also known as Gunnm (Gun Dream), was one of my early exposures to the cyberpunk genre and at that time in my teens, I fell in love with the characters, the world they inhabited, and to be honest this manga is probably responsible for much of my dark humor. When I heard that they were making a live-action adaptation, I had a mixed reaction. In the wake of the botched Ghost in the Shell live-action adaptation, I felt a surge of fear rise in me that this movie would do something similar to a story that I love at least as much as GITS. Out of the larger context of the film, Alita’s CG rendered eyes are so solidly in the uncanny valley that it probably turned off a portion of the audience of this film before it even got its feet. I also knew that James Cameron has been trying to make this movie for years, and his series Dark Angel has clear references to Battle Angel Alita. James Cameron has been involved in some of the best cyberpunk movies such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and Aliens that defined some of the most powerful female archetypes in the cyberpunk canon – Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. He continues this tradition with Alita. So, I went in with an open mind and low expectations after finding my way into a pre-screening of the movie. In the interest of keeping this review free of spoilers, I am going to stick to the official synopsis of the film. We’ll be doing a more in-depth review once the film is released on February 14th, 2019:

From visionary filmmakers James Cameron (AVATAR) and Robert Rodriguez (SIN CITY), comes ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, an epic adventure of hope and empowerment. When Alita (Rosa Salazar) awakens with no memory of who she is in a future world she does not recognize, she is taken in by Ido (Christoph Waltz), a compassionate doctor who realizes that somewhere in this abandoned cyborg shell is the heart and soul of a young woman with an extraordinary past. As Alita learns to navigate her new life and the treacherous streets of Iron City, Ido tries to shield her from her mysterious history while her street-smart new friend Hugo (Keean Johnson) offers instead to help trigger her memories. But it is only when the deadly and corrupt forces that run the city come after Alita that she discovers a clue to her past – she has unique fighting abilities that those in power will stop at nothing to control. If she can stay out of their grasp, she could be the key to saving her friends, her family and the world she’s grown to love.

I’d like to start by saying that the movie exceeded my expectations, but as is also to be expected, it had some things worth being critical about. The casting was excellent for this film, and each of the actors really seemed to capture the characters they represented. Rosa Salazar and Christoph Waltz, in particular, managed to maintain the chemistry necessary to make their important relationship in the film feel believable. One of the things that makes Kishiro’s manga so compelling is the relationships between the characters, and that was not lost here. The first story arc is really about Alita transitioning from innocence to one of extreme worldliness. This plays out as a coming of age tale, filled with love, drama, and conflict. Lots of conflict. The previous anime adaptation perhaps did a better job of keeping the story tight, but skipped many of the exciting elements of the manga in the process, such as Motorball. The inclusion of this violent sport, inspired by Norman Jewison’s Rollerball, was well executed and invigorating. But that brings me to one of my issues with the film, violence. Alita: Battle Angel is violent, but it is the kind of PG-13 action movie violence that often seems to be without consequence. In the manga and anime adaptation, this violence is on full gory display. It may seem to be a small quibble, but this removes much of the emotional content of these moments. When Alita is spurred to fight an overwhelming enemy, she does so because of the atrocities that enemy has committed, and we don’t see those atrocities. No brain eating. No visceral killings. Nothing.

The world the characters inhabit though, does have that visceral, dirty, lived in quality that informs much of cyberpunk’s feel. Gibson said it well:

I also wanted science fiction to be more naturalistic. There had been a poverty of description in much of it. The technology depicted was so slick and clean that it was practically invisible. What would any given SF favorite look like if we could crank up the resolution? As it was then, much of it was like video games before the invention of fractal dirt. I wanted to see dirt in the corners.

Alita: Battle Angel achieves this with fantastic practical sets. There’s CG in this movie, and some of it obvious, but they did a good job of reconciling it. It blends together well. I was never thrown out of the movie by shoddy CG work, which has happened to me a lot recently with science fiction blockbusters coming out of Hollywood. James Cameron said in the post-screening interview that they chose to set the story in South America, apparently where Iron City is located, because it is on the equator where a Space Elevator would need to be built. A minor detail that doesn’t come in the film, but is heavily rooted in the story’s mythology. This choice also seems to have informed the construction of the city. This landscape is also a wonderful space to show off some parkour. As an avid fan of the parkour discipline, this made me a bit giddy and it played so well with everything else in the story that it certainly didn’t feel forced.

Now, let’s talk about stories for a moment. As a writer, I often find my mind snagging on poor storytelling and sadly, there is some of that in this film. Show, don’t tell. This is a central maxim of good writing. There are so many infodumps in this film, but there really didn’t need to be. The world is on full display, it shows much of the context that is needed, and there are flashback sequences that fill in some of what we need to know too. I think this stems for Hollywood’s fear that someone, somewhere won’t understand the film and it will affect their bottom-line. But, please just let our movies be more intelligent. Please? Let’s talk about sequels. Every movie seems to need to setup its sequel at its conclusion and this probably also stems from the bottom-line problem. They want to keep making these movies to keep making those monies. The issue with this from a storytelling perspective though, is that it leaves the film often feeling unfinished. Alita: Battle Angel really could have benefited from a bit more of an epilogue style resolution, rather than the call to action that it ends on. The inclusion of the series’ major villain in an illusive manner would have been enough to secure future films, so it felt a bit tacked on and unnecessary.

Was Alita: Battle Angel a perfect Gunnm movie? No, but it did exceed my expectations. It’s a good addition to an already strong and wonderful franchise that should get more love than it does. And it does it while remaining faithful to the spirit of the source material, if not to the letter and panel. If you enjoy Battle Angel Alita, and aren’t expecting a panel by panel adaptation from the manga, enjoy cyberpunk, or simply enjoy good science fiction, then you won’t go wrong with Alita: Battle Angel.

Alita: Battle Angel – 8/10

If you’d like to brush up on the manga before watching the film, Kodasha has published some fantastic new hardcovers of the original run. You can find them here.

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