Alita: Battle Angel Movie Review

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Rent Alita: Battle Angel on Amazon Video // Read the graphic novel
Written by: James Cameron & Laeta Kalogridis (screenplay by),  Yukito Kishiro (based on the graphic novel series "Gunnm" by)
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Starring:  Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Lana Condor
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer

Plot
A deactivated cyborg is revived, but cannot remember anything of her past life and goes on a quest to find out who she is.

Verdict
The CGI is impressive, but the story is shallow. The cyber punk setting is wallpaper to dress up a standard coming of age movie. The world is intriguing even if we have seen similar concepts, but no time is devoted to how this society operates. The movie crams a lot of what I assume is source material into the run time, and that makes this rushed. The best part of this movie is the actor cameo in the final seconds.
Skip it.

Review
This is set in a world that could be interesting, but there isn't enough focus on the details of this society. With people living on the ground and those of Zalem in the air, it's not clear what's so great about Zalem. This is part teen romance, finding yourself, roller ball, and the action genre.

There's a lot of CGI, and while it looks good, Alita's large eyes were always a bit unnerving. It makes her seem a bit cat like. While no other character had such a feature, I wondered about the reason for it.

Rosa Salazar voices Alita.

Alita is a cyborg and the question of what defines humanity is hinted as she begins a romance with a human, but the movie ignores it when the human says "You're the most human person I know." I really was hoping this would explore robot is sentience. Looking at Wikipedia for character names, apparently Alita's brain is human. If that's the case how/why is she originally in a robot body? Was that just to be a better soldier?
A lot of humans have upgrades, but that's another concept ignored. This world could have been much deeper.

All this is occurring while Alita and friends discover she's an ancient cyborg warrior. This mystery takes up a large portion of the movie as Alita remembers nothing from her past, but boy can she fight.

The movie covers a lot of ground, moving a little too fast without really exploring anything. Alita is a rising motorball star, a popular sport in the region. She also becomes a bounty hunter. With so much going on the movie is rushed. It might have been an attempt to cover as much of the source material as possible, but the end leaves this wide open for a sequel. That's after a rush to a 'conclusion,' that was completely unfulfilling. I thought that was the introduction to the conclusion, not the actual conclusion.

The final scene was my favorite part of the movie just because of the actor cameo. The top bad guy, Nova, had been mentioned all movie without an appearance until the last scene.  That actor is

Ed Norton. He seems to have a knack for interesting cameos