Re-activated and re-built by a kindly inventor, the cyborg 'Alita' (Rosa Salazar) is on an abortive quest to find out who she is...
Every interview I’ve read with James Cameron mentioned his obsession with bringing this property to the big screen. After all this time, it has finally been brought to the screen under the stewardship of Robert Rodriguez.
According to the credits, Cameron was a co-script writer (with Laeta Kalogridis). Apparently the script Rodriguez used was assembled from an initial draft of 186 pages and 600 pages of notes. You can definitely feel that bigger story in the movie's ever-shifting narrative and lack of focus.
Criticising this movie is fairly easy (the plot is labyrinthine, the characters lack clear motivation, and the whole movie feels like a couple of different plots stitched together). The movie had a 170 million dollar budget yet it feels like a TV show - the compositions lack depth (probably an affect of green screen) and the lighting feels flat.
In re-watching Avatar, one of the big takeaways was how Cameron’s camera obeyed the rules of physics- his camera follows characters and never feels free-floating, so when a CG character stumbles while walking across a gorge, or is flying another CG creature through the sky, there’s a sense of depth and tactility to the images which makes the experience more immersive.
The problem with Alita is that the rules of how physics in this world works make no sense. Furthermore, it never really feels like Alita can lose.
The movie’s major saving. grace is Rosa Salazar, and the motion capture team who bring the title character to life. If she was not in it, the lack of character development would have been far more grating.
But I have to say (write?), I had a pretty good time. This movie is silly - it is almost on the level of Valerian and the Cornucopia of a Thousand Inanities. At points the movie verges on Axe Cop in terms of the way the plot is constantly resolving and then veering in a new direction (the beat where Alita gains the warpaint is almost comedic in how arbitrary it is). These story points probably made more sense in the manga (and the 186 page script) but in this movie they feel pleasantly haphazard (It probably helped that I have not read the manga, and had eaten an entire bag of sour worms).In re-watching Avatar, one of the big takeaways was how Cameron’s camera obeyed the rules of physics- his camera follows characters and never feels free-floating, so when a CG character stumbles while walking across a gorge, or is flying another CG creature through the sky, there’s a sense of depth and tactility to the images which makes the experience more immersive.
The problem with Alita is that the rules of how physics in this world works make no sense. Furthermore, it never really feels like Alita can lose.
The movie’s major saving. grace is Rosa Salazar, and the motion capture team who bring the title character to life. If she was not in it, the lack of character development would have been far more grating.
Definitely one for a late night on Netflix.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random.
The latest episode is out today - to get in the holiday spirit, we review the 1987 film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Related
Valerian and the whatever the hell the rest of the title was
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