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Alita: Battle Angel (July 2018)

A Florida-based multimedia company called Epic Stone Group is claiming that they trademarked the term/phrase "Battle Angel" back in 2009 despite the fact that the Battle Angel Alita Manga was first created in 1990, some 19 years earlier.

Their claim is pretty clearly baseless and is likely not to have any effect on the potential future of the franchise.
 
CommanderTrip said:
Yeah I read it on the bluray.com forums and a google search turned up this

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ho...ta-battle-angel-hit-trademark-lawsuit-1181407
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From the article:

The 2009 trademark includes computer games, action figures and other toys, according to the complaint. Epic also filed a new application in April 2018 to cover things like DVDs, e-books, downloadable film and television programs featuring space combat, ring tones and graphics.

That looks like a trademark-in-order-to-sue thing to me. Why else would they extend the trademark to home video less than a year before the Alita film was to be released.
 
Kai "the spy" said:
From the article:

The 2009 trademark includes computer games, action figures and other toys, according to the complaint. Epic also filed a new application in April 2018 to cover things like DVDs, e-books, downloadable film and television programs featuring space combat, ring tones and graphics.

That looks like a trademark-in-order-to-sue thing to me. Why else would they extend the trademark to home video less than a year before the Alita film was to be released.
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Precisely. It seems like a blatant attempt at a money-grab by the plaintiffs.

It strikes me as a similar situation to those individuals who go out and buy copyrights and web domains just in case something hits it big, so they can then sue for infringement or charge the IP holders a large sum to settle or secure the web domain.
 
Noname Given said:
$402 million worldwide isn't a massive flop for a $170 Million dollar budget film:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=alita.htm
- that would be Disney's John Carter (of Mars) with a $250 million budget and a worldwide take of 284 million.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=johncarterofmars.htm
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John Carter is one of my biggest movie disappointments, not because I didn't like it, it's the exact opposite actually. I loved it, and I was really disappointed when it flopped, because it meant we have never gotten any sequels.
 
JD said:
John Carter is one of my biggest movie disappointments, not because I didn't like it, it's the exact opposite actually. I loved it, and I was really disappointed when it flopped, because it meant we have never gotten any sequels.
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I strongly agree. It was an excellent, gorgeous film that was done in by crummy marketing (title included) and corporate shenanigans. I would've loved to see sequels with the same cast and director.
 
Christopher said:
I strongly agree. It was an excellent, gorgeous film that was done in by crummy marketing (title included) and corporate shenanigans. I would've loved to see sequels with the same cast and director.
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I recently saw John Carter on 3d bluray at home. It was one of the few 3D titles I did not own, and I picked it up from newbury Comics for a good price.

I didnt know much about the original john carter of mars, but I did enjoy the movie much more than I expected to. The marketing when it first came out in theaters turned me off to the film because it made me think it would be more of a kids movie.
 
That first teaser with the Peter Gabriel version of "My Body Is A Cage" was dope, though.
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Christopher said:
I think John Carter is likely to become a cult classic over time, but that doesn't get us the sequels I want.
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I don't think so. I never see it on TV for example. People just didn't care about this movie, and Disney is burying it along with Lone Ranger.
 
crookeddy said:
I don't think so. I never see it on TV for example. People just didn't care about this movie, and Disney is burying it along with Lone Ranger.
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And the sequel(s) to Tron: Legacy....

A shame we wont get these movies. I enjoyed tron legacy quite a bit (also snagged for my 3d collection), and I've never even seen the original.

That fact in of itself should demonstrate how well that movie was crafted.
 
CommanderTrip said:
And the sequel(s) to Tron: Legacy....

A shame we wont get these movies. I enjoyed tron legacy quite a bit (also snagged for my 3d collection), and I've never even seen the original.

That fact in of itself should demonstrate how well that movie was crafted.
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Certainly one of the best uses of 3D that I've seen.
 
CommanderTrip said:
A shame we wont get these movies. I enjoyed tron legacy quite a bit (also snagged for my 3d collection), and I've never even seen the original.

That fact in of itself should demonstrate how well that movie was crafted.
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Honestly, TRON: Legacy works better if you haven't seen the original, because the sequel is pretty revisionist in a lot of ways. The original film was more of an anthropomorphic cartoon fantasy take on computers where all programs (even things like accounting or antivirus software) were like little people embodying the souls of their programmers and existing in a symbolic/magical interior world that the humans outside had no awareness of, a lot like what Pixar's Inside Out would do for human brains; whereas Legacy retconned the Programs into deliberately created humanoid AIs in a deliberately created VR environment (which was also immensely less colorful than the original film's Grid, extending the monochrome aesthetic of the Programs to their entire world). Also, they completely changed Kevin Flynn's motivations; he wasn't interested in making software free for the public, but merely in proving that his ex-boss had stolen credit for his lucrative software. He was a capitalist out for his own profit, not a populist fighting for others. (Tron, not Kevin, was the real hero of the film, even though he wasn't the lead character.)

I made the mistake of watching the two films on consecutive days, so that the original was fresh in my mind and I could see how massively the sequel reimagined the premise. The disconnect was a bit jarring. Each film works reasonably well on its own, but they don't fit together remotely as well as the sequel wants to pretend. They're more like variations on a common theme. So it's best to watch them with a fair amount of distance between them, or maybe even to watch Legacy first.
 
I think TNT, USA, or FX showed John Carter a while back. I remember flipping it on and watching a few minutes of the beginning.
 
So, any word about the home media release date? I want to purchase the deluxe Blu-Ray with all the background and "behind the scenes" featurettes (if offered)! It would really be neat if it included the one-shot anime!
 
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