Alita: Battle Angel (12A.)
Directed by Robert Rodriquez.
Starring Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali and Ed Skrien. 122 mins.
Fox, 26th Century Fox as the opening credits style them, are hoping that Alita will be a little piece of history repeating itself: that just like nine years ago, an expensive, James Cameron 3D sci-fi epic which everybody expected to flop will turn into a massive hit. Fox has been desperately trying to drum up anticipation for this (holding free screenings across America last Thursday) in much the same way as they did for Avatar, and 12 years before that for Titanic. The problem though is that the film is all our dystopian futures repeating.
Adapted from a Japanese manga, the world of Alita is one where people are made up of bits and pieces that have been scavenged or recycled. The Battle Angel is a disembodied cyborg head with large anime eyes, found in the rubbish by surgeon Dr Dyson (Waltz), who gives her a body, and then sees her go from innocent child with no memories learning about the world to boy mad teenager in a few days.
The film of Alita is one made up from bits and pieces scavenged and recycled from other films. 600 years in the future, human society has been decimated by a catastrophe, as it always is, and the rich live in a city in the sky while the poor get by down below, as they always do. It'd be easy to complain that it is just ripping off other films but I suspect that it something more than that. Just as the future once was always the realm of shiny cities, flying cars and robotic convenience, now we are incapable of imaging any other future than all these overlapping dystopias. That Blade Runner really did a job on us.
Alita's problem is that the films it most reminds you of are less successful ones: A.I. or Ghost In The Shell. There is though a blatant rip off of Rollerball but given a Speed Racer makeover. Early on the film even ventures into the realms of 20s German Expressionism, with a serial killer going around killing women.
The film is all things you've seen before, not necessarily done better but just as well. It looks impressive, if a bit cartoony, and Salazar is good in the lead role. The script though never really makes the case for its existence. It is too short to really flesh out its characters and their world. But it's too prestigious to just go for wham bam action. In the audience, you are sitting waiting for the film to really get going, to tell us what its really about and then when it does it finishes.
This was originally supposed to be directed by James Cameron's, his follow up to making the biggest box office hit ever, again, but instead he's devoted himself to his plethora of Avatars sequels (four at last count, though he may pop out more.) So he's handed over directing duties to Robert Rodriquez. Cameron is the man who has five times made the most expensive movie ever made, while Rodriquez is famous for making films on the cheap. While Cameron is hey Big Spender, Rodriquez's is the theme to Bargain Hunt.
Rodriquez's made some fine films and he certainly hasn't let anyone down here. I don't think any of the $190 million has been wasted. (Apparently the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean movie cost nearly twice as much.) But it isn't enough. Given it genesis, it needed to be groundbreaking marvel, not merely competent. I already compared it to A.I. the film Spielberg, a very time focused and practical filmmaker, made of an idea by the meticulous perfectionist Kubrick and Alita is diminished in the same way A.I. is. It needed Cameron's driven, profligate obsession to make it worthwhile.
Directed by Robert Rodriquez.
Starring Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali and Ed Skrien. 122 mins.
Fox, 26th Century Fox as the opening credits style them, are hoping that Alita will be a little piece of history repeating itself: that just like nine years ago, an expensive, James Cameron 3D sci-fi epic which everybody expected to flop will turn into a massive hit. Fox has been desperately trying to drum up anticipation for this (holding free screenings across America last Thursday) in much the same way as they did for Avatar, and 12 years before that for Titanic. The problem though is that the film is all our dystopian futures repeating.
Adapted from a Japanese manga, the world of Alita is one where people are made up of bits and pieces that have been scavenged or recycled. The Battle Angel is a disembodied cyborg head with large anime eyes, found in the rubbish by surgeon Dr Dyson (Waltz), who gives her a body, and then sees her go from innocent child with no memories learning about the world to boy mad teenager in a few days.
The film of Alita is one made up from bits and pieces scavenged and recycled from other films. 600 years in the future, human society has been decimated by a catastrophe, as it always is, and the rich live in a city in the sky while the poor get by down below, as they always do. It'd be easy to complain that it is just ripping off other films but I suspect that it something more than that. Just as the future once was always the realm of shiny cities, flying cars and robotic convenience, now we are incapable of imaging any other future than all these overlapping dystopias. That Blade Runner really did a job on us.
Alita's problem is that the films it most reminds you of are less successful ones: A.I. or Ghost In The Shell. There is though a blatant rip off of Rollerball but given a Speed Racer makeover. Early on the film even ventures into the realms of 20s German Expressionism, with a serial killer going around killing women.
The film is all things you've seen before, not necessarily done better but just as well. It looks impressive, if a bit cartoony, and Salazar is good in the lead role. The script though never really makes the case for its existence. It is too short to really flesh out its characters and their world. But it's too prestigious to just go for wham bam action. In the audience, you are sitting waiting for the film to really get going, to tell us what its really about and then when it does it finishes.
This was originally supposed to be directed by James Cameron's, his follow up to making the biggest box office hit ever, again, but instead he's devoted himself to his plethora of Avatars sequels (four at last count, though he may pop out more.) So he's handed over directing duties to Robert Rodriquez. Cameron is the man who has five times made the most expensive movie ever made, while Rodriquez is famous for making films on the cheap. While Cameron is hey Big Spender, Rodriquez's is the theme to Bargain Hunt.
Rodriquez's made some fine films and he certainly hasn't let anyone down here. I don't think any of the $190 million has been wasted. (Apparently the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean movie cost nearly twice as much.) But it isn't enough. Given it genesis, it needed to be groundbreaking marvel, not merely competent. I already compared it to A.I. the film Spielberg, a very time focused and practical filmmaker, made of an idea by the meticulous perfectionist Kubrick and Alita is diminished in the same way A.I. is. It needed Cameron's driven, profligate obsession to make it worthwhile.
