Alita: Battle Angel Review - 7 Ups & 3 Downs

This film covers a lot of ground over the course of its two-and-a-half-hour runtime.

The sheer amount of muchness is certainly not a bad thing (it's actually a pro later on this very list, in its own way) but the fact that the film has some difficulty coherently managing the muchness is a bit of a problem. Much like Alita's own sporadic and impromptu desires, the script seems to switch gears willy-nilly, which can lead to character motivations getting a bit muddied.

Alita goes from wanting to know more about her past, to wanting to become a respected Hunter-Warrior, to wanting to do whatever it takes to make enough money to run away with Hugo, to wanting to be a Motorball professional, to wanting to right all the wrongs of the city. Having her motivations change this often is fine (if a bit clunky) considering she's essentially a teenage girl. But having the film's form buy fully into each change of motivation, selling each one as her sole driving goal makes the narrative feel cluttered and a bit incoherent.

Essentially, Rodriguez and Cameron clearly loved the source material and tried to fit as much of Yukito Kishiro's source material in there as possible. However, stuffing a two-and-half-hour-film with a whole season's worth of narrative can lead to each thread stepping atop the other one.