RATING: B
This is one of those movies where I'm not even going to try and pretend that I know anything about the source material. This movie is apparently based off a manga/anime, which is not something I've delved into very much. The first I heard about this movie is when I saw a trailer for it in the theater--and it was pretty clear right away that the main character was a CGI creation, particularly because of the abnormally large eyes that pushed it into the realm of CGI abomination. The good news? In the final product, the eyes look semi-normal--or at least less distracting.
For those not familiar with the manga (like myself), this takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth; where humans and cyborgs live either on the sky city Zalem, or live down in the WALL-E-esque wasteland below. (No seriously, one of the early shots looked like it was ripped straight out of WALL-E.) Down on the surface, some scientist played by Christoph Waltz discovers a damaged female cyborg, who is mostly 100% robot--but has a human brain. The girl, who gets named Alita, has no memory of anything. And thus begins a journey to find out who she is--which involves her getting embroiled in the world of other cyborgs, the sport they (and humans) play called motorball, and also the evil ruler that watches and interferes from above in the sky city.
Probably the biggest hurdle in this is seeing if you can get past the fact that Alita, our main character, is completely CGI-created--even her head and face (to be fair, the rest of her is robotic). This seems painfully obvious early on when she is put alongside real humans, like Christoph Waltz and Jennifer Connelly. Even though there is motion capture involved, it's still a little odd at times. It is possible to get used to, and as the movie goes on, she ends up spending a lot more time with other cyborgs--who are arguably even more bizarre, since they're often just robots with human-like faces glued onto their heads.
If you are able to get past that, what follows is a fairly fun sci-fi post-apocalyptic movie with elements of cyberpunk. If you're hoping for battles involving the cyborgs, you'll get plenty of that--and those usually are the best parts in the movie. Alita's fighting style is actually pretty well done (even if it's not exactly choreographed, since she's all CGI). If you're also hoping for a decent story and good characters... the story works. Even if it's a little convoluted and has an overused trope or two, it keeps you interested and does go into some interesting directions down the stretch.
The characters are a bit more bland--it says something when one of the most memorable characters is a dog-loving cyborg who's on screen for 5 minutes tops. Still, they're helped along by decent acting. Even though Waltz feels like he's playing against character here, he does fine. Rosa Salazar does well via motion-capture. The real standout here is probably Mahershala Ali, who also seems to be playing against type a little, but does quite well at it.
All in all, this movie's nothing spectacular and some may have trouble getting around the whole "CGI protagonist" thing. But if you're a fan of sci-fi or cyberpunk or post-apocalyptic material at all, you'll probably want to check it out. There's a lot of fun action scenes here, and it doesn't feel like they're propping up a lifeless story. It does end as if there's a sequel expected, something that has become tiresome to some. Still, I would be interested to see where the story goes next if a sequel does happen.
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