Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Yeah, I didn't read the Manga. I was never a manga fan, but now that comic books are going the way they are... Manga is starting to look pretty good isn't it?
Anyway, it seems like a lot of the bad reviews are... political. You know, the, "people only like this because they are (insert woke insult)." and that's really not fair.
I'll go out there and admit that Alita's eyes kind of freaked me out. Too realistic, too cartoony eyes, and that left me with an unsettling feeling. It was creepy. It was creepy in the same relative way the Elves on the Shelves are creepy.
But the story comes fast and hard and leaves you very satisfied in the end. It kind of felt like Princess Monanoke kind of ending. And that is all with a story about someone that in really pretty innocent in a world that is really pretty horrific, and that is also a fun thing to watch.
But, yeah, her eyes kind of freaked me out. Aside from that, it was a totally enjoyable film. Give it a shot and ignore the politics.

I did enjoy _Alita_. It was a great big "pkyew-pkyew" sort of a mess, but I did still walk away having had a pretty good time.
Unfortunately, both Alita(the character)'s romantic interest and _Alita_(the movie)'s romantic plotline I despised. And this aspect took up **so much** on screen realestate that I could never see my way to giving _Alita_ a glowing score, even if everything else about it had been perfect (it wasn't).
An interesting part of the flim though that I also need to touch on is the special effects. They aren't even close to photorealism, but it honestly still totally works, just because there are so many of them. Impressive is the most appropriate word that comes to mind. See, even if the CGI effects don't always sell themselves as reality, the world that they are in fits, it's like how an animated movie doesn't look like real life, but you're still convinced because against its own backdrop, even though maybe they didn't use an actual elephant to play the role of Dumbo, you still believe that he's a real character **in that world**. _Alita's_ sheer abundance of creative, setting driven CGI, blurs the lines between live action and animation, delivering a totally new, unique product.
It's just a shame they couldn't have done that in a better, more coheseive (and less bogged down) narrative.
_Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._