Superhero Media: Alita Battle Angel

I actually read some Battle Angel Alita manga years ago when I was getting ready to run my "Equalisers" Mutants and Masterminds campaign, as one of the players wanted to play a version of the manga's antagonist, Sechs. That character was never translated over to my miniature collection, as it was pretty annoying and didn't really fit the tone, but it does mean I knew a little about Alita Battle Angel going in. In the distant year of who knows how far in the future, civilization is divided between a floating city and their massive garbage dump, also there's robots, so a bit like that Astro Boy film I covered ages back. Everyone is trying to make their fortune to get to the city, but the only way is some kind of Rollerball/Mario Kart hybrid game for cyborgs, so most just eke by on what they can scavenge. When Christoph Waltz discovers the wreckage of Alita in the dump, our story begins.

A couple of things out of the way with this one first; the animation used to make Rosa Salazar into a living anime girl is both really impressive and kind of unsettling to look at. After a few minutes, my eye got used to it, but every now and then it was a little creepy. Also, Alita Battle Angel is very much made with tween- and teen-aged women as the intended audience, and makes no secret of this, which means there's a bit of romance and lots of feelings, not that it bothered me, because I don't hate on that kind of thing to make myself feel less inadequate. Honestly there isn't that much to Alita Battle Angel, but the construction is solid and the whole product looks brilliant. The cyborg fights were the kick in the pants I needed to get back to my Cyberpunk project, with cool designs and a nice mix of futuristic and retro tech so that every character, even those only on the screen for a moment, looks unique and is easy to identify.

For those who enjoy such, Alita Battle Angel is what I call an ideal "painting movie"; something to have on while doing hobby work which is fun to watch but slow to distract. The setting is interesting enough to recommend itself, though isn't properly explored, but renegade cyborgs and the bounty hunters who chase them are an easy sell to me. I don't think much of Alita as a character, but then, it was the same with the Manga, so I wasn't expecting Lady Macbeth or anything. Sometimes good is good enough, and given the source material, I believe Alita Battle Angel is more than good enough, especially if you just want something fun to watch. Now that the brand has shifted to Disney, there may be another film, or perhaps a series down the line, and I could easily see that working well in the right hands.