I watched Alita: Battle Angel, like most people, with no prior knowledge of its source material, the original nine-volume manga that was published between 1990 and 1995.
I didn’t expect much from it, just a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It couldn’t even give me that.
Alita (Salazar) started out as an android with large owl-like eyes, an infant-like face, the body of an adolescent, the temperament of a child, and the raging hormones of a teenager.
I never knew androids could have hormones, but there she was, going all googly-eyed for the first boy she met, and being rebellious from the day she walked out of Dr Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz)’s office.
You see, Alita was just an android head with a living brain that Ido found a few days prior, while scavenging in the junkyard.
He gave Alita the body he once built for his deceased daughter, and his daughter’s name as well. Because, of course, Alita has amnesia.
But it turned out that her model was the best killing machine ever built, for a great war the movie hinted at but never explained.
Despite it being a world-changing war, only a few plot-chosen people had knowledge of what Alita was. Ido was one of them.
Anyway, throughout the movie, Alita was the cause of all the problems, as well as the solution to everything, the MacGuffin, and the deus ex machina, all the while being the Mary Sue.
This literal killing machine also later received a more grown-up, self-healing, and near invincible android body, known as a berserker – one that Ido had refused initially to give her. (Ido is smart, I really like him.)
Once she had her way, the first thing she said was how her new body felt more sensitive to touch – and the boy she met on her first day promptly tested that out!
All these are typical early 90s manga cliches and fan service, and I forgave them all. It was easy to do since the movie is gorgeous.
Alita herself looked like a well-groomed female version of Gollum (from The Lord of the Rings) to me – a Gollumette if you will – but everything else was eye candy.
It also helped that I watched the movie in an IMAX 3D cinema.
My main complaint with this movie was its lack of an ending. There was no satisfaction, no conclusion, and no closure.
It was so open-ended it could have been arrested for indecent exposure. It took all the good opinions I had for the movie away.
But, for those looking for a manga-turned-Hollywood movie adaptation done right, go watch Alita: Battle Angel.
Personally, I would wait for the sequel and binge-watch the complete series to get the whole story at one go.
