Alita: Battle Angel — Trying to Blockbuster in a Marvel Universe

Caitlin Stow
8 min readMar 14, 2019
Rosa Salazar in Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel is by definition a popcorn movie. It’s super fun, super flashy, super pump-your-fist-in-the-air, and super forgettable. It’s been a huge flop at the box office, grossing only $80M domestically and $400M worldwide. When we’re talking about a film that had a $200M budget, that’s pretty bad. Had this come out even five years ago, however, I’m not sure that would be the case, but our times have changed rapidly, in my opinion for the good.

I believe Alita failed because of Marvel, and how Marvel has changed the industry. Out of the 20 highest grossing films of the 2010s, Marvel occupies 6 of those slots. Star Wars occupies 3, Pixar occupies 3, Jurassic World occupies 2, DC occupies 2, and The Hunger Games occupies 2. Franchises obviously dominate ticket sales, but it isn’t a fluke that Marvel is achieving double what the other franchises can rake in. Let’s look at those six titles more closely.

Captain America: Civil War sits at #18 in the top 20. I wrote a rave review for Civil War when it came out, praising its stellar portrayal of complex character relationships and real, important themes. Marvel understands its audience. They saw the fandom split between Cap and Bucky, saw that same split between Cap and Tony, they knew to use that excitement and drive to bring people to their seats, and then, most importantly they earned those seats by providing a film full to the brim with not only action and group drama, but powerful messages.

Iron Man 3 takes #17. The finale of the beginning of the MCU was always going to succeed. But again, as Marvel does oh so well, not only did it draw people in, it kept them there with a wonderful performance by Downey Jr. working through PTS.

Avengers: Age of Ultron, landing at #11, takes a complex look at AI and humanity. Using this moment to bring in Scarlet Witch, a beloved character who has absolutely lived up to her name, and blasting all previous set pieces out of the water with a jaw-dropping floating city, earned them this spot.

The Avengers was always going to do well, and looks down on us all from its lofty #5. The brilliant post-credit sequences in all preceding movies guaranteed fan interest, but the humor, character, and warmth of Avengers solidified as a long-term favorite among fans.

Finally, Black Panther, at #2 box office grosse of the 2010s, smashed into society with a clear statement from Marvel: we are here to represent, we are here to tell important stories, we are here to change the world. There are many many important things happening in the world in terms of race relations, and obviously Marvel isn’t even close to the top of that list, but the fact that Black Panther grossed $700M domestically, and $1.3B worldwide is a giant statement from the world that most of us want equality, love, and acceptance.

With Black Panther especially, but I would argue the others fit this bill as well, people weren’t drawn back for repeat viewings, or convincing their friends that a movie can’t be missed, because it was full of cool explosions or sweet weapons, it’s because we care about these characters and our hearts are filled by the messages and social commentaries of the stories.

Meandering back to Alita, it failed for a few reasons. First off, James Cameron can’t write dialogue. I don’t claim to be a James Cameron aficionado, I’ve seen actually very few of his films, but from Titanic to Avatar to True Lies, the dialogue never exactly wins me over. Its his concepts that do the job. He’s good at the big picture, not the small moments. Alita follows this trend, focusing so much on world and story that it leaves its tender moments behind, relegating them to dialogue we’ve heard a thousand times, and left quickly in the dust of epic battles.

Second, it’s messy. It’s like James Cameron was minorly aware of this newfangled “action movies with meaning” trend, so he tried to kinda incorporate it, but his heart wasn’t in it. There’s a smattering of feminism, and an undertone of classism, even some interesting biblical stuff going on, but all of it is an afterthought to a frankly unnecessary romance and a tired “self-discovery” main theme.

Keean Johnson in Alita: Battle Angel

Lastly, it’s not a sequel, but it feels like one. If you look at the top films of the 2010s you’ll notice they are all, save for one, part of an existing on-screen narrative (although I would argue that Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle only barely fits that description). The one that’s different is The Hunger Games, which is an adaptation, just like Alita. Hunger Games succeeded mostly because the books are awesome and a huge success, but also because it’s actually an AMAZING movie focusing on character, emotion, and theme.

James Cameron is a huge deal in Hollywood and it’s given him quite a lot of confidence. This is an excellent trait in a lot of ways, but similarly to him deciding that an Avatar sequel will be popular enough to pay for four more after that, he’s assumed Alita has earned its scope before actually taking the time to earn it. Origin stories are meant to be small, to focus on what makes this hero unique, why we should care, and what the stakes of the world are. Instead, Alita sets up its character quickly and clumsily, giving her the most basic personality known to man (yes, specifically to “man”), then launches into a complicated, multi-plot epic. This feels like a second film in a trilogy: not a ton of lead in, no conclusion, but lots of plot, various characters, and a butt load of action. If James Cameron had used that confidence to make a slow, careful, focused origin story, I think he would have easily earned his large-scale sequel, but trying to cram an origin and an epic into one has lead to a bloated, confusing, meaningless mess.

Ed Skrein in Alita: Battle Angel

I know that I’m speaking mostly of Cameron rather than Robert Rodriguez, which may be unjustified and biased as I simply like Rodriguez more than Cameron. But in this instance, seeing as Alita has been in the works for a decade, was written by Cameron, and Rodriguez was brought on only to direct, I think Cameron holds most of the blame for the layout of plot and character. Rodriguez could have done more to help scene by scene, I’ll concede that, but there’s only so much a director can do when handed bad dialogue by the cockiest man in Hollywood.

Christoph Waltz in Alita: Battle Angel

Alita does get a few things very right. The CGI is breathtaking, I actually didn’t have a problem with the big eyes, I thought they were different and interesting. The action is some of the best I’ve ever seen. The choreography is clean, unique, and layered, utilizing various different landscapes and modes that break up what could have easily been a monotony of kicks and punches. I love how the action plays with size. Alita is so small, and in this world people can be all sorts of sizes. How Alita fights a smaller person is insanely different from how she fights a larger one; this attention to detail is quite refreshing. This sounds like an afterthought, but these aspects were so good that I would happily pay money to see a sequel even though I’ve spent most of this review shitting on it. There’s something visceral and aesthetically pleasing about really excellent fight scenes, and these are so excellent I’ll probably rewatch this movie many times just for the satisfaction of the movement.

Jackie Earle Haley in Alita: Battle Angel

I’d also like to shout out to the scene where the male love interest calls Alita for help, because she’s stronger than him. Gotta love a solid male character who doesn’t have the overdone trait of penis-related ego. Again, though, while this is a wonderful addition, it’s not enough to save the film. This should have been a bigger focus.

This movie wasn’t a disaster, it will sit somewhere in the middle of my 2019 lineup I’m sure, but it could have been amazing had it just slowed down and looked at what it was actually trying to say. Time to admit that Marvel knows how to blockbuster better than you, James Cameron; put down your ego and take a leaf out of their book, it will serve you well going forward.

Rating: Good.

Great
1) Arctic
2) Us
3) Gloria Bell

Good
4) The Beach Bum
5) Captain Marvel
6) Apollo 11
7) Fighting with My Family
8) Alita: Battle Angel
9) Isn’t It Romantic?

Some Issues
10) The Wedding Guest

--

--

Caitlin Stow

Filmmaker and writer from Corvallis, Oregon. I write journalistic film reviews about how film affects our lives, and how our lives affect film.