Alita: Battle Angel - 16 WTF Moments
16. The Ridiculously Rushed Opening Sequence
Alita unfortunately reeks of a movie that was fed through a blender in order to reach its 122-minute run-time, and this is no more evident than in the breathless opening sequence.
The film begins with a cold open where Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz) discovers Alita's (Rosa Salazar) remains in a junkyard, takes her back to his lab and builds her a new cyborg body. The entire scene lasts all of five minutes, speeding through a series of events which shouldn't feel this breezy and insubstantial.
From there characters are just lazily introduced by randomly crossing paths with Alita, namely Hugo (Keean Johnson), Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) and Zapan (Ed Skrein).
The result is an opening - and, really, an entire first act - that just feels a bit "off", as though a far more fleshed-out introduction was cleaved away in post-production to keep the overall length acceptable.