Alita: Battle Angel

“This is just your body. It's not bad or good. That part's up to you.”

Filmology Rating: 2 out of 4

Alita: Battle Angel is the film that James Cameron pushed back the release date for because he knew it would flop in mid December. So here it is! From the visionary director of Sky Kids 4 comes a film that was better in thought.

Alita is a robot girl in the most generic post-apocalyptic world ever. She can't remember anything of her past until she learns she is a badass warrior. She stays that way for the next two hours. Someone with scoliosis has better structure than this film.

Let's start with positives: the CGI looks fantastic.

The negatives are quite extensive. This was written by James Cameron and a few others. But James Cameron's pursuit of shoving CGI down our throats is getting irritating. From a script perspective, it feels like a first draft. Literally everything is wrong with it.

Alita is probably the least interesting protagonist I've seen in a while. The first time she fights, she is a badass. And every single fight after that, she's a badass and she never loses. WHAT A CHARACTER! There is a love plot that involves her which was horribly tacked on. There just isn't any growth of Alita at all throughout the entire film.

There is also no story. This film is just a series of scenes that were edited in a sequence. Along with some very on-the-nose expository dialogue made for a highly predictable "plot" and boring film. When the film started, I was very curious where the film was going until it answered all of my questions within the first thirty minutes. After that, nothing. Just "stuff." This film is like if you have a mansion and the outside is beautiful with a garden and great paint job, then you walk in and it's a concrete floor, there isn't any drywall up, and the electrical and plumbing don't work. BUT THERE'S A POOL!

So this film set up a lot of characters and plot lines that, guess what, WILL BE ANSWERED IN THE SEQUEL! I'm sick of James Cameron and his franchises and sequels, I'm sick of it. Make a good movie first! Like "Terminator." This film was like the pilot of a ten episode TV show.

The villain was generic, characters are forgotten and incomplete. It's essentially Blade Runner, but dumber.

Rating: Skip It

-Nolan