Alita: Battle Angel

This movie is INCREDIBLE!! Seriously, the trailers and marketing did NOT do the movie justice! I watched it three times in theaters, and purchased it from a 24-hr Walmart on opening day (today) at 2:15 AM. Yes, you read that right – in the morning! I’d highly recommend getting at least the Blu-Ray version which comes with over 2 hours of behind the scenes extras. You’ll receive a closer look into the origins and making of this fantastic story!

Now you may be wondering, why is this in the Anime section instead of Film Fanatics? The answer is because Alita: Battle Angel is a live-action adaptation to a manga/anime series that was originally released in 1990. As many anime fans know, most live-action films of traditional anime have been flops, unable to compare to the 2D artwork that most Japanese artists publish on screen.

Alita: Battle Angel is the resounding exception! Everything about the world was carefully constructed to respect the beauty and passion that was infused into the original artwork – a very conscious decision made by James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez. If anything, it brings every detail to life in a breath-taking grand-scale replica!

What’s more is that the writing of the film was masterful at conducting timely exposition. You don’t receive a major data-dump at the beginning, but elements of the world and back-history of the character are gradually layered in intervals appropriate to the context of the story. This keeps the audience just as curious and intrigued as Alita while they discover the journey alongside her. (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Dr. Ido discovers an unconscious broken core in the trash heap coming from the floating city of Zalem. He takes her back to his medical cyborg workshop and gives her the body that was meant for his deceased daughter. When the cyborg girl wakes up, she has amnesia and he gives her his daughter’s name as well, Alita. With time, he hopes that she will recover enough to remember her true identity, and leads her around Iron City, the rougher, more impoverished domain beneath Zalem. During this tour, Alita gets distracted by a spectacle of Motorball on screen, a violent sport between racing cyborgs on an arena track, which Dr. Ido strongly discourages.

She also meets Hugo, a roguish handsome boy who admires her mechanical make-up. He invites her to play a street game of Motorball, finding that she has an affinity for it. After spending the day with him, she arrives home late and Dr. Ido voices a strong warning for her to always come back before dark, due to safety concerns. More cyborgs have gotten attacked lately, and harvested for their parts.

Alita catches Dr. Ido sneaking out into the night with a weapon of his own and follows stealthily in his footsteps. When it appears that he’s about to attack a woman strolling calmly through the streets, Alita intervenes… only to realize that the woman is not an innocent bystander, but part of an ambush of criminals. Dr. Ido tries to protect Alita, but is quickly overcome by the numbers. Alita dashes into the fray, quickly dispatching two of their attackers. A third arrives, a colossal foe by the name Grewishka who means to eliminate her and the doctor. While she is not able to kill him, she does remove his primary fighting arm, forcing him to retreat into the depths of the earth.

During this fight, Alita gains a flashback to her prior life where she was part of an elite trained combat unit that was fighting on the moon. She questions Ido about her identity, but is unable to get any answers. However, he does take the time to explain his role as a bounty hunter, or rather, a Hunter-Warrior. He and others parole the streets at times, looking for criminals with wanted bounties on their heads in exchange for currency. It’s because Dr. Ido performs these tasks on the side that he is able to keep his medical clinic up and running, even for people who can’t afford to pay. Alita wants to be a Hunter-Warrior like him, but Dr. Ido forbids it.

Dr. Ido has an ex-wife named Chiren who works in league with the manager of Motorball, Vector. Ironically, it was to them that Grewishka retreated, and as a cyborg doctor, she is tasked with his repair. While having a conversation with Vector about the incident and treatment, a mysterious force comes over both Grewishka and Vector to speak, taking the form of illuminated blue eyes. She recognizes this force as an entity from Zalem, who identifies himself as Nova. He offers to give her what she wants most if she devotes her full services to him: an ascension to Zalem. What’s more, she resents Dr. Ido for the loss and supposed “replacement” of their daughter. She would like nothing more than to return to their previous home, which is thought to be nigh impossible.

Hugo takes Alita out for a Motorball date, where he informs her that once every few years, there’s a championship, and the ultimate victor gets to ascend to Zalem. Halfway through the event, he is called to leave by his friends, and checks to make sure she can get home safely before departing. What she doesn’t know is that he and his crew work for Vector to ambush cyborgs and steal their body parts for his Motorball machine-warriors. Hugo keeps this aspect of his life a secret from Alita, but in order to help her, he takes her out to an abandoned warship at a crash-site to see if it will help unlock her memories. While making the hike, his friends elaborate on the history of “The Fall” which had to do with a war between earth an the URM (United Republic of Mars) 300 years ago. Alita jumps into the water, sinking to ground level as she proceeds into the husk remains of the battleship. An exquisite advanced cyborg body lies inside, miraculously undamaged from the ship’s impact.

Alita retrieves the body and presents it to Dr. Ido, requesting that he fashion it to her. The doctor refuses, claiming this to be the body of an ancient URM Beserker, one of the deadliest inventions known to mankind. Infuriated, she demands that he must give her this body, since the ship responded to her presence. She believes this is who she was meant to be, and that it will help them both defeat Grewishka who terrorizes the streets. Dr. Ido answers that the ship may have recognized her identity code, which allowed her access to walk in, but nonetheless, he will not unite her with this body of destruction.

Not ready to back down, Alita marches with Hugo towards the registration center and becomes a Hunter-Warrior. She proceeds to the local bar, and first makes a scene of calling all the other bounty hunters to her aid to take down Grewishka. To her dismay, they laugh, and some even state it’s not their business since Grewishka doesn’t even have a bounty on his head. Alita tries another tactic, mocking them for their impotence, and goading them into a bar fight to challenge their resolve.

Of all times, Grewishka comes knocking, thirsting for her blood. No one comes to her defense except a tiny little dog, who barks angrily at the giant. Grewishka slaughters it needlessly, and challenges Alita to the death. She paints her face in the innocent’s blood and a solemn vow echos in her mind. “I do not stand by in the presence of evil!” And she chases Grewishka into the depths beneath the earth.

An incredible battle ensues in this underworld, and unfortunately Alita is outmatched in her adversary’s territory. He slices her apart, and with her last fading effort, she breaks off her remaining arm in his eye socket. Help finally arrives from Dr. Ido, Hugo, and the Cyborg Dog Trainer (to his credit, he was the only one who didn’t take part in the pointless bar fight, but showed up when it really counted.) When Hugo sees Alita’s shattered form, and the arm that he stole for Vector that was attached to Grewishka, he is devastated.

Dr. Ido resolves that no one should hurt Alita like this ever again, and recreates her with the URM Beserker body. She wakes up elated and grateful, her body more powerful and agile than ever. Dr. Ido hugs her and says that her body is a just a shell – she is the only one who determines if it is used for good or bad. She goes to show Hugo, and elaborates that her touch receptors can feel more as well. Hugo is intrigued, and asks her to close her eyes. He tests the sensors up her arm and to her face, before gently kissing her. She asks him in a moment of vulnerability if it bothers him that she’s not completely human. He responds, “You are the most human person I’ve ever met!”

Vector speaks with Hugo in private (with an abundance of alcohol) to bring Alita to the Motorball Championship try-out’s. In return, Vector promises that he’ll send him to Zalem, which has been Hugo’s lifelong dream. Alita perches on his window the next morning, waiting for him to recover from a hangover, and they discuss a future together. When Alita realizes how badly he wants to go to Zalem, she offers to literally give him her heart, as a part to sell. Dr. Ido has informed her of its value, and she is certain it will amass a fortune for them both to go to Zalem. All she would need is a cheap replacement–and Hugo stops her there, emphatically telling her that she needs to be more careful about protecting herself. He urges that she keeps her heart, and says they will find another way. Maybe she could become a Motorball Champion? She excitedly agrees, but only if he will be her coach. Zapan, a Hunter-Warrior who was humiliated by Alita earlier in the bar fight, sees her happiness with Hugo, and vows to get vengeance from the shadows.

As Alita is preparing for the Motorball trials, she has no idea that Vector has assembled a team of bounty hunters and criminals to retrieve her heart. Nova requires it. Hugo is on his way to the Motorball arena, but stops first to prevent his friends from completeing a cyborg ambush. He tells them that he’s quitting, but is attacked by Zapan. Hugo flees the Hunter-Warrior’s wrath, who’s framed Hugo for a murder in order to justify collecting the bounty. Meanwhile, Alita is locked in a death match. When Hugo calls her for aid, she breaks out of the arena, throwing off her attackers along the way. When she finds him cornered by Zapan, she sees the bounty sign flashing behind him, stating that he’s wanted for murder. When Hugo tries to explain, Zapan snarls that if she helps him escape, she’ll be breaking the law, and it will be legal to execute her too. She responds that Hugo belongs to her, to which Zapan replies that she must be the one to kill him.

When she falters, he stabs Hugo, and she whisks him away into an abandoned building. They are trapped in by the bounty hunter and three additional centurions. What follows next is one of the most gut-wrenching scenes in the whole story. Hugo confesses while he’s dying that he more or less deserves this because he took people like her apart… for money. Alita asks him where he was that night before the Motorball game, and he tells her that he went to stop his crew, and that he quit. She asks why he would do that, and he answers “Because I love you.”

Dr. Chiren sees the grieving couple, and her heart softens. She abandons her mission of obtaining Alita’s heart, performing a procedure that removes Hugo’s head from his body, and receives circulation from Alita’s valves… just long enough for her to escape back to Dr. Ido, so he can give Hugo a cyborg body of his own. Vector confronts Chiren about the failed task he gave her, and she informs him that she is quitting for good. As a doctor and a mother, she cannot perform the actions he and Nova want of her. In this moment, Vector offers to send her to Zalem, and Grewishka blocks her way out.

Alita and Dr. Ido discuss Hugo’s dream of ascension to Zalem, which previously was based on currency. Ido tells Alita that no one can buy their way into Zalem; it’s clearly a scam concocted by Vector. The only true way to ascend is to become a Motorball Champion. She asks how Ido knows this, and he reveals that he and Chiren were born there. They descended to Iron City to find a cure for their daughter’s crippled condition. Alita storms Vector’s estate, making short work of his security forces. She challenges him over the lie to send Hugo to Zalem, but Vector corrects her–stating that he never breaks his promises. He told Cherin that he’d send her up too… and opens a case with her preserved body parts. Nova values these for his experiments.

Suffering another flashback, Alita realizes that her original mission as an URM Berserker was to destroy Zalem, which is how she fell into the rubble heap that Dr. Ido found her in. Alita forces a one-on-one conversation with Nova after slaying his champion Grewishka. He’s impressed with her, but threatens the lives of Dr. Ido and Hugo, warning that he’s always watching. Without furhter ado, she kills his puppet Vector, only to receive a call from Dr. Ido that Hugo is trying to climb his way to Zalem. She chases Hugo up the one of the massive cargo cables that anchors Zalem to Iron City, and begs him to come back down with her.

Hugo believes this is the only way to survive, since he still has a bounty on his head. He’s afraid he’ll either be executed, or they’ll always be running. She holds out her hand, affirming that they’ll do it together, and can still be free. Hugo relents and starts to follow her, but Nova releases a spiraling ring of death. Alita manages to dodge, but Hugo gets ripped apart, with only his head, torso, and one arm remaining. Alita grasps this arm as they fall, digging her sword into the siding of the cable stretch. They dangle in the sky, and his arm slowly starts to come apart. In these last moments, he thanks her for everything, and she sobs… telling him she loves him. His arm snaps and he plummets to his death.

In the following months, Alita rises in rank to become the final contender in the arena for Motorball Championship. Pointing her Damascus blade toward the heavens, she makes a silent vow of retribution to Nova, whom she knows is watching from Zalem.

And… roll the credits with outstanding music featuring “Swan Song” performed by Dua Lipa. All I know is that THERE HAD BETTER BE A SEQUEL!!!

***I’d also like to point out the similarities between this movie and Avatar. #1 – there’s the initial eating of the fruit/chocolate; #2 – there’s the rallying speech to Toruk Makto and Warrior Hunters to unite against a greater threat; and #3 – there’s the scene of being scraped up from the ground and lifted to dangle by one’s hair in the face of a mighty enemy, screaming one’s defiance against death.***

I’m going to go ahead and make a bold prediction. I think superhero movies are starting to go out of style, and I think that the next big thing in Hollywood is going to be more live-action anime/manga adaptations – specifically because of the hard work, passion and success of Alita: Battle Angel. I can’t wait! As always, please let me know what you think in the comments section!

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