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.
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