Four stars. Rated PG-13, and quite generously, despite relentless violence and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.15.19
When we get sci-fi world-building on a scale this visually spectacular, there’s no doubt that James Cameron must be involved.
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| Hugo (Keean Johnson) rushes forward, hoping to prevent a catastrophe, when a potentially violent encounter prompts Alita's (Rosa Salazar) battle instincts to kick in. |
In fairness, director Robert Rodriguez deserves equal credit for this energetic, post-apocalyptic adventure. Where Cameron’s epics generally have a serious tone with underlying real-world political elements, Rodriguez is more willing to just have a good time. That’s certainly the case with Alita: Battle Angel, which sometimes displays the youthful, wide-eyed breathlessness that was typical of his Spy Kids series.
But we must remember that Rodriguez also is the gritty, down ’n’ dirty maestro behind From Dusk Till Dawn and the Sin City chillers, and he stretches this new film’s PG-13 rating waypast the breaking point.
Alita: Battle Angel is a Frankenstein’s monster of a movie, which successfully blends elements from previous classics: a little bit of 1975’s Rollerball, a taste of 1982’s Blade Runner, a soupçon of 2013’s Elysium and a whole lotta 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Considerable credit also goes to Yukito Kishiro, creator of the 1990 cyberpunk manga series Gunnm(translated on these shores as Battle Angel Alita). Kishiro’s series ultimately went to nine volumes, after which Cameron optioned the property … way back in 2000.
Although originally intending to direct a big-screen adaptation, Cameron got distracted by Avatar; meanwhile, he “borrowed” some of Kishiro’s concepts for the 2000-02 TV series Dark Angel, which made a star of young Jessica Alba. Numerous twists and turns later — notably, after Rodriguez was brought in, initially just to trim Cameron’s overlong screenplay — all the elements fell into place, and here we are.
We should be grateful for this long gestation, because it allowed special effects technology to catch up with Kishiro’s wildly imaginative premise and setting. Senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri and production designers Caylah Eddleblute and Steve Joyner have delivered a jaw-dropping degree of futuristic wonder: a wholly immersive dystopian setting that feels persuasively authentic, down to the tiniest detail.
Rodriguez also makes excellent use of Bill Pope’s 3D cinematography. You’ll want to experience this film at least twice: once for its exciting, pell-mell storyline; the second time to better appreciate the meticulous effort that has gone into every frame.
Mind you, elements of the complex plot are insufficiently addressed by the script — credited to Cameron, Rodriguez and Laeta Kalogridis (the latter known as the creator of TV’s Altered Carbon) — but Rodriguez and editors Stephen E. Rivkin and Ian Silverstein maintain enough momentum to carry us past dangling questions.
The 26th century setting, cheekily introduced by a revised 20th Century Fox studio logo, is 300 years beyond what’s known only as “The Fall,” a shattering war that halted all technological progress, and destroyed all but one of Earth’s massive “sky cities.” Humanity’s remnants have gathered in Iron City, where ordinary people and cybernetically enhanced humans exist in the shadow of Zalem, the sole remaining sky city.
Iron City survives solely as an oppressed factory town, where people labor hard to manufacture goods for the never-seen elites who live in the sky above. But it’s far worse than that; a dangerous black market also harvests far more unpleasant “natural resources” for clandestine clients. On top of which, repurposed tech makes it easier for Iron City’s strong to prey upon the weak.
Despite such tyrannical circumstances, a few noble souls do their best to help their fellow sufferers. One such is Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), a compassionate cyberphysician who repairs and replaces the damaged enhanced limbs of day-laborers; this necessitates a constant search for spare parts. One day, while scavenging in the mountains of trash that literally rain down from Zalem, Ido discovers the remnants — a head and bits of torso — of a disembodied female cyborg.
She wakens the next morning with a rebuilt body and fully functional mind, but absolutely no memory of her previous life. Ido christens her Alita, and becomes her guide through the wonders — and perils — of Iron City.
Alita is played by Rosa Salazar, but not in the usual sense; the seamless — and occasionally shocking — blend of live action, motion capture and special effects is every bit as astounding as Alicia Vikander’s breakthrough performance in 2014’s Ex Machina, with the emotional gravitas of the similarly fabricated characters in Avatar. Salazar “becomes” younger, slimmer and incredibly agile; in the classic manga/animé tradition, her owl-like eyes also are far larger than usual.
And yet Alita is every bit a living, breathing sentient being who immediately touches our hearts, via childlike curiosity and a bird-like awareness of everything around her. That was the crux of Blade Runner and A.I., of course: the degree to which artificially constructed and/or enhanced beings come to be regarded as human, and deserving of our empathy. Salazar gives Alita her warm heart and soul.
That said, it takes a bit to grow accustomed to the simplistic, often corny dialogue that passes between Alita and Ido, and — very quickly — between Alita and hunky Hugo (Keean Johnson), a scrappy, street-smart friend who offers to help trigger her memories. Over time, fluttery images drift through her head: battle training, skirmishes in some sort of deep-space environment, a link to the long-gone United Republic of Mars (URM) colony somehow involved with The Fall.
Not to mention Alita’s almost supernatural strength and agility: the result of (we eventually learn) an ancient martial art known as “Panzer Kunst.”
The speed with which Alita and Hugo bond is one of several times when we feel the absence of abandoned script pages, but Salazar and Johnson are cute enough together, that we easily forgive such contrivance.
Besides which, more sinister elements are at work. Ido has a prickly relationship with ex-wife Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), a similarly skilled cyberphysician who channeled her grief — following the tragic loss of their daughter — into the cold-blooded pursuit of money and power. Her means to success: designing ever-more-lethal cyborgs for the insanely violent and deadly sport of Motorball (cue the riffs on Rollerball) staged to distract the oppressed Iron City masses.
Unfortunately, this has placed Chiren in thrall to the ruthless Vector (Mahershala Ali), Iron City’s top broker of cyborg parts. Ali plays him as a sophisticated elite who delights in crushing any and all potential enemies, and yet has the seductive savoir faire of a charismatic ruler; as a result, all the street kids look up to him.
When Vector smugly quotes Milton’s famous line from Paradise Lost — “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven” — in Ali’s richly cultured voice, we know he means it.
Those who get in Vector’s way wind up facing the colossal Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley), a fallen Motorball star turned lethal via a super-charged frame: a massive metal gargoyle who becomes larger and larger each time he’s rebuilt, always with the grotesque synthetic face that reminds everybody of the human within.
On top of which, Vector isn’t entirely what he seems. At times he “channels” the mysterious Nova, an unseen Zalem entity who is — somehow — in control of, well, everything.
And if this isn’t sufficient plot, additional peril is supplied by swaggering cyborg Zapan (Ed Skrein), whose sharp wit and razor-edged limbs are enhanced further by his weapon of choice: the Damascus Blade, an ancient URM-built sword that can slice through armor like butter. Not to mention a gaggle of other cyborg bounty hunters; Hugo’s hot-headed friend Tanji (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), who doesn’t like or trust Alita; and a massive, half-submerged space ship with its own secrets.
(Whew!)
For the most part, Rodriguez juggles all these elements reasonably well. Allowing for occasional red herrings — never more than brief distractions — we’ve no trouble separating angels from devils, and the key plot points are easy to follow. And, in the grand traditional of flawed heroes and indecisive villains, a few characters undergo crucial (and unexpected) changes of heart.
The increasingly dangerous confrontations and melees climax with a truly awesome Motorball sequence that blasts out of the stadium and onto Iron City’s streets and superstructure: a dazzling, breathtaking skirmish that — by itself — is worth the price of admission.
All this aside, mention must be made of this film’s savage brutality. Rodriguez likely escaped an R rating only because most of these creatures are almost entirely cyborg constructs, but that’s a cop-out; if the whole point is to make us care for these beings — and we do — then the limb-slicing violence is every bit as horrific, as if these were wholly flesh-and-blood humans.
This film also is ill-served by its relentlessly pounding synth score from Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL), which is little more than over-amped noise. I lament the absence of emotional enhancement that came from Vangelis’ far richer score for Blade Runner: an additional layer of dramatic heft that Holkenborg’s stentorian bleats and blasts are incapable of delivering.
Given the (more or less) consistent pacing throughout this adventure, all manner of chaotic crises erupt during the clumsy and bizarrely accelerated final 10 minutes, as if Rodriguez suddenly had been ordered to bring in the film at no more than two hours. We can practically hear the pages being ripped from a longer script, and the set-up for a sequel is extremely contrived (albeit no surprise).
I look forward to the eventual release of an extended director’s cut, which I’ve no doubt will be far more satisfying.
Meanwhile — that concluding flaw aside — Alita: Battle Angel is one helluva ride, set within a richly audacious cyberpunk future (that we can pray never comes to pass). Filmmaking of this sort should possess a sense of wonder, and Rodriguez definitely delivers.
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