507: Alita: Battle Angel

[Speaker 0]:\nTwo fourteen. Let's get to Alita Battle Angel, which came out in twenty nineteen, is directed by Robert Rodriguez as well as written and produced by James Cameron, stars Rosa Salazar, Christophe Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nAnd the synopsis is a deactivated cyborg's revived, but can't remember anything of her past and goes on a quest to find out who she is. Well, when this one came out, I didn't know anything about it in terms of the manga \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nthat it's based on. All I know is that it was done by Rodriguez, who has done Desperado, Sin City, Spy Kids, and then being produced by Cameron. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nThis was also my only second time watching it, I believe. I don't think I watched it since the theater. I like it overall. It's at about the same level that I remember the first time. If I had to choose between this and Ghost in the Shell, which there are a lot of obvious similarities between the two, I would choose Ghost in the Shell, which I don't know if that's a hot take or not. But the actress, Rosa Salazar, which this was really her big break, she is perfect in this. That was spot on casting. I know some people when it came out, maybe even still, don't love the animation of her face or really of her whole body, but with the big eyes, like bug eyes, that stuff to me, I don't mind at all. I think it works. I think it still looks great. Talking design wise, whereas Ghost in the Shell major had fully artificial skin over her whole body, so she looked at least fairly human. Whereas in this, Alita, she only has her shoulders up with skin. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nAnd then the rest of her is you can tell that she's a robot. You see all the wires and the plates and all that stuff, which \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nthat is such a unique inspired design, and I can't say as to how accurate it is to the source material or anything. The setup where she's found in this scrapyard and Christophe Waltz is a technological, you know, scientist doctor who helps, I guess, put people back together in a way, I like that storyline, and that also calls back to Ghost in the Show with Major having this parental figure being the female doctor, Juliette Binoche, and then Alita has Christophe Waltz. Robert Rodriguez is a filmmaker who I typically follow. I don't think I've seen every one of his films. I saw his most recent one, which was Hypnotic, and I did do that on the show. And that was truly terrible, so I'm hoping that he gets back to films like this. But combining his style as well as James Cameron is a very interesting choice, and I would be up for them working together more. I think it has more James Cameron than it does Rodriguez, but with Rodriguez, you get, in this movie, the more, I think, the more cultural inclusion and even who they're choosing to cast, where they're setting the story, \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nlanguage, and also a very crazy visual style. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nAnd then you get some trademark James Cameron isms, like the good and evil. Evil has the power over everything, and then the good people are the people on the ground who are struggling. And there's that conflict as well as almost like a Romeo and Juliet, which you can see in the majority of his films, like Titanic would be the most obvious, Avatar. Touching on some issues real quick, the biggest problem by far with this movie, and I noticed it the first time and that's what largely brings the star rating down is the romance. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nFor one, the \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nmain guy in this, the boy, is miscast. I don't blame him totally because the writing for him is very clunky, and it's all this cheesy dialogue to try and charm her. But not only that, for whatever reason, he does not seem to fit into the context of this world. He does not blend in, whereas everyone else does in their own role. I feel like he is someone who looks like an actor. He could have just stepped off a a CW show set or something. Not to be too mean, because his performance is fine. It's not offensively bad, but I was always taken out of it. I did not care about this guy. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nThe romance is maybe half of the movie or more. The chemistry is not there. It bloats the runtime to two hours, which isn't that long, but I think it easily could have lost fifteen, twenty minutes and been closer to the Ghost in the Shell run time, but for the better. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nBecause whenever it cuts back to that, I just feel disengaged. I wanna get back to not necessarily the plot, but just that world building, and I wanna get back to Alita's narrative. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nOn top of that, by the end, it seems like her motivation \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nto do all these things that are going on is for the boy. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nThat's not inherently bad, but it almost starts to feel like a Twilight romance or something because I wanna see Alita who, at many points in the story, especially the beginning, is this very strong, powerful, yet vulnerable or impressionable kid who really wants to make her own way, rediscover her life, and this boy does not need to be there in order to achieve that. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nSome strong notes. The design of the robots, both Alita, as I said, and especially the enemy robots are fantastic. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nThe group led by Ed Skrein, or I guess that's his little gang, Ed Skrein, for one thing, I love him as an actor. He's great at playing a villain or a bad guy in some way, and not that that's bad at all. I would love to see him \n\n[Speaker 1]:\ndo more things, but he's great in roles like he is in this. The look of Jackie Earle Haley's robot, which is this huge, lumbering figure, then the girl who she's only in it for a few minutes, \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nbut the girl with the red hood who has a torso that doesn't have any artificial skin or anything, it's only metal, and she has, almost animal like claws \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nIn that same fight towards the beginning, actually, there's one more who he almost looks like a demented sci fi version of Chucky, but in the best way. So they have a really good ability, and I think that seems more like James Cameron by having these really grotesque, dark, almost horror like imagery when it comes to the robots, and that definitely is reminiscent of Terminator and Aliens and other things. One of the big standout scenes, which is the popular one from what I gather, and it's my favorite scene in the movie, and there are a couple actually, is the motor ball \n\n[Speaker 0]:\ngames or the arena. That is \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nsuch a great sequence because it not only looks amazing and Robert Rodriguez shoots it very, very well, but it's just pure, \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nridiculous, fun sci fi. It has very little to do with the plot aside from maybe towards the end. And it would be hard for anyone, I would think, to not get at least some enjoyment out of it. And I like also at the beginning when Alita is discovering this. She gets into the street games of it and all that. And one more thing about her performance, she not only has the physique and the, you know, the physicality of everything, but her charisma and energy, not only just her emotional range, it's all very contagious. Because when she's discovering something like chocolate or oranges or motor ball, whatever, when she's excited, you're excited. So you get much more, at at least I did, much more invested in her arc and her journey. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nThe rest of the story, it is what it is. It's mainly just this sort of a conspiracy, big sci fi, bad guys, you know, ruling everything. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nI don't love that, but it's not done horribly. It's not overly complicated, and I like that they have really top notch actors like Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali in there to help hide some of the generic aspects of it. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nThe score by Junkie XL is solid. Always a great composer. \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nOverall, I feel like it's not ever gonna be one that \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nis gonna be a five out of five for me. It's very worth watching for sure, and I am sad that it did not do that well at the box office because I would happily watch an Alita Battle Angel two or Ghost in the Shell two over, I don't know, Fast and Furious eleven. There's so much more creativity even in the flaws of films like this than in so many other franchises that live on. And I would love to see what they would do theoretically with expanding this world, expanding this character, \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nbut, unfortunately, I don't think we're ever gonna get that. Maybe, but I really doubt it. \n\n[Speaker 1]:\nThat is a heavy three and a half \n\n[Speaker 0]:\nout of five. \n\n