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ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
Director: Robert Rodriguez Cast: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Jorge Lendeborg Jr. MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:02 Release Date: 2/14/19 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 13, 2019 You can tell that the eponymous character of Alita: Battle Angel isn't actually real—as in, we're not looking at a flesh-and-blood human on screen. The eyes, significantly larger than your average human's, are a dead giveaway, but so, too, is the occasional shine on the character's skin, which reveals, not pores, but pixels. Here's the thing, though: The character—a combination of a motion-captured performance by Rosa Salazar and who-knows-how-many hours of work by probably dozens of computer artists—works. You can tell Alita isn't real, but after seeing the character in action, you really don't care. Those actions, by the way, aren't just the fights, which are plentiful and brutal. They're the simple things, too, such as during the lengthy sequence in which Alita awakens after a slumber of many years, decades, or perhaps centuries. Lying in a bed with the sun shining upon that clearly digital skin, Alita wakes up as if from a relaxing nap. She proceeds to figure out the nature of her current existence, with the same head and upper torso but now with a body that has the look and texture of ivory. She considers it all, by touch and by examining her new self in the mirror. Through it all, that face and those big eyes reveal shifting, complicated emotions—the innocence of waking becoming confusion, becoming curiosity, becoming admiration. That's why the character works. Alita isn't simply an exquisitely rendered visual effect. She's an actual character, with a clear but dynamic personality, as well as a sense of thinking and feeling behind that digital sheen. Over the course of the film, she develops, too, in ways that have less to do with plot and more with figuring out what kind of not-human she wants to be. Much of this, one imagines, is the result of Salazar's performance, but there's also the decision on the parts of director Robert Rodriguez and the effects team to accurately reflect that performance in such detail. As for that pesky problem of the "uncanny valley," the point at which an artificial human looks too real and makes us uncomfortable, that's not an issue. Alita isn't real, and she's not human. That's the premise of the story, so on a subconscious level, we never feel the urge to reject her. The character is, then, more than just an opportunity to show off the filmmakers' ambition and ability to push the limits of technology. She's the result of a suitable marriage between technology and storytelling, in which the story defines the need for the technology and the effects complement the story. An Alita that looked too fake would be a joke (See the other CG characters here), and one that looked too real might undermine the intentional distance the character has from her human counterparts. All of this is to say that Alita—as a visual effect and, more importantly, as a character—is the best thing about this film, which comes from the manga series Gunnm by Yukito Kishiro. There are other admirable elements here, too, such as the film's sense of its world—a post-apocalyptic future of 2563, three centuries following "the Fall" after a great war. Before the war, there were floating cities in the sky, but now, only one, called Zalem, remains. Most of the population lives below the hovering metropolis, in the crowded and bustling Iron City, where humans use cybernetic technology to replace limbs or an entire body. In terms of the basic story, Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) finds what remains of Alita in a scrapyard below Zalem. He gives her a body and names her after his deceased daughter. From there, Alita has to unravel a few mysteries: a serial killer preying upon women, a conspiracy involving the commissioner of motorball (like a roller derby but with fatalities) Vector (Mahershala Ali) and Ido's ex-wife Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), the heroine's feelings for Hugo (Keean Johnson), the mysterious puppet-master Nova (played by an uncredited actor who's only recognizable in the final seconds) and his assorted cybernetic goons, and, of course, Alita's back story. The plot is far less involving than the main character or the world. The screenplay by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis juggles a lot, and most of it becomes an excuse for action sequences or, ultimately, doesn't matter in the big picture. So much of Alita's history, purpose, and identity hinges on details that remain a mystery by the film's end. It's obvious that the filmmakers have at least one sequel in mind, and by the end, catering to that idea of building a series out of this material leaves us, not only hanging, but also with a sense that everything that has happened thus far is just a scratch on the surface. It's not a complete story, and the big question, then, is whether or not everything else about the film compensates for that final feeling of hollowness. In ways, it does. Beyond the clear leap in visual effects that she represents, Alita is a surprisingly complex protagonist, who struggles with issues of identity in trying to find a balance between the person she could be and the person others want her to be. The film's world is a wondrous spectacle of grimy futurism, and the action is fierce and, despite being performed by a bunch of digital actors, has a genuine sense of weight to go along with the dynamic movement. Is that enough? For what the Alita: Battle Angel could be, perhaps it isn't. For what the film actually is, that certainly feels like enough. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language)
