Badmovies.org Forum

Fiends, queens and tentacled beings, cast your mind back to the 90's.  Adult-oriented anime was making its way into mainstream culture with movies like Akira, and bizarrities like Legend of the Overfiend were spoken of in whispers or seen only on vastly expensive laser discs imported from Japan.  With the growing wave of anime in Western culture came companies like AnimEigo, US Manga Corps, Madman Entertainment and AD Vision,  all of which brought popular and more niche anime to an increasingly thirsty market.

One such import was Battle Angel Alita.  Originally named Gunnm in Japan (literally meaning Gun Dream), Alita tells the story of a young cyborg woman rescued by an enigmatic cyber physician named Dr Ido.  It is set in a postapocalyptic cyberpunk world where cyborgs and humans survive in a slum-like place called The Scrapyard.  Above the Scrapyard hangs Tiphares, a gigantic cone that houses the upper class.  Alita has no memory of her life up until she is rescued by Ido, but demonstrates hardwired combat skills beyond anything that the Scrapyard has seen when activated.  The multi-volume series - which continues even now - charts Alita's journey to recover her past while fighting villains and making relationships along the way.

Alita was translated into English by VIZ Comics, and the first two volumes were made into a very faithful but sadly overlooked OVA by Studio Madhouse and Animate.  James Cameron bought the live action movie rights many years ago, but was said to be holding back from making it until special effects technology had developed to where he thought it would do it justice.

That time has now come.

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj8mN_7Apcw#)

I honestly don't know what to make of this.  When I first heard that James Cameron was to make Alita into a live action movie, I thought that a youngish Natalie Portman could be really good in that role.  It was around the time that Luc Besson made Leon The Professional (1994).  Obviously she isn't the right age for the role of Alita now, but I never expected them to CGI an entire face for the main character.  Ghost in the Shell (2017) seemed about right to me in terms of manga-to-live action translation.  But this?  I keep looking at it and second guessing it.

What do you fine folks think?

After watching the trailer the other day, I can already hear chants of white-washing.

As far as the movie, I can't say. It looks like it might be a bit too much -- something. I can't put my finger on it. Something just didn't feel right. Actually, I kept thinking, "This is Pinocchio with more violence."

I'll wait to see if it shows up on Netflix.