Alita: Battle Angel Review - 7 Ups & 3 Downs

So much of what works so well about this film can really be boiled down to one word; Alita.

While the work that Weta has done in terms of the effects is truly incredible, it is Rosa Salazar's astounding performance that imbues the character with such genuine sincerity and heart. As the amnesiac cyborg, Salazar spends a huge chunk of the film essentially serving as the audience surrogate and having to be wowed by the world and character around her, and it is to her eternal credit that she makes this feel so fresh and vitalized. A huge part of the reason the worldbuilding works so well here is thanks to Salazar's reaction shots.

It's established in the film that Alita has an old-school cyborg heart that is unbelievably powerful to go along with her wide eyes and goodwill. Honestly, this winds up being kind of the perfect metaphor for the film as a whole, with Alita the character acting as the beating heart of the film. She's such a powerful character and such an achievement of both technology and performance that even when the film makes mistakes, its kind of hard to hold them against it.

Just like the best motion-capture performances to have come before this, Rosa Salazar's performance as Alita is so good that it eventually strips away your own preconcieved notions about the effects and just becomes a great performance in its own right.