Alita: Battle Angel

First Hit: The integration of human CG characters and humans in film reached a new level here.

In the past, computer graphic (CG) characters have not, visually or emotionally, felt human enough to engage the emotional or deep feeling part of the audience. Despite the action-oriented basis of this film and the main character, Alita: Battle Angel effectively makes this leap and crosses this border.

We begin with Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) is wandering through a massive pile of debris which is being created by Zalem, a tethered city floating about a mile above the earth’s surface. The waste pile is the discard of Zalem.

Ido finds and picks up the remnants of an android that has a human face, but without a body and an engaged brain that appears undamaged. Taking it home, he attaches a body that he’d built for his now deceased daughter and names the girl Alita, after his dead daughter.

He and his ex-wife Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) had a daughter whom they called Alita. She didn’t have use of her body, and Dr. Ido was building a mechanical body to attach to her head so that she would survive. The daughter died too before he could finish. Bitterness between Ido and Chiren developed, and Chiren joined Vector (Mahershala Ali) to control the earth’s inhabitants. Vector gets his direction and commands from Nova (Edward Norton) who is the supreme being on Zalem.

The new Alita has no previous memories of where she came from and who she is so when she tries an orange for the first time, is blown away by the flavor. Although later she tries chocolate and thinks this taste is far better than the orange.

Alita soon learns she has skills as a fighter and after meeting Hugo (Keean Johnson) begins to show signs of being able to have and show deep feelings. Hugo wants to go up to Zalem that is dumping the garbage on earth because he thinks his life will be better there. Alita is not so sure that this is a good thing as she begins to understand that Zalem is where she came from, she was a weapon.

Where the film excels is watching Alita grow into her emotions and having some emotional intelligence as a young teenage looking girl is impressive. Showing her love for Hugo and her father is so well done that often I didn’t think of Alita as a robot but as an odd looking human with amazingly expressive eyes and facial features even though she had a body made of Nanotechnology components.

The script also gives Alita plenty of opportunities to show her fighting skills. She becomes a Hunter-Warrior. Hunter-Warriors kill enemies of the people and are paid by representatives of Zalem. All the other Hunter-Warriors think Alita is incapable of fighting until they challenge her. Throughout the film, she proves them wrong about her abilities. Through these battles, Alita proves she’s the best warrior on the planet when she wins the famous Motorball game in which the winner gets a free pass to Zalem. The fights are fun to watch, but they are typical CG in that most of the movements are humanly impossible. However, it is her humanness that makes this better than your standard CG fighter film.

Rosa Salazar as Alita was used as the model to develop the facial features and movements for the CG personnel. Waltz is excellent as Dr. Ido, Alita’s creator and father. He does so much with his facial expressions which help us to believe that Alita is real. Connelly is good as Ido’s ex-wife and right-hand person to Vector. Ali was outstanding as Vector the being who controls earth for Nova. Johnson was excellent as Hugo, the young man who has misguided ideas and falls in love with Alita. James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis, and Robert Rodriguez wrote the complicated screenplay that also indicates follow-up films will be made. Rodriguez did a great job of using CG technology to bridge the human/machine gap.

Overall: The enjoyment is in the emotional context of the film as the action scenes are typical.

Shutter Island

First Hit: Regardless of the semi-surprise ending, getting to the end was painfully difficult because film goers have to wade through overly crafted scenes while the story line and music drone on.

The previews of this film made me cringe because it seemed like the film would be overwrought with style over substance.

However, it was a mess in both ways it was over stylized and the content had no substance. I’m not sure why Martin Scorsese did this film, except to say the thumbnail version of this film could have been very interesting.

There are too many scenes and each scene seems to be overly developed. The poorly constructed script leads the actors to drone on about stuff they already said earlier. There were also times when the characters seemed to learn something important only learn it again later as if it was new information.

The film was almost like a run-on sentence.

Anyway, the plot is simple: Detectives come to this island to investigate the disappearance of an inmate. The investigators Teddy Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo) have problems investigating because of the lack of support by the staff but resolve to find an answer to the disappearing woman.

In the end, their real roles are revealed and the audience is supposed to be surprised. This isn't what happens. What the film does is take the actors far and wide of their target.

I suppose this was to give the film depth and meaning but what it presents is more and more confusion. It almost states: Confuse the audience enough and they will be happy to have the ending we give them.

DiCaprio is good enough in his role and he does do his best, but the script and over handed directing squelches the performance. Ruffalo is better because he has less to do (less is more). Ben Kingsley as Dr. Cawley is strong and convincing, mostly because he has fewer scenes. Scorsese is a fine director but this film felt heavy handed and lacked a trust that his audience would be able to get where he was going. Laeta Kalogridis’ script is overwrought with needless dialogue and repetitions of ideas.

Overall:  About one-third of the way into the film I realized I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I started looking around the theater at the other audience members and I didn’t see anyone connecting to the screen and the story like I did when I saw my previous film; North Face.