Kevin Marr

Alita is a sci-fi action flick based on a comic book set in a typical dystopian future where the cyborg-like inhabitants of the Iron City barely scrap out a living selling machine parts and doing menial work. This city is basically a junk heap. It is definitely the kind of environment that does not carry a devoted police force or judicial system. It instead relies on random strong, combatant citizens known as hunter warriors to do the police work for this world. I would say the movie was decent! The action scenes and visuals were excellent! It is a film with some high quality actors playing in it. Most of them did their job well given the writing they had to deal with. I enjoyed the character of Alita and how purely innocent/virtuous her actions were in the movie. The world of Iron city looked interesting and the film dropped some weird, comic book terminology like "panzer kunst" and "the fall" though I wish this aspect of the movie was explored more. My main problem with the film though was definitely the plot...it just moved too quickly. The plot ruined the pacing of the film. The film started off at a good pace and then steadily got faster and faster until it train wrecked at the end. A key part of this problem was that there were too many characters that congested the story and made it more convoluted than it needed to be. Some of the characters shouldn't even have been in the movie at all. I don't like how the movie was marketed and portrayed as a PG-13 film. It really needed a rated R leaning as the film had some very dark, disturbing imagery / violence that definitely did not look like it was made for a family oriented audience. Still, the acting was good for the most part and world lore was interesting. The fight scenes were the best part of the film. I just wish the directors had paid more attention to having Alita explore the Iron city than be engaged with the "plot". It is fun film to watch if you like CGI action scenes and cyberpunk inspired worlds! I would recommend it for that audience but not anyone looking for an interesting, well told story with deep thematic elements. I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.