Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
When Alita awakens with no memory of who she is in a future world she does not recognize, she is taken in by Ido, a compassionate doctor who realizes that somewhere in this abandoned cyborg shell is the heart and soul of a young woman with an extraordinary past.
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54 films that influenced Alita: Battle Angel
What critics say influenced Alita: Battle Angel
But this mix of Ultimate Fighting with demolition derby, played by souped-up cyborgs on a super-fast track, basically amps up the savage roller-skating of Norman Jewison’s 1975 Rollerball.
Hugo and Alita also fall under the spell of a violent game named Motorball that attracts millions of fans (a ripoff of the 1975 film “Rollerball”).
There is food, drink, and, motorball, a viciously violent sport that calls to mind the James Caan classic, Rollerball .
Set in the 24th century after a massive war called The Fall, “Alita” takes place in a "Blade Runner"-like shanty city located directly underneath a seemingly lifeless floating metropolis that hovers above on a great disc.
Alita: Battle Angel is an unholy mashup of Blade Runner, Rollerball , Robocop, and The Terminator… all of which, it must be noted, predate the 1990 Japanese manga by Yukito Kishiro this is based upon.
Randomly filching from Blade Runner, Metropolis, The Matrix, TRON, Rollerball and a teenage boy’s wet dreams, it’s more of a scavenger hunt than a movie.
So, if you're looking for comic-book-quality characters, mindless mayhem and postapocalyptic visuals you looked at already in Blade Runner, Dark City, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Jupiter Ascending, Ready Player One and Mortal Engines, I really can't recommend Alita: Battle Angel highly enough.
In the hands of Rodriguez and writer/producer James Cameron, it aims for the sci-fi heights with its blend of Astroboy, Rollerball, Blade Runner, and Cameron's own Dark Angel.
In other words, Alita is basically Whip It crossed with Blade Runner—and it rules.
The specific influence of Paul Verhoeven’s beloved satire, as well as his Arnie-starring follow-up Total Recall , is apparent throughout.
That isn’t to say that Alita is the natural successor to the likes of Total Recall or RoboCop , but it treats its characters with the same brutality, particularly in action sequences.
Every World Under One Roof: In case you haven’t gathered by now that Alita: Battle Angel is as much a wild assemblage of mismatched parts as most of its characters, here’s an abbreviated list of additional movies this writer thought about during the film: Total Recall , A.I. Artificial Intelligence , Speed Racer , Rollerball , The Twilight Saga: New Moon , Jupiter Ascending , Star Wars , and Elysium .
Some of this crash-boom stuff takes place during a game called Motorball, one of those survivalist contests that have been a genre staple since at least the 1975 film “Death Race 2000.”
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With Alita—sourced from Yukito Kishiro’s beloved manga—he finds a confident and thrilling stride, balling up many reference points (The Matrix, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cameron’s Dark Angel TV series, and more) into something that feels fresh despite its obvious influences.
Similar technological revelations are depicted in cinema, perhaps none as memorable as Colin Clive's manic cry from the 1931 Frankenstein: "It's alive!"
The Rodriguez and Cameron team turned this Yukito Kishiro-penned, sci-fi graphic novel into a many-movie mash-up; it’s “Star Wars,” “Blade Runner,” “Rollerball,” “The Blood of Heroes,” “Robocop,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” and many more.
I can’t speak to the manga that inspired it, but Cameron, Rodriguez and third screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis give us settings, characters and story elements from “Blade Runner,” “Robocop” and “Rollerball,” all hanging from the framework of Cameron’s TV series, “Dark Angel.”
But the film, which also has thematic ties to Cameron’s 2000 TV series “Dark Angel,” is more like a two-hour-plus derivative exercise in the constant repetition of ultra-violent CG battle scenes that secured a PG-13 rating because the film’s gladiators are not human.
Alita: Battle Angel was first thought to begin production after the demise of Cameron’s television show “Dark Angel” only to have him decide something else was more pressing.
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Coming across as a hybrid between “Pinocchio” and, strangely enough, “Rollerball” - that notoriously terrible LL Cool J and Jean Reno classic from 2002 - “Alita” could prove worthy enough to spawn a franchise (though a $500 million worldwide box office haul needs to happen) and I wouldn’t be shocked if the sequel is better than “Battle Angel” which seems to oversaturate its nearly two hour runtime with clunky terminology, characters, and subplots that either feel like wasted space or trimmed for time.
It’s a little Æon Flux, a little Ghost In the Shell, and even some Akira and Speed Racer.
Based upon the three-decades old Japanese comic series “Gunnm” created by Yukito Kishiro, there are a lot of expectations for this adaptation, especially in light of the whitewashing controversy surrounding the lukewarm Scarlett Johansson live-action feature Ghost in the Shell.
It has long been fact that western adaptations of eastern material (more specifically Japanese manga) have never quite hit the mark; from the casting debacle of 2017’s Ghost in the Shell to the letdown of Netflix’s Death Note that same year, so you won’t be surprised by people's trepidation going into Battle Angel, but it must be said that this is easily the most faithful manga adaptation to date - and that may be down to the fact that it’s been twenty years in the making.
Live-action adaptations of anime and manga haven’t had the best of luck in Hollywood, at least if we’re looking at big theatrical attempts like Ghost in the Shell or Dragon Ball Evolution .
Two years ago, at around this same time, Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell crashed and burned due to an irresponsibly conceived story that put into stark relief the whitewashing of its main character.