My Review of Alita: Battle Angel (Major Spoilers!)

I am a big fan of the original work this film was based on. I waited a long time to see this film. Green Gods preserve me, I had high hopes for it the whole while. I finally saw it today. Wanna know what I thought of it? Here you go.

Overall, the film was good. A solid 7/10. It had its ups, and those ups went so high they nearly pierced the heavens. It also had its mehs and downs that left me feeling like a surly drunk crawling out of the gutter I passed out in the night before. Not enough to tip the scales to an "okay" rating, but they're still issues set with malevolent glares.

Aside from one or two cringe-worthy scenes, the acting was great (special mention goes to Alita's actress, Rosa Salazar, as well as Christoph Waltz and Jennifer Connelly). The visuals were splendid. The action was top-notch. The story was a big, fun cyberpunk adventure. I was a bit depressed that it took more after the anime than the manga (which only followed some of the manga and made up a lot of portions for itself), but other than that, it was undisputedly one of the best western adaptations of any manga out there. Be that as it is, it does have some serious problems holding it down from perfection. Besides the fact that the film felt like it was trying to squish several arcs of the manga together in a sandwich that was almost too big for my mouth, four big issues stand out to me that rub its filth all over my face.

First comes our main setting: Iron City. In the manga, it was a pollution-choked and gritty hellhole of a place — a true dystopian cyberpunk setting. There, you couldn't look around a corner in a crowded street without seeing a host of drug addicts, madmen, prostitutes, psychopaths, conmen or creeps lurking there. Here, in the film, it's just a big, sunny city with bright colors, lots of open and friendly folk, almost everything is clean, and there are only some darker aspects here and there that would make you question whether or not it would make a decent place to live. True story.

Next is the lack of development for Hunter-Warriors. When Alita registered to become one in the manga, she kicked major ass right off. Aside from becoming rich almost overnight, she did such a damn good job of hunting down and brutally slaughtering evil cyborgs and criminals to the point that it became a semi-tedious task for her; she could afford to casually daydream while facing her foes with little repercussion. Here, we saw NOTHING! She registers as a Hunter-Warrior, fights the bounty-less Grewishka, and does NOTHING! Just the scene where she "kills" (read: saved the life of) Hugo when the hot British robot dude Zapan coerces her to do the job herself under penalty of getting both her and her flat-charactered boy-toy killed. And also, the part just before Alita says she would not stand by in the presence of evil, she literally stood by in the presence of evil when the big-bad mook Grewishka impales a cute little dog near her to death with his lightning-fast claws. I would have at least shown Alita trying in vain to reach for the poor mutt before the blindingly quick and gruesome act of dog-kicking is over with.

Then comes the hulking, evil byproduct of the tyranny lording over the society: Grewishka. If Makaku from the original manga and Grewcica from the OVA became lovers, Grewishka is the deformed (yet strangely adorable) result of their hot, sweaty lust. In the manga, his (original) counterpart Makaku was both a far better villain, and just plain fucking horrifying — he ate peoples' and dogs' brains there as a pastime, fresh and raw, just for the morphine-related high they gave him. Just as well, he was a well-developed antagonist in the manga: we got to hear about his utterly tragic background. He had earnest depth (he fell in love with Alita due to her hope, willpower, and unwavering determination to destroy rancid, foul, evil and perverse things like himself, in a weird and fucked-up sort of way). He wasn't hunted by the Hunter-Warriors, not because he was bounty-less like in the film, but because he flat-out terrified them. And in spite of his foul-to-sickening-degrees acts of evil, I felt a genuine sort of sympathy with him at the point of his (awesome and over-the-top) moment of death, just as Alita managed to. All-in-all, his entire arc could have been translated to a film of its own and still rock ass. Here, he's just a big dumb flunky who gives Alita her first taste of the brutish oppression this society bears, has some cool fights with her ("FUCK your mercy!" gets a special mention) and finally gets dunked on by her with all the effort I use to eat a saltine cracker at the very end. I'm just glad that they kept his "pendant" speech to Alita from the manga; it was creepy, sick, and very much a faithful call-back to his original character.

The last shortcoming of significant mention to me was the film's end and Hugo's fate, and that's without counting how Hugo's character himself in the film is flatter than a roadkilled possum compared to his manga and anime counterparts. In the manga and OVA, it was a key scene when Hugo tried to ascend to Zalem in a futile, practically suicidal fit of rage, anguish and pure delirium, while here it's both incredibly brief, and more an act of pure desperation in an effort to not die than anything else. I was so happy they kept the part where Alita cuts Hugo's head off to save him, but was really disheartened by their decision to take out the scene where he reacts to his robot body (one of two big parts of the aforementioned delirium that spurs him to climb the wires), as well as rushing his death. It robbed a lot of the meaning from him and the impact he had on Alita, given she spent a climactic scene just before successfully saving him.

Other than those gripes (and a few others), the film was still good. It was an enjoyable flick overall, and I'm happy I saw it. Did it fulfill all my expectations? Almost, but nah. Was it a perfect adaptation? Heck no. Did it take a big, positive step in the right direction for western live-action manga/anime adaptations? Heck yes!

Also, the Hunter-Warrior cowboy McTeague and his Hellhounds were pretty cool, too. My ensemble dark horses, yessiree.