Alita: Battle Angel felt like a series of short stories glued together by the always marvellous Christopher Waltz.
Jennifer Connolly really mailed in her performance, and Mahershala Ali must have filmed his over the top scenes during his lunch break on the set of Green Book or something. And the ending of the movie left much to be desired, like Fellowship of the Ring level of 'huh?', except I'm not excited nor even care if there's a sequel.
As for Alita herself, Rosa Salazar was the perfect person to play this role, nailing the whole teen spirit thing. I liked how she could switch back and forth from sweet and kind to murder death kill. If they gave awards for motion-capture performances, this would be up there among the best.
I'm not familiar with the source material--ten years ago you could have told me manga was similar to a mango and I would have believed you--but the film was rather enjoyable from a 'i have no idea what I'm walking into' perspective - in spite of all I just wrote.
The action was exciting, the street-level villains worked, and the CGI/mocap was top shelf. I would have preferred the story to have been tighter, feeling more like one coherent script.
3.5/5
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