Trailer arrives for Rodriguez/Cameron’s Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel Robert Rodriguez Rosa Salazar

The live-action manga adaptation ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is a project I have been keeping an eye on for a while, mainly because of who's making it – the film is directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by James Cameron. A trailer for the film has now been released online, and I have to say it looks very different from what I was imagining when reading about the plot and characters. Given that the surprising element comes in the form of impressive visual effects, that's a good thing.

Scripted by Cameron, Rodriguez, and Laeta Kalogridis, the film stars Rosa Salazar as the title character, 

a female cyborg that is discovered in a scrap yard by a scientist. With no memory of her previous life except her deadly martial-arts training, the woman becomes a bounty hunter, tracking down criminals.

The trailer has a much sweeter tone than that story description might lead you to expect, and Alita doesn't look at all like I thought she would. I figured this cyborg character would just look like Salazar, but that's not the case. She really is a manga drawing brought to life.

I suspect future trailers will show us more of the action, but for now this trailer does a good job of introducing us to Alita and the world around her.

Salazar's co-stars include Christoph Waltz as Alita's mentor; Mahershala Ali as two different characters, one of whom is Vector, who "runs and fixes matches in a gladiator-style combat game called Motorball"; Keean Johnson as Alita's love interest Hugo, who teaches her how to play Motorball; Jennifer Connelly as one of the villains; Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as a friend to Hugo; Jackie Earle Haley and Ed Skrein as villainous cyborgs; Leonard Wu as another cyborg; Lana Condor as an orphaned photographer; Marko Zaror as Motorball player Ajakutty; Michelle Rodriguez as the cyborg Gelda, who is a mother figure to Alita in the manga; and Eiza González as a mystery character.

ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is scheduled to reach theatres on July 20, 2018.

Source: Arrow in the Head

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.