Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron's Alita: Battle Angel

Ah damn shame then.

Huh alright then.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 1st 2019 at 1:17:08 AM

Well, remember Venom, and just have fun.

51% now. So half of the critics are giving it a pass so far.

Some of the negative reviews seem a little odd. They say the film pulls too much or is too similar to works currently running or recently released while still acknowledging the source material is older than all of them. The film is too close to the original material and too original. The romantic interest is awkward even though he probably gets mulched not long after his introduction. The film doesn't wrap everything up in a neat bow even though it just adapts the first two-wish volumes of a five volume series itself part of a three part ongoing series.

Ah well, I'm still looking forward to seeing the film even if it isn't an amazing critical success.

Looks like the film is at 53% now on RT.

Edit: Nevermind. I don't like rotten tomatoes.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Feb 5th 2019 at 6:38:02 AM

It was “fresh” at one point. But it’s currently at 58%, but that means the majority of critics are giving it a pass.

Edited by ManOfSin on Feb 5th 2019 at 1:18:50 PM

…Speaking of RT, is there a reason a 3/5 score is counted as "fresh", but a 6/10 is counted as "rotten"…?

3/5 and 6/10 are literally the same thing. Unless there's something I'm missing here.

No, they're pretty much the same numerically speaking.

That has been one of the criticisms of Rotten Tomatoes, they've positioned themselves as the "final judgement" of a movie's critical consensus but when people start investigating individual reviews they find 3/5 rated movies going for either positive or negative depending on the weather. It pokes holes in their claims of being neutral. Metacritic accounts for mixed reviews and is often seen as a better indicator of actual consensus

The thing is that a movie like this can go just about any direction when it comes to critical reviews. A niche property can sometimes cause confusion because certain critics may just not be familiar with the genre or be making comparisons to less-regarded works. About the best I can say from the trailers is that the CG looks impressive and maybe slightly more confident in its story than Ghost in the Shell, but the Uncanny Valley of the real world anime design of Alita may take some getting accustomed to and it feels like the back-half of the movie is going full Rollerball, which is not a complement.

Saw this in theatre this afternoon. I'm not familiar with the source material, so I have no idea how faithful it is to it.

But otherwise, yeah, I enjoyed it, even if it was a bit open ended.

Yeah, it covers roughly a third of the original manga's story, and the part most devoted to worldbuilding while we are at that. And, knowing that who basically is the second most important character only makes a physical appareance at the midpoint of the manga, well, yeah, even without seeing the film, I'd expect it to be quite open.

A reviewer said (paraphrasing) that it's more of a triumph of world building than storytelling, and I don't entirely disagree with that assessment.

It's a beautifully realized world with a lot of potential, but the actual story is pretty loosely put together. I feel like the stuff with Alita trying to discover her identity is strong, but the central relationship between her and Hugo is pretty meh and ends up stealing focus in some places.

I don't know if there's really a central drive to the story since big bad Nova isn't even officially revealed for most of the movie and it's not clear why Zalem is that important in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, you have all that stuff with URM trying to destroy it, but who even knows why. You just know there's something evil happening there and it needs to be destroyed, but without a firm reason for it you just sort of go 'OK' at it. I know, sequel bait and all that, but there's no guarantee it will do well enough for that.

It's a fun movie and I don't regret watching it, but it could have been stronger. I'm sure fans of the anime will dig it though. The art design and effects are genuinely beautiful and they've captured the feel of a live-action anime close to perfectly. Great action too.

Edited by edvedd on Feb 10th 2019 at 7:13:21 AM

The romance with Yugo was the part I was most afraid of, but I think it was handled pretty well in the end… I was just a little disappointed by Yugo's death. In the manga there was this sense that he was still captive of his futile dream and Gally saved him from it before he died. In the film it just feels like he tries to go to Zalem because he has no other choice, which makes his "thank you for saving me" ring a bit hollow.

Otherwise, I think they did a pretty good job at keeping the core elements of the story while rearranging some things in a somewhat logical way (like expanding Vector's role). Obviously it's a bummer that it's written like the first half of a two-parter… but really, I'm not sure it's possible to adapt this story into a single movie. I've only read the first four volumes of the manga so far (up to the Jasugun arc), and it's already pretty packed. I wish the film's dialogue relied less on exposition though.

All in all, it's easily the best live-action adaptation of a manga that I've seen.

I thought the exposition was well handled. This film is probably accessible to people who have never read the manga or watched the OVA.

I had great expectations, and I wasn't disappointed.

So...in comparison to the last movie based on an anime/manga, how does Alita: Battle Angel fare as an adaptation to its source material?

Well it's not being an adaptation of Robocop so by definition it can only do better than GITS did.

It's shockingly faithful to the original in a way that I've never seen before in a Hollywood adaptation and honestly probably hurts it a little as a movie.

Not that everything is exactly the same of course, but it just seemed to me that they wanted to "recreate the same story" rather than "make a movie using the premise" if that makes any sense.

Edited by Clarste on Feb 15th 2019 at 8:40:31 AM

Very faithful indeed. All the changes to the story keep being coherent with the universe, and many are taken from characters or story arcs that would appear later in the books. And some of the changes from the manga were present in the OVA.

Edit: On second thought, some of the scenes about troops from Mars may be a bit different from the original story, especially the part in which they attempt to climb up to Zalem. I don't remember seeing that in the manga, and they are supposed to come from space, not to climb up.

Edited by gropcbf on Feb 15th 2019 at 6:50:52 PM

One criticism I would have is that… for the first half of the movie at least, Iron City really doesn't seem like such a bad place to live in. Not very wealthy, but not the shithole it is in the manga.

So for a while a newcomer might wonder why Yugo wants to live the city to the point of engaging in some fucked-up business.

The movie seems to be doing better than expected.

I really enjoyed this film, it is a visual treat from start to finish with amazing world building. My primary criticism is that it feels very episodic, like taking 5 episodes from a TV show and stringing it together. The Myth Arc is obvious but it's easy to forget what they are really trying to accomplish. The narrative is very vignette based, even though it tries to be more fluid, and it's only the last 5 minutes that really hones in on an end goal (which is used more as a Sequel Hook).

I guess too looking back that the character interactions are not THAT engaging, but serviceable. It's again bolstered by the visual design. A problem with the Ghost in the Shell movie was that it was playing too much to the spectacle, saying "isn't this so awesome" when it was actually rather generic and not nearly as exhaustive as it needed to be. Alita provides just enough exposition to explain things but otherwise framed things more formally, letting the setting and body language tell the story.

Of course some compromises had to be made with the PG-13 rating, it tried to cram in a bit too much, to the point that I don't think 10 more minutes would have really hurt, and the romance part gets sappy at times - I wonder if, after deciding to delay from December to now, they did some last adjustments to the editing to emphasize that part, given the release on Valentine's Day. Among other weaknesses I may mention the anonymous musical score, and a fairly wasted Vector and therefore Mahershala Ali: little of what he does is by himself, as he spends a lot of time being mind-controlled by Nova - who is also made into a more explicit presence rather than just hinted.

However, it's honestly not much compared to what they managed to nail: the fidelity of some scenes to the manga and OVA is positively shocking at times, the fights are fantastic, and all the additions, changes or rearrangements feel coherent, nothing of the "core" is lost. Ed Skrein makes a really great Zapan, so arrogant and vainglorious. A detail I liked more than in the manga: the Berserker body happened to be an old find by Ido, conveniently stashed in his basement to be used, while here's it's found by Alita thanks to memories of her past. In the end it's an expanded and better version of the OVA (which were clearly the basis of the film's script, given the presence of Chiren and Grewishka).

Personally, I anticipate that many viewers will like Mc Teague despite his little screen time; and of course Zapan, who may also get some Draco in Leather Pants.

Regarding the PG13 it has its benefits and drawbacks… Replacing Yugo's spine trafficking by something more tame reduced the impact of his character arc to me, but stuff like Grewishka being hooked on fresh brains would have been a bit too gross in a live-action film. And I'm not sure what's worse between killing the dog offscreen or actually showing it… When you think about it, even the most hardcore horror films don't often show animals being brutally killed.

……

I watched the OVAs out of curiosity. I was surprised to see a lot of scenes that I thought were film-original, as well as Chiren (I thought she appeared later in the manga or something). These OVAs have… not aged very well honestly, and the film is basically a better version of them, although I realize that the film also skipped Yugo's backstory, which is a shame…

Now while the OVAs' sound design and voice acting are lackluster (Ido's Japanese VA especially did not give a shit), I love the synth music. The film could have benefitted from this kind of distinct sound rather than your run-of-the-mill Hanszimmeresque score.

On another note, I'm amused that Vector has three different fates in three different versions. The poor guy can't get a break.

Edited by Lyendith on Feb 16th 2019 at 1:53:41 PM