It was in the summer of '94 that I fell head over heels in love with the short animated film Battle Angel (renamed Battle Angel Alita in the US). One of the managers at the local comic book shop had unexpectedly handed me his VHS copy one afternoon and asked me to give it a watch.
The obvious echoes of Fritz Lang's Metropolis meets Ridley Scott's (and Phillip K. Dick's) Blade Runner, laced with other original elements by story creator Yukito Kishiro, blew me away. Soon after, I started reading the graphic novels/manga.
The obvious echoes of Fritz Lang's Metropolis meets Ridley Scott's (and Phillip K. Dick's) Blade Runner, laced with other original elements by story creator Yukito Kishiro, blew me away. Soon after, I started reading the graphic novels/manga.
Despite being a longtime fan (or maybe because of that), I can't say that I'm looking forward to the live-action film that director Robert Rodriguez and producer James Cameron are bringing to theaters in the coming weeks. Off the top, I don't care at all for Alita's (or Gally's in the manga) facial design.
I positively love Alita's anatomical design on the flat, two-dimensional plane, but the over-exaggerated, Disney-influenced eyes that the manga and anime of Japan have been known for over 50+ years just looks too grossly unnatural–to me–in a live-action venture.
Rodriguez should have reconsidered taking that approach, I think.
The off-putting design seen in the trailers, however, is somewhat downplayed in this poster, and it WORKS. In fact, the overall design of the poster is really gorgeous, and I love how the florescent pink and baby blue just pops...
Heyyyy, wait a minute! (Then again, never mind.)
Despite my disinterest in the film, somehow I still want it to do well. Rodriguez has every thing to do with that; he's yet to make a film I didn't enjoy, and if I could get past the design of Alita–which I can't–I'd probably enjoy this one too.
The poster really does kick ass, tho.
Alita: Battle Angel opens on Thursday, February 14. If you see it, puh-leeze feel free to tell me what you thought about it. I'll prolly just stick with the original anime and the comics.
3 comments:
just watched the trailer. visuals are cool but i had trouble trying to figure out what the storyline or plot is. what is this movie all about?
In a nutshell (based first on the anime), a cybernetic doctor named Daisuke Ido is rummaging through a junkyard one day and finds the head and torso of a young female cyborg. He takes her back to his lab, adds missing parts to her incomplete body and she quickly becomes something of a surrogate daughter to him.
Being a cybernetic doctor, Ido has a day job doing repairs to the cybernetic bodies for people who need them. At night, though, when Alita’s in bed asleep, he's a bounty hunter who tracks down criminal cyborgs. One night Alita sneaks out and follows Ido. When she learns what he does and what kind of money bounty hunters make, she decides that she too wants to work as one too.
She has her reasons for why she wants the money, and some of it has to do with a boy she has a crush on. As the story goes on it gets more complex (and sad) and the movie clearly makes use of elements from later stories.
And yes, I agree: the visuals I saw in the trailer do look cool. The comics really do offer tons of great reference material, though.
sounds cool. wonder if it will show downtown at filmbar?
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