Alita: Battle Angel (July 2018)

Nice! *interest intensifies* Thanks for the link, purchasing now!

 

Looks like the release date for this is now Jul 23, 2019. Captain Marvel's release date is June 11th and it came out after this so I don't know what is going on there.

 

Marvels home media releases are quicker than most, the Mouse has the money.

 

Looks like they held to that date as I purchased my Blu-Ray copy yesterday .

 

Finally got around to see it and...well it wasn't *awful* exactly, but it wasn't exactly good either. I think the most frustrating aspect is that there's a good movie buried in here, but it needed some serious trimming and a recast of the boyfriend character. Or at least re-frame him as a friend instead of a love interest because there was zero chemistry and the lead actress was just acting rings around him. Poor lad was punching way above his weight. I hate to say it, but by the mid-point I was actively rooting for him to be killed off.

The plot seems like a bit of a mess too and it really shows that they're trying to adapt a serialised story into a movie while preserving as many of the major beats as possible, when really they needed to condense it down to bare essentials. and really, when a person like myself who has neither read the Manga or watched the anime can tell more or less where the episode breaks would have been, that's kind of a problem.

Indeed in a way this whole thing feels less like a movie and more of a heavily abridged season of the most expensive looking streaming show ever. Actually, had they gone that route it might have even been more successful!

 

I just watched it too and while I don't disagree with any of the criticisms, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

What’s the gore level like?
I love Alita, but am going through a bit of a squeamish phase, so while I want to buy it and watch it, I sort of find myself hoping it’s toned down from its source materials xD.

 

Most of the gory part is about the cyborgs' cybernetic components, so you won't see a lot of blood and guts flying around.

 

I haven't seen it yet, but it's only PG-13, so it can't be that bad.

 

Minimal. They bump up against the PG-13 a bit here and there, but it's mostly pretty tame unless you count artificial parts.

 

Thanks chaps. Will pick it up. It’s cheapish on iTunes.
It can sit next to GiTS in my ‘it’s not as bad as the people who whinged about said’ list probably.
I notice there was no controversy this time out the gate.

 

It's because Alita was never Japanese in the original material either.

Same reason no one gets upset that if any adaptation of "Attack on Titan" is done the actors won't be Japanese...it's because the characters were never Japanese to start with (Except Mikasa).

 

Nah. I think it’s because Alita didn’t Star Scarlet Johansen. XD

I am actually a great defender of the live action GiTS, largely because I think the controversy was...manufactured I guess...and no one judged the film on its merits. It was also typically carried on, on both sides of the argument, by people who just plain don’t know the original work, or Shirows work, beyond some surface knowledge and maybe enjoying some of the other adaptations.

It’s also a little crazy decrying a film with such a diverse (by Hollywood standards) cast for the reasons they did. Throw in the way they folded the casting in as part of their story, and it deserves much more credit.
Kudos in this regard is also due for the ‘realism’ or at least the speculative nature of it...Japan is shown as multiethnic (helps that like 95 it’s looking to HK) which is a big leap from Japan of today...but a logical one. It’s good world building, and totally in keeping with how Shirow does things.

They also overestimate the Motoko characters importance in Japan. We may love it over here, but over there it’s not a ‘big’ anime. It’s fairly niche. (Everytime I met Japanese people at uni, who were into anime and games, it would take a while for them to work out what I was talking about when I talked about GiTS. It’s a C tier presence, liked by old geezers in their forties xD) and most of the arguments for and against were being had by people who just didn’t know. And by people who didn’t watch the film.

I find this usually happens a lot with western live action anime tbh. Look at death note...if you want a good accurate version (ish) then the films are awesome and the tv series was awesome. You are gonna have to cope with subtitles though.
Getting your knickers in a twist over a messed up American version is a bit silly.
I am British...they even change stuff from here when they make it over there, and it rarely goes well.

GiTs the live action is a rare beast. A cyberpunk movie, and a good one.

 

Since James Cameron owns the rights to Alita independently, the chance is there that we could get a sequel at some point.

 

Weren's there some people who were complaining when they used all Japanese actors in the Fullmetal Alchemist live action movie, when the characters in the anime and manga are actually supposed to be European?

 

Well, it was a Japanese-made film. From what I've seen in other Japanese productions, there aren't a lot of ethnically European people in the Japanese film industry who can actually act worth a damn.

I think the difference is that America has a richly diverse population that the film industry hasn't yet learned to represent proportionately, whereas Japan, until recently, has been a country with very little ethnic diversity in its population, and thus even when it does represent the population proportionately, it's still pretty uniform. So it's easier for an American film to have an all-Asian cast if its creators are willing (e.g. the live-action Mulan remake) than it is for a Japanese film to have an all-European cast.

 

I think people referenced that to stop all the nonsense with Ghost in a Shell etc.

 

Well, that and the Live Action FMA movie wasn't even that good with stuff beyond the actors.

I suppose another hit against GiTS was that the movie's plot was pretty cliche and generic, a Robocop riff, whereas if they'd done a straight up translation of the original anime film it might've been better received.

Or the critique would be that the movie took no risks in not deviating.

Sounds like another no-win scenario.

 

Alita at its core is a simple fable, wrapped in high tech trappings and is a very enjoyable and fun "movie"

The world is fascinating, Riza Salazar and Waltz do great jobs, it's fast paced fun for the family.

Sadly the movie did suffer from being a female lead movie released in the same time period as Captain Marvel. Far left feminists championed Captain Marvel and hated Alita with a passion. It was dragged into the modern culture war for not being progressive enough because Alitas body was "too hot" or something and because she fell in love with a male. (Alitas boyfriend WAS a very meh character tbh though)

Anyway if you haven't seen Alita I highly recommend giving it a watch, it's charming and fun entertainment that just wants to tell a simple story and not smash you over the head with the in trend political ideals the 1% want to push on the masses

And for that I grant it two thumbs up