With top-shelf visuals and a deep bench of talent — including Robert Rodriguez directing and James Cameron in an elliptical orbit with a writing credit — hopes for Alita: Battle Angel ran high. But emblematic of my day-late, buck-short reviews recently is that walking in to see it, I knew that the People have already decided that this film is, allegedly, Not Good.
The People are not wrong, per se, but neither is Alita a throwaway. In fact, you should see it.
“Oh, Haus,” I hear you scoff. “You crotchety contrarian! You aging antagonist! You hoary old gainsayer of the zeitgeist!”
These and worse I may well be, but Alita has enough visual oomph, enough weirdly ambitious set pieces, and enough childish, to-hell-with-it enthusiasm to make it a fun and memorable night at the pictures — story be damned. (That final clause was also, I think, Cameron’s pitch.)
Alita: Battle Angel is a sci-fi adaptation of a graphic novel, set in the usual dystopian future (this time in the year 2500 or so, a full 300 years after “The Fall”). This is a world piled high with table leavings, like the heavy-handed “rich up there, poor down here” sky-city dualism of Elysium, or the Blade-Runner-meets-Mos-Eisley aesthetic.
Inhabiting this just-so, bright-but-gritty little world is Christoph Waltz, a doctor specializing in attaching robot limbs to hardscrabble menfolk, scavenging garbage heaps, and moonlighting as a sort of cyborg-killing cop. Waltz finds a girl’s robot head in the rubbish tip, gifts her with a body, and — poof! — brings to life a sort of cyborg pollyanna, a manic pixie dream girl for Jolt drinkers, complete with manga-sized dish eyes. (Rosa Salazar — the only decent thing about CHiPs — plays her). Named “Alita” by a misty-eyed Waltz (for reasons that feel more like box-checking than backstory), she quickly proceeds into the world, finding joy in the little things and having a meet-cute with the first teeny heartthrob she sees (Keean Johnson). When Alita isn’t bludgeoning shiny cyborgs in the street, she’s bludgeoning the audience with her innocence. Turns out, you see, that the amnesic Alita has some serious skills (on both counts).
A mysterious past, and killer kung fu? Picture a cross between Jason Bourne and a Ty Beanie Boos Big Eyes toy, then strip out any meaningful revenge motive, and you pretty much have the titular Battle Angel.
To be frank, this is not a terrible setup for a film. Is Alita old military tech? Will she take down a villain? Right some wrongs? Learn about her past? Develop as a character? Learn something? Face consequences? Make good on a long-forgotten promise?
No, no, no.
What follows instead is a strange brew, a mix of robot roller-derby called Motorball (?), oddly unfulfilling bounty hunting, and maddening hinted-then-unexplored backstory. There’s something of a love story, a little coming of age, and (I guess) some fraction of a revenge arc — but there’s too much going on and too little continuity. It’s a shame — through the windswept sands of vapidity and the patchwork glitz of cyborg CGI, we can almost make out the ruins of a vast and majestic story buried somewhere beneath. (I am Ozy-Cameron, King of Kings. Look on my script, ye mighty, and despair.)
Rodriguez either should have made a ten-episode miniseries out of this, or dropped the majority of this extraneous chaff and told just one flipping tale.
Little effort is made to link Alita’s allegedly kick-ass past with her bushy-tailed amnesic optimism. I have no idea why those metal bounty hunters were doing three quarters of what they did. I also don’t know why a blue-eyed villain (who looked strangely like James Cameron in Doggles) shows up a couple times, yet plays no actual role in the story. I think the ending is possibly a sequel setup, but I really can’t be sure. It’s not exactly hard to poke holes in this story, since in the end it barely qualifies as a story at all.
So what gives, Haus? Why u no steer us away from trash?
Because it’s not trash, exactly. Instead, it’s like Alita was made by children: It has the same arbitrary twists and continuity breaks, yet also displays such utter confidence in its single-line proclamations, pat resolutions, and truisms.
And therein lies the secret truth: To enjoy this movie, you need only imagine you’re listening to an elementary-schooler’s stone-faced narration of jottings from his composition journal. Just nod quietly at each Deus Ex Machina clean-up or foray into robot roller-skating, and worry not about backstories aggressively hinted at and then promptly forgotten. Marvel, as your young narrator clearly has, at the simple spectacle of People Made of Metal But With Human Faces, or of Oscar winner Mahershala Ali dressed in a future-trenchcoat and calling himself “Vector.” Stifle your laughs. Buy in. Suspend your disbelief in every way.
Net net, there’s a purity here, a youthful earnestness that transcends the many faults and invites us simply to take pleasure in the creative process, in imagining shiny and ultimately meaningless things. I should hate Alita, but I really don’t.
Haus Verdict: Alita is short on plot, but nonetheless seduces with its innocent disregard for storytelling basics and its fascination with shiny things.
Alita: Battle Angel opened everywhere February 14.
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