Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel

Her eyes took me completely out of it in the trailer.  It was enough for me to consider not watching it.  But the glimpses of fight sequences looked good enough (especially this shot):

Power pose!

And a friend said Rosa Salazar does an amazing job, such that you forget about the eyes soon enough.

The fights are really cool, and Rosa Salazar does do an amazing job.  And while I never got over the eyes, they did fit well enough into the aesthetic of the movie that I stopped regarding them as a negative point.     

The problem is that I can’t reconcile the live action parts of this film with the CGI portions.  Their integration isn’t quite seamless enough for me to consider it a ‘live action’ film.  Sure, that distinction has been stomped on for over two decades now, but it’s usually pretty easy to make a call on whether a movie’s animated or not.  Even CGI-fests like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings are still live action movies.  Something like Mary Poppins is live action with animated elements.  But Alita feels like an unintentional Roger Rabbit, where manga characters live side by side with humans.  I wish I was better with my words to explain the oddness.  

Part of it may also have to do with the fact that a lot of the cyborg vfx aren’t of the highest quality.  They don’t look real enough. I was willing to accept Alita, but the rest of the cyborgs aren’t up to snuff.  And Keean Johnson (Hugo) kept reminding me of Mario Lopez for some reason. Hard to take the love story seriously when Alita’s kissing AC Slater.  

The movie is better than all of my moaning about the special effects.  Salazar brings a heart to the story that moved me, Christoph Waltz is an excellent father figure, and I would love to see a sequel.  (I’d also love to see the Wachowskis take a stab at an Alita movie.  I got tons of Speed Racer vibes from this, especially in the Motorball scenes.)

Regret watching: No

Would buy on DVD: No

Would watch again: Yes

Rating: Nice

X-Women wrapped up my first X-Men box.  How’d it look?

Box Summary:

Time spent reading: 20 hours, 47 minutes

Issues read: 184

Issues cut: 32

Highlights (Good or better): Saga, Blue is the Warmest Color, Phoenix: Endsong, Greg Rucka Wolverine, Old Man Logan

Project Summary:

Time spend reading: 15 days, 5 hours, 19 minutes

Issues read: 2990

Issues cut: 388