SidViscous
Member
As the movie is officially out today in some parts of Europe, lets have an official thread for it!
Synopsis
I watched the OVA when I was in my teens and was smitten by it, and ended up keeping up with all the Manga all the way up to Mars Chronicles which is currently on-going. The story revolves around Alita (aka 'Gally' over in Japan) who is found in the scrap heap after being dumped with the trash from the floating city Zalem, with no memories of who she was or why she knows the long forgotten martian fighting style Panzer Kunst.
The setting is rather special too, it's in a distant future where mankind inhabited the stars and had amazing magic-like technology, but then fucked it up (as we do) by having a big old interplanetary war between Earth and Mars, which resulted in most of the technological advancements being lost or regressed.
The aforementioned floating city of Zalem was the only one not destroyed in the war, so it's now seen as some mystical heavenly like structure that everyone living in the scrap heap 'Iron City' beneath it dreams about, but nobody actually knows what's really up there any-more, and whoever lives there sure as hell don't want folks going up and so have banned flying machines, guns etc and use their fancy-pants Zalem tech on anybody who tries.
The film takes place entirely in the Iron City, and is a mix of romance, interesting character relationships, cyborg bounty hunters, and action.. lots of action. Oh, and a guy who attacks people with a pack cyborg dogs, I mean he's just sitting there looking like a bad-ass in his chair with a bunch of cyborg dogs... I want to be that guy, he's so cool.
Trailers
Totally non-important other people Reviews
I'm too lazy to post them all, but it's just crept up to 60% Fresh from 39% rotten, which is pretty much unheard of.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/alita_battle_angel
If you're also too lazy to read, it's basically "speed racer" good.
My Review
As someone who grew up hearing about this film, it's something I've been both looking forward to and nervous about for almost 20 years. Honestly, I probably googled every few months since I was a teenager to 'see what the latest is', and here I am on the wrong side of 30 holding my ticket stub in disbelief that I've actually seen it.
Given my love for the anime, that weird first trailer and now the rather mixed reviews, I went expecting to hate it and just wanting to be in a 'the movie actually came out and I saw it' world. But, wow, it was fucking great! Like, I'm going to see it again on Saturday in 3D great.
It's flawed in a lot of ways, the ending doesn't quite land, some of the relationships don't work on the big screen without all the manga back-story. But as a faithful adaptation of the Manga it does an incredible job and the whole time watching it, I could just feel that the writers loved the source material and really wanted to do it justice.
Every-time I expected to be let down, "I bet they changed this bit", "I bet this character is written out" "I doubt they can show that on a PG13" - Nope, crazy Jim Cameron / Robert Rodriguez have someone found a way of not only including it all, but making it mostly work on the big-screen.
If you have no idea what the fuck Gunnm is and just want to know if it's a good movie, let me give you a few reasons to see it.
- Alita / Rosa Salazar is incredible, 'the eyes' are a total non-issue after 5 minutes and visually the movie is well beyond what is shown in those original trailers. This is probably the best looking 200M budget movie I've seen.
- You like action? like decently shot action that isn't shaky cam and lasts longer than a few seconds? This film has full on 'anime power-levels' fights that go on for so long that if you held your breath you would be dead. It also has a sport which is basically Speedball on a race-track, which results in one of the coolest sequences I've seen in a very long time.
- Cameos! remember those actors you really liked? but you wonder why they are not in any films any-more as you wouldn't mind seeing him in a movie again. Good news, all of them have minor roles in this film. Seriously, the fact they also play manga characters resulted in a double whammy of 'oh wow they have that character from the ManGAOH WOW IS THAT WHO I THINK IT IS PLAYING HIM!?!'
- That guy with cyborg attack dogs, seriously. How empty is your soul if that isn't enough justification for seeing a film? You saw Mamma Mia twice and that didn't even have one cyborg attack hound.
So?
So my first OP, how did I do?
Are you going to see the film, or if you have seen it what do you think?
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