Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel – The year is 2563. Following an interplanetary war referred to as “The Fall”, most of the Earth is wasteland. The floating city of Zalem remains inaccessible to most people, who live in the run-down Iron City directly beneath it, surviving on the scraps that fall from Zalem’s waste chutes. One day a scavenger finds the remains of a half-dead amnesic cyborg on the scrapheap and brings it home to repair. Little does he know that her memories contain shocking secrets about the city’s past, and huge implications for its future.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019) – Director: Robert Rodriguez

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59771820

Rating: 12

Running Length: 122 mins

Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earl Haley, Keean Johnson

Genre: Sci-fi, Action

REVIEW: ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL

In development for many years as a project for James Cameron to direct, Alita, based on a Japanese comic series, finally arrives directed by Robert “Desperado” Rodriguez, based on Cameron’s script. But despite the delay and the change of director the vision seems to have remained intact and no expense spared in bringing this cutting edge, large-scale science fiction epic to the screen.

Although the set-up is complex the action gets moving fairly quickly, with back-story filled in gradually along the way as the title character regains her memories, leaving more space for the characters and action. Alita herself, a CGI motion-capture character performed by Rosa Salazar, is almost 100% convincing, and gives perhaps the best performance of the film, moving from lost and innocent, through charming and funny, to determined and inspiring. Other characters are less well served and are sketched in fairly thinly, with Christoph Waltz and Jennifer Connelly particularly under-used.

It’s slightly annoying that it still relies on the old trope, particularly prevalent in manga but also seen in other films like The Fifth Element, of a cute, innocent young girl who is also a kick-ass warrior, and the solutions to most of Alita’s problems seem to involve beating up lots of other people.

But this is a mostly a very entertaining action adventure in a well-designed and beautifully realised environment. The plot is well constructed and varied, and the actions scenes are clean, comprehensible, and well choreographed. It’s quite violent in places, although the borderline horrific injuries some characters sustain are mitigated somewhat by the fact that they’re mostly cyborgs losing metal limbs rather than flesh and blood characters.

There’s plenty of scope here for sequels to further the story and dig into the background, with tantalising hints at the larger world and directions the plot could take in the future. I hope they get to make them.

CONTENT: IS ‘ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL’ SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN?

Guns are illegal in Iron City so there is no shooting. As a consequence characters are mostly armed with knives or swords. There is regular violence throughout the film, usually based around punching and kicking, but also involving limbs and body parts being stabbed or chopped off with bladed weapons. However most of the characters involved are cyborgs, which means that the body parts injured or broken are usually metal, although they often “bleed” a green fluid. Many scenes featured cyborgs’ limbs being forcibly amputated to be sold as parts, while they lie there protesting and screaming in distress, even though they are not suffering physical pain. Cyborg characters are often shown dismembered but still alive, and in a few instances are shown with broken or partially missing facial elements as a result of fights.

In an early scene women are seen being stalked through dark alleyways, and there are verbal references to a recent spate of murders. One character is threatened with a blow torch which is pointed into the camera, although we do not see their reaction or any damage inflicted, and the moment cuts away quickly. At one point a major cyborg character is chopped into various pieces, and while they suffer no physical pain it is shocking and distressing for the character and potentially for the audience.

The sport of Motorball is mostly bloodless although there is a constant threat of physical violence, and Alita has to beat off a variety of opponents by physically incapacitating them. Elsewhere, a character is shown driving through the city on a motorbike without a helmet, and then running through streets performing a type of parkour, leaping across rooftops and dodging traffic, narrowly avoiding injury.

A dog is killed off-screen, implied with a sound effect. Afterwards we just see a small pool of blood on the floor nearby.

A person’s brain and eyeballs are briefly shown in a case after being harvested (off-screen). Another major character falls to their death near the end of the film, causing much distress for Alita.

Following a body upgrade, Alita mentions that she has new sensors and that she is much more sensitive to touch. This leads directly into a kissing scene. In another scene a woman is shown lounging on her bed in underwear and a négligée

One character is often seen drinking spirits (possibly whisky or cognac). He shares some with a younger character, who is seen hungover the next day, ruefully admitting that he drank too much.

CAN I SEE A CLIP?

VERDICT: IS ‘ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL’ FOR KIDS?

An action-packed and frequently violent science fiction with plenty of peril and combat. Many scary and violent moments make this mostly suitable for children aged 10 and upwards.

• Violence: 4/5 (constant action and regular fight scenes)
• Emotional Distress: 1/5 (the main character is an innocent who is particularly distressed by the violence and betrayal she experiences)
• Fear Factor: 3/5 (some scary cyborgs with a sharp weapons, threatening others in often dark, night-time scenes)
• Sexual Content: 1/5 (one long kiss, from a distance; one shot of a woman in underwear)
• Bad Language: 2/5 (One use of the f-word; a few isolated uses of milder words like ‘crap’, ‘bitch’ and “shit”)
• Dialogue:  1/5 (repeated verbal threats of violence)
• Other notes: (deals with slum communities, exploitation, poverty, body modification, street violence and violent sports)

Words by Simon Litton

Simon is a friend to Is This Movie Suitable and runs a blog full of his travels at Simon Says. You should check it out!