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James Cameron's Alita: Battle Angel Released After Sixteen Years (rottentomatoes.com) 140

Posted by BeauHD from the yay-or-nay dept.
Slashdot reader Drakster writes: Hollywood producer and writer James Cameron, who is best known for his first two Terminator films, Titanic, Avatar, and Aliens, has released his most recent film this week, Alita: Battle Angel, to mostly mixed to positive reviews. First announced in 2003, based on Yukito Kishiro's Gunnm manga series, it was stuck in development for several years, finally starting production in 2008. Slashdot last discussed this fifteen years ago, so now that it's finally here. For those who have seen it, what did you think? Met or surpassed your expectations, or not worth the wait?
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James Cameron's Alita: Battle Angel Released After Sixteen Years More

James Cameron's Alita: Battle Angel Released After Sixteen Years

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  • Early screening (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 15, 2019 @03:32AM (#58125182)

    I went to see an early screening about 2 weeks ago in IMAX 3D. It's a fairly entertaining film. Probably the best 3D visual effects I have seen, vertigo inducing in parts. Without the 3D I imagine it would lose its entertainment value somewhat with some cliché scenes and gaps in the story. Good overall, I'd give it 7/10 in 2D and 9/10 in 3D

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      I've seen multiple reviewers say that this movie would be worth watching in 3D. It is unusual that a movie is enhanced by 3D in reality, and not the opposite. Where I live, most theaters are in Real-D projection which is utter crap. Only one has laser-IMAX 3D, but it is expensive.

      I have also heard that the movie would have felt a bit condensed, like they would have had deleted scenes that could have provided e.g. more character development.
      Therefore, there is a possibility that there would be an extended cu

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by judoguy ( 534886 )

        I've seen multiple reviewers say that this movie would be worth watching in 3D. It is unusual that a movie is enhanced by 3D in reality, and not the opposite.

        Foster's Law states "If 3D makes your movie better, your movie sucks". Except surfing movies. A 3D surfing movie would be cool!

        • If color makes your movie better...

          If hd makes your movie better.

          Etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mitreya ( 579078 )

          Foster's Law states "If 3D makes your movie better, your movie sucks". Except surfing movies. A 3D surfing movie would be cool!

          Next thing you'll be saying "If special effects make your movie better, your movie sucks".
          Entertaining special effects is not necessarily a bad thing though (when done properly and in moderation)

        • OMG if Warren Miller had had 3D for his SKIING movies . . .

  • Not Director (Score:5, Informative)

    by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Friday February 15, 2019 @03:34AM (#58125190)

    James Cameron is probably better known for directing films than for writing or producing them. Alita: Battle Angel was directed by Robert Rodriguez, not Cameron. The last thing Rodriguez directed that wasn't critically panned was the original 'Sin City'.

  • It was OK, not great (Score:3)

    by bazorg ( 911295 ) on Friday February 15, 2019 @03:47AM (#58125216)

    The first posts on the 15 year old Slashdot article linked here suggest something darker and more interesting than what I watched last weekend.
    This Alita was a remix of Pinocchio, Ben Hur and a few others. It looked very well made but to me it didn't feel really new. I'm just too old compared to the target audience, I guess.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, the headline is also wrong. The movie was announced as early as the late 90's.
      It was the times of Netscape Navigator and Altavista when battleangelalita.com redirected to FOX.
      Debian was pretty much equivalent with dependency hell.

      The rumor back then was that Dark Angel was a test run to see how action female in post apocalyptic setting was received.

      I don't think the movie has a target audience anymore. Cameron is a fanboy and convinced FOX to grab the rights for it. Then he did other movies instead of

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Creepy ( 93888 )

      So are most critics, apparently. The first article I saw gave it 1 1/2 stars and said it was a mess. Rotten Tomatoes was in the 60% range for critics last I checked. Audiences liked it about 97%, but I suspect that was mostly fanboys and fangirls doing the review and in a few days that will drop. I'm always a little torn with movies like this - on one hand, I'm often craving good Sci-Fi or Fantasy and on the other hand Cameron, Bruckheimer and Bay just don't do it for me. Avatar was hippie shit and IMO the

  • Impressed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Drakster ( 976032 ) on Friday February 15, 2019 @04:01AM (#58125242)

    Just got back from watching it, submitting the story before I did.

    Overall, I was very impressed with it. When seeing the first teaser, I’ve got to say, the eyes of the lead was a bit much, but coming back from seeing the entire film, they ended up blending in very well, not at all being the distraction I thought they could be.

    From the current review score, expected a generic Sci-Fi movie, but it surpassed my expectations, having good characters, story, setting, and action. Due to the nature of the story, had a good deal more heart to it as well.

    Been a while since I’ve read it but diverts from the source material a bit, but overall, it's a faithful adaptation of the first few volumes.

    I’d recommend it for any Sci-Fi fan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The trailer made the CGI on Alita look very, very fake... But I hear that they either fixed it or it's just a lot less noticeable in the actual movie. Looking forward to seeing it.

      • So when Gally opens her eyes you can react with 'Am i kawaii uguu?' like its out of some kind of terrible moe anime with overblown eyes and petite bodies. It still looks very very fake. But as you go in and watch, you get to see it in motion which fixes 90% of the issues within seconds.
        And the movies goes all in with motion, escalating it in a visually pleasing way. From walking, eating, running, acrobatics, martial arts to gymnastic to Motorball. And each escalation works to let the audience forget the unc

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 )
        It's also the things that seems to have got a lot of people tied up in knots over sexualisation, etc. so it's good it's not as bad as first made out. To be fair to Cameron, she's supposed to be an anime character where big eyes are the norm and also not entirely human so in context a deliberate giveaway like that vs. an actual human might be something her creators might do. It's a tough call; faithful to the original visual material and avoids any petty boycotts by fans who were expecting a faithful repro

        • Re:Impressed (Score:4, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday February 15, 2019 @06:24AM (#58125496) Homepage Journal

          Well her look was a deliberate choice in the manga, part of the whole "battle angel" concept where she is kind of a variation on the "born sexy yesterday" trope. A bit more "born cute yesterday" perhaps, but also a military grade ninja like Quorra from Tron Legacy, Leeloo from The Fifth Element, or maybe even Thor from the Marvel movies.

          It's interesting that Hollywood finally managed to translate a manga into a half decent live action movie. I can't think of a single one that wasn't terrible before.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Zocalo ( 252965 )
            It does sound like it. I'm also curious to see whether China's latest attempt to go the other way and produce a Hollywood-style live-action sci-fi blockbuster is going to pan out in the west. Initial impressions of "The Wandering Earth" [imdb.com], an adaptation of a novel by Cixin Liu, seem a lot more favourable than their previous efforts, so it's looking promising, and it took in $443m within China in less than 10 days, apparently, although it's only got a fairly limited international release so far. Anything th

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              I think it will be hard for them. Look at Japan, been producing great movies for decades, but apparently western audiences have issues with both subtitles and dubbing. About the closest Japanese movies have come are some Studio Ghibli dubs by Disney.

              With the current propaganda war against China and other cultural issues I think it will be hard for that movie to do well in the west, but we can hope. More likely is a Hollywood remake, in the long running tradition that includes things like Seven Samurai, The

              • I'm not so sure about the health of Japan's live action film industry as you seem to be. Anime is doing great in both sub and dub, with Japanese live action not doing anywhere near as well.

                As for Japanese live-action adaptations of anime and manga, well ... there aren't really any of them that seem to be praised, except for ones based on real-life romantic comedy stuff.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by The Rizz ( 1319 )

            It's interesting that Hollywood finally managed to translate a manga into a half decent live action movie. I can't think of a single one that wasn't terrible before.

            Edge of Tomorrow?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              "that wasn't terrible"

              • Sorry... Edge of Tomorrow was actually good.
                In fact, it was better written than the original book or manga... which have issues with finding an ending and some of its fan service.

                It also managed to create a coherent story while not having to spell it out for the audience.
                The time travel, the technology, why is it all happening... while leaving all the elements in there, for audience to piece it together.
                Like the whole Alpha-Omega thing in the end which doesn't have to be explained with technobabble for the

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  To be fair it wasn't that bad... But Tom Cruise ruined it for me, I can't watch anything with him in it now.

                  • Frankly, I'm more comfortable with his flavor of mental issues and moral flaws than with those of James Woods and Adam Baldwin.
                    Never really was much of a Firefly fan, but I'm sure gonna miss all those charming assholes Woods managed to ruin retroactively.

                    Watching Cruise I at least don't feel like I'm being shoved someone's toxic worldview down my throat...
                    Well... apart from that whole "everything revolves around ME-ME-ME" thing.

        • To be fair to Cameron, she's supposed to be an anime character where big eyes are the norm

          If you want to be fair to Cameron, then you're going to have to say that he's got no imagination. Where are the original concepts? Nowhere. America is down to knocking off Japanese cartoons because its own cartoons have already been knocked off, and there was no need for this movie no matter what country it was made in, to boot.

  • This movie is underwhelming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Quakeulf ( 2650167 ) on Friday February 15, 2019 @07:25AM (#58125582)
    First of all, they tone it all down to fit the lowest age rating the board could decide on, which means the only connection this movie has to the comic is mostly in name only. In the comic, Ido kills for the thrill of it, and he goes hunting with Alita, and they bond in a lot of ways that shows how their sort of weird relationship is growing, and evolving.

    Admittedly the comic itself is not the best story-wise, but at least it has interesting characters. Again, since they toned it down the characters are lame, and the cast of Waltz as Ido would be perfect if he got to be the Ido that was in the comic, not this chained-to-the-wall imitation we see on the screen because THEY GOT TO KEEP IT PG-13.

    I could go on forever about this, but let me just say I am not that impressed. They should have gone Deadpool on this and stick to the source material. It has better designs, better character portrayals, and is better overall for this kind of silly sci-fi.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by johnsie ( 1158363 )
      Nobody gives a fuck about the comic other than nerdy teenage boys
      • When it comes to total amount of enjoyment from a movie, Rampage with Dwayne Johnson did more for me than Alita.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Megane ( 129182 )
          I got to see the second half of Rampage. It was surprisingly good for such a throwaway idea.
          • It had the kind of silly charm Alita didn't have. Dwayne going "this is a big arm, don't fight it" as he chokes a soldier was better than all the dialogue in Alita, and the comic did have a few funny lines they did not transfer to the movie.

      • "teenage"? The manga came out in 1990. no teenager is even aware of it's existence. Troll failed.

        • ... And even then, western teenagers were barely aware of Dragonball until 1996 or so. Probably a number approximating 0% of 1990s teens knew about Alita.

    • Your comment has made me ditch the film and just decide to read the manga in jap. I fucking hate all ages bullshit, its gotta be coming from marketing dept. suits that want to 'target a wider audience' at the expense of the story.

  • Great Imax experience (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Friday February 15, 2019 @09:49AM (#58125914) Homepage

    So, it was a great Imax experience - if you have a Giant Imax screen near you (not those small Imax Digital ones), like the 26m wide Laser Imax I had close to me, the way it looks alone is worth the admission. I don't like 3D in general, but this was actually shot in 3D so it looks good overall and the action sequences are gripping and well shot.
    Now, the story is not very "original" nowadays, as we've seen a lot along similar lines these days. A friend asked me if it is a bit derivative to things like Ghost in the Shell - I had to point out the original manga was contemporary to the Ghost in the Shell manga, so you can't say it came a lot later. And in general this movie it is not very close to the manga (which I guess might be a good thing for the general audience - bad for those who like manga/anime).
    But overall I would recommend just for the giant Imax screens which make it a great spectacle, for a small screen it is just a decent sci-fi but nothing to write home about...

    PS. The part-CGI character is not annoying/uncanny at all - it helps that it is supposed to by a cyborg anyway and that cgi is more advanced than 15 years ago when this was first discussed on /.

  • no superheroes, no spandex, not marvel or dc movie ?... what the hell ?

  • Rodriguez did the same thing he did with "Sin City". Many of the frames looked so much like the manga, it brought tears to my eyes. I've been waiting to see this version of Gally and was not disappointed (except for the ending!).

  • Gunnm is actually one of my favorite mangas of all time (Yokohama Kadaisho Kikou being the other one). I'm going to see Alita in about and hours time at the local cinema, and apparently they have Masaaki Yuasa's 2018 movie playing too so I guess I'll see that tomorrow too.

    I kinda need to see it, just hope that they didn't mess it up too bad. Also, it's promising that they changed the English title around from "Battle Angel Alita" to "Alita: Battle Angel". This implies they're leaving things open for sequels

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