Alita: Battle Angel

James Cameron takes a break from his Avatar series to adapt a Japanese Manga with his state-of-the-art CGI cast in Alita: Battle Angel, but he forgets to tell a story people care about. The problem with this film is similar to the problem in First Man, a strong production with a weak story, except this is taken to the extreme.

Rosa Salazar is transformed into her CGI character, Alita; a teenage girl’s brain inside a robot that was thrown out of the sky city into Iron City to be saved by a doctor/ bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz. This film is weird, and not in a Phil-Lord-and-Chris-Miller-fun way. It is a basic sci-fi world with oversaturated history spanning 300 years after “The Fall,” and it is spoon fed to the audience like infants. The ruins of Iron City are filled with little details that every sci-fi film crams into each frame to make the city feel real, and for this film it does not work. Visually, it is impressive, but the feeling is so forced and hollow I was never invested in anything I saw. The one redeeming trait this film offers is Rosa Salazar.

Film is at the turning point of what can be defined as a performance. I have seen it with Andy Serkis as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Caesar in The Planet of the Apes trilogy; the world saw it with Josh Brolin as Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War; and now Rosa Salazar justifies her performance to the collection. She goes all in with the gymnastics, fight-poses, and strange dialogue, fully committing to this character to the point where she loses the audience completely. She and Alita become one person, and it is flawless, but they are more enthusiastic to be a part of this world than we. Even with her big eyes and over expressive mouth, Alita feels real, but she is surrounded by a lackluster script and boring concept of a sci-fi world.

Overall, it is a pretty film with great action, but the greatness ends there. James Cameron took the story from the Manga and layered it in his impressive visual style, yet spends 2 hours building up for the next installment. He added nothing to the source material; these characters we see are not his in any way. They are merely tools for him to showcase what CGI-work he has done since Avatar in 2009. Nothing more. I will be surprised if this gets the sequel he was planning, because I felt nothing watching what really is the first 2 acts of a potentially great story.

Story Rating: 5/10

Character Rating: 1/10