Alita: Battle Angel — Identity, Mission, and the False Promises of Sin

Whenever Hollywood sets out to adapt a Japanese anime or manga, fans of the original material tend to get anxious. To understand why, look no further than the live-action adaptations Dragonball: Evolution (2009), Death Note (2017), or Ghost in the Shell (2017), none of which can match their Japanese counterparts in terms of worldbuilding or character development, and each of which was ultimately rejected by devotees of their source material. It was with this precedent in mind that fans reacted with some trepidation to the news that Hollywood would once again adapt an anime property, with director Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, Spy Kids) and producer James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar) tackling a live-action version of the 1993 anime Battle Angel Alita (itself an adaptation of a successful manga series of the same name).

Unlike the other adaptations noted above, the anime source material for Alita: Battle Angel (the live-action movie’s reordered title) is more of a cult hit than a cultural phenomenon, and while the original property is relatively well known within the genre, it is not regarded as any sort of masterpiece except by its most nostalgic admirers. With this in mind, it is not necessarily surprising that Alita clears the bar set by the original, yet it accomplishes much more and wholly exceeds the most reasonable of expectations. Far from the middling-to-disastrous failures of the above-mentioned anime adaptations, Alita manages not only to match the quality of its previous version, but actually surpasses it entirely.

As the story begins, we find ourselves in the 26^th century, hundreds of years after a catastrophic war known as “The Fall.” In the rough-and-tumble Iron City, a harsh society comprised of many languages and peoples that is home to both ordinary humans and cyborgs, a goodhearted doctor named Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) scrounges through the sea of trash dumped to Earth by the overhanging aerial city of Zalem. There he makes a rare discovery: the shattered remains of a young female cyborg, whom he immediately sets to work to repair. Awakening in her new body, the cyborg (played endearingly by Rosa Salazar via some very remarkable CGI motion capture technology) receives a new name from the doctor: Alita.

With no memories of her past life, and curious about the world around her, Alita sets out to explore her new environment. Some of the film’s most effective scenes involve her innocently learning about food and making new friends, such as the young Hugo (Keann Johnson), with whom she is quickly smitten and who brings Alita deeper into Iron City’s society via a sports match with his friends. The film doesn’t linger in such innocent territory for long, however; Iron City’s populace also includes a network of bounty hunters known as Hunter Warriors, a loose confederation of cyborgs who collect money in exchange for criminal bounties. Some of these Hunter Warriors have noble motives, while others — like the sword-wielding Zapan — are in it for little more than greed and a love of violence.

As Alita slowly learns her way around this rough terrain, she is observed by the watchful eyes of the ill-intentioned entrepreneur Vector (Mahershala Ali) and his chief scientist, Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), both of whom see the young cyborg as a piece of a larger puzzle that, if solved, could advance their respective ambitions. Finding herself targeted by this malevolent pair, merciless Hunter Killers, and a shadowy puppet master pulling their strings, Alita must also contend with the question of her identity, the prowess of her cybernetic body, and the meaning of the strange memories that begin to take shape in her mind.

She may not know who she is, but she does hear one clear creed that rings through the fog of her shrouded past:

“I do not stand by in the presence of evil.”

Director Robert Rodriguez wisely avoids much of the ugly brutality of the anime, while at the same time incorporating expanded world-building that raises the mythology of the story to a level more befitting the religious implications of its title. The struggle between good and evil depicted in the film lends itself far better to a theological reading than the anime as well, an interpretation that is supported by one villainous character’s remark that he would “rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” The world of Alita is not one populated only by characters who are merely good or evil, but also by those who — having made awful decisions in moments of desperation — have chosen their damnation gradually, selling their souls piece by precious piece in exchange for empty promises.

It is a world, in other words, that mirrors the experience of sin in our own embattled reality.

The technical aspects of Alita are praiseworthy, to be sure, as is the ambitiousness of its futuristic world-building. The accomplishment represented by the film’s fully-CGI main character alone may be reason enough to see this film for yourself. But in spite of its technical feats, the movie just wouldn’t work were it not for the fact that Alita herself is quite a lovable character. Rosa Salazar’s performance and the story’s commitment to fleshing out Alita’s character (no pun intended) reminded me of my first experience seeing Gal Gadot as the lead in Wonder Woman, a film that was just as sincere and which arguably depends just as much on selling the main character to the audience. It is a testament to the efforts of the cast and crew of Alita that lines such as this do not come off as incredibly cheesy, but instead as quite moving:

“I’d do whatever I had to for you. I’d give you whatever I have. I’d give you my heart.”

Alita: Battle Angel is rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action. Parents are strongly cautioned.