by Emma Smith, Assistant Editor

Almost a decade after Avatar changed our expectations of CGI and 3D filmmaking, James Cameron is back and partnering with director Robert Rodriguez to bring a futuristic version of Earth to life in Alita Battle Angel. Unfortunately, the filmmakers don’t seem to have spent the same amount of energy on the story portion of the film. Much like Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planet’s the result is beautiful and fun but emotionally hollow. 

When Doctor Ido (Christoph Waltz) find a cyborg core with a live brain, he takes it home and gives her an operational body. This wakes up the girl he names Alita, as she cannot even remember her own name. The mystery of her origins will take her an a dangerous journey through the dark underbelly of a dystopian society.

The star of the show here is definitely the CGI and 3D work. James Cameron has said that he waited to make Alita because he needed techniques to advance to the level he felt was necessary to create a realistic, albeit futuristic, version of Earth. In addition, creating Alita without diving into the uncanny valley is a challenge in itself. Cameron and Rodriguez, along with the many animators, artists, concept designers, editors, VFX technicians, etc who worked on this film have truly created something special. They used both face and body motion capture from actress Rosa Salazar to create Alita and the attention to detail really shows. Alita manages to be both lifelike and human while maintaining the fantastical facial structure from the original manga. The world creation around the characters includes an incredible amount of attention to detail, right down the the appropriate level of dirtiness for a city of poor manual laborers. 

It is unfortunate that a film with such success in humanizing a cyborg main character does not do the same for its actual humans. This is surprising given the incredible level of talent in this cast. Three Oscar winners, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali, anchor the cast, but their performances are largely flat. Walz is weighed down slogging through most of the films exposition, but Connelly and Ali are mostly hampered by uninspired dialogue and a lack of character development (Ali does get the best line of the entire film – you’ll know it when you hear it). There is a scene about two thirds through the film that is meant to be romantic but is one of the most ridiculously unbelievable pieces of schlock committed to virtual celluloid. 

In combining four of the Battle Angel Alita manga to create the plot for this movie, Cameron bit off more than he could chew. The movie is two hours but the amount of material shoved into its running time means the characters must take large narrative leaps with little set up. On occasion the characters’ actions contradict the character development set up in previous scenes in order to push the plot in certain directions. Despite this, the film still feels largely like a set up for the next one in the series. 

None of this is meant to say that Alita is not worth seeing. It is worth it for the same reason Avatar was, the technological feats are incredible. The motorball sequences are impressive, the world building is meticulous, and underlying idea of the battle cyborg is interesting. But it is disappointing to again and again see directors and producers of material with such potential become so enamored with the technology they are using that they forget to pay attention to the story they are telling us. 

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Alita: Battle Angel 3 out of 5 amputee fetishes (I see you Rodriguez).