Alita: Battle Angel originally was an adaptation that director James Cameron had planned on making after Avatar, the first installment in a planned trilogy of films. Jim would instead map-out a bunch of Avatar sequels and eventually hired Robert Rodriguez to direct the film and Robert shot the film at his own studio facility Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas.
I was personally thrown off by the overuse of CGI on the main character of Alita, more importantly the uncanny-valley aspect of her giant eyes and face that were obviously an homage to the drawing style of the character in the Japanese manga.
Although, they might have wanted to cast an Asian actress if that was their aim.
However, the artistic choice there is still a little unsettling when you know actress Rosa Salazar didn’t need to have her head/face completely CGI, when other actors in the film playing cyborgs didn’t all undergo the same level of alterations making Alita’s unnatural facial expressions standout even more.
The biggest hurdle Alita: Battle Angel faces is a massive amount of competition on it’s opening weekend on December 21st as it’ll be going up against high-end studio projects including Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns, WB’s DC Comics adaptation Aquaman, Paramount’s Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, and Fox’s comedy Holmes and Watson. Battle Angel having the most expensive budget out of these five releases, it has the most to lose at the box office that weekend.
There was recently an off-site event for Battle Angel at San Diego Comic-Con, where they showed twenty minutes of footage. Well, today Fox has released the new trailer online alongside a live Q&A and it gives us a better impression of what this manga/anime adaptation will look like on the big screen.
You can watch the new trailer below.
From visionary filmmakers James Cameron (AVATAR) and Robert Rodriguez (SIN CITY), comes ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, an epic adventure of hope and empowerment. When Alita (Rosa Salazar) awakens with no memory of who she is in a future world she does not recognize, she is taken in by Ido (Christoph Waltz), a compassionate doctor who realizes that somewhere in this abandoned cyborg shell is the heart and soul of a young woman with an extraordinary past. As Alita learns to navigate her new life and the treacherous streets of Iron City, Ido tries to shield her from her mysterious history while her street-smart new friend Hugo (Keean Johnson) offers instead to help trigger her memories. But it is only when the deadly and corrupt forces that run the city come after Alita that she discovers a clue to her past – she has unique fighting abilities that those in power will stop at nothing to control. If she can stay out of their grasp, she could be the key to saving her friends, her family and the world she’s grown to love.
SOURCE: FOX