In the ‘90s, Guillermo del Toro brought Yokito Kishiro’s Manga “Gunm” to James Cameron’s attention and inspiration took flight with domain names bought as early as June 2000 and a number of reports of screenplay and production announcements. With Cameron still having the next two Avatar sequels on his plate, he had to hand off what would become known as “Alita: Battle Angel” to producer Jon Landau with Robert Rodriguez in the director’s chair as production finally got under way at the end of 2016.
“Alita: Battle Angel” has Rosa Salazar in the title role and is the story of a disembodied cyborg core being discovered in a landfill by Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz). She has no memory of her life before him (much less her name), so she becomes the title character, named after Ido’s lost daughter. In beginning to discover her new world, Alita meets Hugo (Keenan Johnson) who in turn helps her to discover things she likes such as chocolate and the popular sport Motor Ball. As time passes and memories start to reform, Alita finds out that she is more than she could have ever imagined.
The technology that has been designed and developed by Cameron (and others) has allowed for an almost seamless vision of CGI and live-action enhanced by the fact that we were able to see this film in the Dolby Vision format AND in 3-D (which I would recommend seeing it in). My only issue with this film is its following of the current trend of having an open ending for sequel(s) to follows as opposed to giving an ending and then finding a way to add to the story if a production will actually happen. Overall, I found “Alita: Battle Angel” to be an enjoyable film with a strong female lead and great visuals.