Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly

A deactivated cyborg is revived, but cannot remember anything of her past life and goes on a quest to find out who she is.

Oh, Hollywood, when are you going to realize you don’t need all these CGI and an overload of destruction to make a good movie. Just tell a good story.

‘Alita: Battle Angel’ isn’t a bad story, but its not really all that great a story either. In fact, by the end of the film I had far more questions than answers. Why? Where? How? Is that even possibl? Etc, etc. I became increasingly bored as the film progressed. What started out as a relatively unique premise became formulaic.  And for the hundredth sci-fi movie there was the battle to the death in a futuristic sporting event cliche. Yawn, how many times have we seen this before?? So American, no offense…

With so much CGI it felt like I was watching someone playing a video game. Off course, the CGI intensified as the film progressed until nothing was realistic anymore. Oh boy, and off course there’s the cliched “love story” as well. Teenagers ‘falling in love’ without even knowing one another. That’s called LUST, Hollywood, not love!! You simply don’t understand the meaning of love! There was absolutely no chemistry between Alita and Hugo. Why would a human fall in love with an android anyway? That’s just bizarre!

Ah, and there’s the Blade look-alike character, Vector, who also tries to act like him. (I actually still don’t fully understand this character. So, he becomes someone else and then his eyes turn blue????). Critics praised Rosa Salazar’s acting as Alita. I guess she was good, since it was a very demanding role, but so much of it just didn’t feel real because of all the CGI, and I didn’t entirely believe her character. Christoph Waltz is a fantastic actor, but even here his character is so incoherent that I didn’t buy his character either. The same goes for Chiren (Jennifer Connelly).

Everyone’s always talking about going to Zalem and how badly they want to go there – and Alita is from there – blah-blah-blah-blah, but we never get to see Zalem, so what’s the point? We never even get a glimpse of what Zalem is all about. It’s just talk, talk, talk and more talk about Zalem.

And they always do that same old darn superhero pose. Ugh, so over it! Yawn. Oh, and I see the ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel. Think we can see more of Zalem if there’s to be one? And what the point of the bloody place is?

Ok, credit where credit is due. The visuals were really good. Not the overblown CGI-heavy scenes, but the android designs and how realistic they looked.

‘Alita: Battle Angel’ was a big box office success, earning $404 million on a $170 million budget. It won several awards in the Visual Effects categories, and also received nominations for Best Science Fiction Movie and Best Actress, among others.

Would I watch it again? Nope!