Alita: Battle Angel is a dumb movie. Okay, maybe not the most eloquent way to put it, but hey, it’s accurate. Luckily for me, there are plenty of reasons to back this up. We’ll get to those in a little bit.
The majority of this review is going to be done a bit differently, so I’m going to get the good aspects out of the way first. And that won’t take long as there are only a couple, though they are enough to make Alita a wholly watchable movie.
First, Alita is a visually impressive movie, no doubt about it. The special effects are mostly exceptional. There’s not much more to say; it looks good and it looks cool.
Second, the action scenes are fantastic. There are a number of great fight scenes as well as some fun Motorball action (more on that later). There’s enough mixed in to make the bland in-between scenes barely worth it to get to the next piece of action. Seriously, these alone make the movie worth it.
Now, onto the fun (?) part. Presented in no particular order, the reasons why Alita: Battle Angel is a dumb movie.
1. Motorball, a sport, is the biggest driving force behind the movie
The plot revolves around a re-awakened cyborg fighting machine trying to discover her past and build her future. But the way to do that is through her infatuation with a sport? Thank you, next (…I’m sorry).
2. The movie doesn’t even remotely try to explain the rules of Motorball
You can get the basic gist of the game just by watching, but at no point are we given any sort of explanation. This is even more surprising due to the fact that Motorball is brand new to Alita. But when she plays for her first time, she just jumps right in, no questions asked. Well, no questions aside from “Is this Motorball?” This may seem like a small thing to complain about, and normally I would agree. But with it being such a central focus of the movie, couldn’t they give us a little explanation?
3. Too many questions left unanswered/Movie was made assuming sequels would be coming
I’m all for a movie not giving away answers to every single little question. But Alita left so much unanswered. These types of movies depend on effective world-building to draw the audience in. Alita starts down that path a number of times, but only ever gives us surface level information.
There’s also the true “big bad” of the movie. He’s someone we get a small introduction to, but we don’t learn a whole lot about him. This was clearly done to be used as a segue into a sequel, setting up an obvious conflict.
There are also other plot lines that don’t get the time they needed to be fully fleshed out. Again, it felt as though they were being saved for future movies.
This comes off as half lazy, half arrogant. Lazy in the sense that production maybe thought these parts didn’t matter. Arrogant in that they operated under the assumption it would be so successful that a sequel (maybe more) was all but guaranteed. Whatever the case, it ended up feeling like James Cameron and director Robert Rodriguez were just giving a big middle finger to the audience.
4. Everything was underdeveloped
This goes right along with point #3. When I got to the end of the movie, it didn’t feel like the movie deserved to be there. It was more of “Huh? How did this happen?” The story just kind of jumped from one scene to the next, and there was minimal character development. And then all of a sudden we’re at the film’s climax.
5. Was Rosa Salazar’s performance bad?
I honestly couldn’t tell. Could it be the terrible lines she was given? Or the CGI face that seemed incapable of conveying sincere emotion? Maybe it the fact that Alita and Hugo (Keean Johnson) had zero chemistry?
6. Acting was poor across the board
Just a big “ugh” from top to bottom. Except, of course, for Mahershala Ali. His acting was fine. It character, however, not so much.
7. Script was awful
Honestly, some of the most cringe-inducing dialogue I’ve heard in a while. When you’re laughing at (serious) lines two time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz is saying, you know something is wrong.
8. How Alita becomes known as a Battle Angel
I’m not going to spoil this one for you. It doesn’t ruin give away anything important about the movie, but it will be more fun for you to find out on your own. But rest assured, it is super dumb.
And there you have it; eight reasons (I guess) why Alita: Battle Angel is stupid. And yet, somehow I find myself recommending this movie. Granted, it’s in a “If you can see it for free or for cheap and don’t mind a movie that doesn’t make you think deeply about anything that’s happening and you’re okay only being there for cool visuals and fun action sequences, then sure go see it.” type of way. But as long as you can accept that, go check it out and enjoy.
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