Alita: Battle Angel (2019)Directed by Robert RodriguezI watched "Alita: Battle Angel" in 3D 4DX on Sunday (first time I'm watching a movie in this format). While it was good to experience once, I think the extra effects were gimmicks and didn't add much to the experience of the movie, which was entertaining on its own. The movie is set in 2563 and opens with cyborg specialist Dr Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) discovering the head of a 300 year old cyborg (with a human brain) in a scrap heap. He gives it the cybernetic body of a teenage girl, and names her Alita. Alita can't remember anything about her past and doesn't know the present world, and through her, the audience surrogate, we are given exposition. Alita and Ido live in the Machine City, and the wealthy and privileged live in the Sky City of Zalem. We are introduced to the other characters that make up the world of the film, the sport of Motorball, the other antagonist cyborgs and the Big Bad, a character called Nova.The world building they've done here, is terrific. I love a good cyberpunk film and this is well executed (kind of reminded me of "Altered Carbon" and "Elysium", though those are very different). It has exceptional visuals and effects. I don't think the technology to accomplish this would have existed a few years before. The cyborg characters are entirely rendered in CG. Initially Alita with her big anime-style eyes takes some getting used to, but the effects are photorealistic enough that you accept it as being real. The acting from Rosa Salazar as Alita is great, and Christoph Waltz has such an amazing screen presence in anything he's in. This felt more like writer James Cameron's movie to me, than a Robert Rodriguez film. Nevertheless, I liked it a lot, and felt it was much better than what I was expecting. The movie sets up a lot of story threads to be resolved in a sequel (I hope the movie is successful enough that we get one). I liked the music score by Junkie XL (here credited as Tom Holkenborg). The action scenes are very well done.I drew Alita from the movie, this was drawn with my new @ns1pen on A6 Brustro sketchbook and scanned.#418 / 27-Feb-19 (More info in comments)
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