Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel Story: Alita is brought back to life in a post-apocalyptic future, and must learn to survive in a world ravaged by war where the powerful prey on the weak. Alita: Battle Angel Review: Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) is a cyber-surgeon who finds a discarded female cyborg shell in a junkyard. When he restores her, it becomes quickly evident that she’s no ordinary machine. Alita, as he names her, has an innate child-like curiosity. She quickly learns to adapt to the harsh world around her. Along the way she also discovers her history and the real power she wields as she finds her place in a future that makes a clear distinction between the haves & have-nots. To say that producer James Cameron is instrumental in creating a compelling post-apocalyptic future should come as no surprise from the man who knows a thing or two about killer robots. But Cameron and director Robert Rodriguez are also known to pay a lot of attention to a film’s plot; both proving their respective abilities to flesh out intriguing characters and using emotionally driven story-telling to power action sequences. Beyond the technical superiority expected from a film that has Cameron attached to it, the emotional heft of ‘Alita: Battle Angel' comes from a connection to the characters. A lot has been said about the lead’s anime-inspired eyes. While they might be an acquired taste, there are many compelling reasons to get lost in them. Rodriguez ensures that Alita is the embodiment of the adage – the eyes are the windows to the soul. Alita is an old soul, and she draws you into her self-discovery. Rosa Salazar brings oodles of charm and conviction to make Alita a fully-realised CGI persona. Christoph Waltz is perfectly cast as her father-figure, and their relationship anchors the plot as the set-pieces unfold around them. The other cyborg figures played by Ed Skrein, Eiza Gonzalez and Jackie Earle Haley add to the deadly mix to make for thrilling fight scenes. However, the considerable talents of Mahershala Ali & Jennifer Connelly are largely wasted. The biggest problem with ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ is that it resorts to 'origin' tropes. Although it soars leaps and bounds in the technical department, it's hard to shake off the feeling that we're all too familiar with this story. There’s also a completely unnecessary romantic angle that the film could have done without. While Rodriguez and Cameron push the boundaries of computer wizardry, they choose to follow the storytelling textbook, so whether they succeed in breaking the curse of the live-action anime adaptation is up for debate. That aside, ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ is another testament to the power of big-screen IMAX 3D extravaganzas even though there are no great surprises in its ‘last-of-her-kind’ narrative.

When technology, animatronics means creativity… the directors and creators always want to travel that extra mile to give something that real life movies are unable to do so. Alita is one such ambitious project, but in terms to give a fitting experience, seems the makers lost track and veered from the original play. It's a coming-of-age melodrama about young love in the post-apocalyptic future, centering on a young woman called Alita with “the face of an angel and a body built for battle”, and involving plenty of human-slash-cyborg martial arts. The story begins with cyber-surgeon Doctor Ido (Christoph Waltz), picking over an enormous junkyard that we learn is full of the detritus left by the war known as The Fall, which took place some 300 years before. This conflict left Iron City as a messed up dystopia overshadowed (literally) by a floating city above it – an ideal lifestyle and living that the citizens of Iron City dream of, and frequently bargain to gain access to with desperate measures. In the heap of trash, Ido finds the still living core of a young cyborg woman with a human brain, and takes her back to the surgery he uses to perform repairs. Here he gives Alita a whole new body, but when she wakes she can’t remember who she is, or why. As predictable it could be, she’s an absolute expert in the legendary but now extinct martial art, Panzer Kunst… The year, is 2563 and so the apocalypse is further away, so thats way into the future. Alita his latest creation, a girlishly slight but steely fusion of flesh and wires who awakens with a blank-slate brain that gradually admits glitchy memories of battles centuries before. Part of that success is owed to the script that producer James Cameron and co-writer Laeta Kalogridis taking time over for quite some time, as this film was in development alongside Cameron's own Avatar. The story works so well in both the capacity of setting up a larger world, as well as letting the audience really get to know the people living in it, with a good dose of action set-pieces to keep it all moving. There are so many plates spinning in Alita: Battle Angel, but all are vital to truly building the world we could potentially return to. So yes, there is possibility of a sequel if the makers aspire to do one. Of course, without Rodriguez's directing chops, and the spectacular cast chosen to bring it to life, Alita: Battle Angel wouldn't have the super-powered heart it possesses. In particular, Rosa Salazar's tremendous work as Alita holds this universe together, without any question or fault. Her shifts from childlike wonder to her more grown and experienced persona happen so naturally, with Salazar seizing focus in the most naturalistic of ways. Verdict : Overall, ; had it been more engaging with respect to humor, twists and turns in the story-line, the movie which has everything with respect to CGI would have done wonders.