I grew up watching anime and ‘Battle Angel Alita’ was one of my favorites as a kid so I’ve been pretty excited to see what director Robert Rodriguez was going to do with ‘Alita: Battle Angel‘. The new trailer shows that James Cameron picked the right director for the film as it hits all the right notes. The one thing you might not be able to take your eyes off of though is Alita’s eyes which are very anime in style.
It isn’t clear yet if this is a cyborg standard or just something that is in place for the leading lady. You can check out the trailer right here!
The original work told the story of Alita who was a cyborg that was almost completely destroyed. Daisuke Ido is a doctor who finds and restores the young woman who is found to have no memories. We are shown a complex society where those who live on Earth are the lowest caste and something much more stunning lies in the skies above as an upper-class society rule from the clouds. Alita is thrown into a world where fighting is the norm and soon learns that her own mysterious past means that she’ll have a much larger role to play in this society moving forward.
James Cameron announced the project over a decade ago and sadly created the juggernaut ‘Avatar’ instead which has tied up all of his time in the multitude of sequels which have yet to be released and are in various stages of development. Instead of letting the project linger, he stayed on as a producer and tapped Rodriguez to helm the movie and at least visually it looks pretty spectacular.
According to Rodriguez:
“When I first Jim’s script, I didn’t know much about it. I knew it was based on the manga. So I came in cold. When I read his script and saw the images that he had [made for it] it was arresting and completely captivating and I could identify with all the characters — Alita is someone who starts down in a trash dump and finds out that her true destiny is becoming something much greater than who she thought she was. And just having this huge spectacle-type world but with a story that can really connect — that’s what Jim does best. I was so happy to see all of that was in there, it was crafted with all the love and care with any of his other projects. It was a real dream to be able to take on the project in his place since he was going to be doing the Avatar movies.”
With cyborgs being fully realized in the film, we’ll be seeing a slew of humans who have replaced parts of themselves with technology and this first look into the world shows that they’ve been able to pull it off. As the manga was spread out over multiple volumes the original pitch for the film was to have it as a trilogy. That being said, this first film is “a self-contained story, so you’ll see a movie that’s very complete but it tunes up a world and a character that could go on and on.”
Having grown up with the series and with what has been hinted at in the films so far shows me something that I can get behind. Live-action manga and anime have more often than not been a miss so far but this could be a huge win for fans, audiences, and the studio alike!
Are you looking forward to checking out ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ on the big screen when it is released? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Entertainment Weekly
