This article will contain spoilers for Alita: Battle Angel. For a spoiler-free experience, watch the movie before reading!
I should preface this article by saying that while I'm aware that this is an adaptation of the manga, I haven't actually read it. My review will be based on the film itself, and I may do a separate one on the manga one of these days. I'm going to brush over the problems I had with the movie's pacing, but I will say that the last 10 minutes had me absolutely livid. Instead I want to focus on what I did actually enjoy, and that's the sci-fi elements that the film explored. I found the major theme of the film to be about complicated relationships. Specifically, the complicated relationship between humanity and cybernetics, as well as between the wealthy and the poor. I'll spend a bit of time talking about each one and what the film suggests of them.
Dehumanization by Cybernetic Enhancement
Alita, as well as the vast majority of characters in the film, are cyborgs. They are, to an extent, organic beings with artificial bodies. Some characters have an artificial arm or implants in their eyes, while others, like Alita herself, have fully artificial bodies from the neck down. Despite being mostly artificial, Alita is still seen and treated as a human, both by other characters and the audience. Some of the villains of the film, however, are clearly not. Grewishka, for example, is a massive cyborg with only parts of his face appearing unaltered. Several of the bounty hunters and criminals are almost entirely artificial, some even replacing limbs with weapons. I found myself wondering for the entire movie, what makes cyborgs like Alita compelling characters while the rogues' gallery are instead seen as monsters. At first, I thought it was the fact that they were built to be weapons. Later on in the film, however, we learn that Alita was as well. It wasn't until long after the movie was over that I realized what it was: human form. While Alita and Ed Skrein's character Zapan were both mostly artificial and both had bodies built for combat, both characters still retained a human figure. Characters like Grewishka, as well as some of the criminals hired to kill Alita later in the film, alter the human form in a way that makes them unsettling. They may maintain a human face, but some of them share a similar figure as spiders, having far more appendages than we're used to. These characters become monsters once they have modified their body so much that their original form becomes unrecognizable. In a cyberpunk future, high-tech and low-life is what is expected. In the future depicted in Alita: Battle Angel, the wealthy don't really need to modify their body to that extent, but the poor do it out of a misplaced hope they can use it to earn enough money to elevate their status. This brings me to the next point: necessary inequality.
Necessary Inequality
The film's plot revolves around the last remaining Sky City on Earth, called Zalem. During an interplanetary war, 300 years before the film, all of the other cities were destroyed. Zalem floats above Iron City, now populated by descendants of refugees from the war. They work providing resources to Zalem in exchange for basic sustenance and minimal financial compensation. There's both an unspoken rule that no one goes up to Zalem, but plenty of rumours that some people have the connections and resources to send others up. The film uses this as a bit of a blunt metaphor for wealth inequality, having the upper class literally above the lower class, with several characters trying to ascend and often failing. Despite minimal interaction with Zalem, the people living beneath it need Zalem in order to survive. In addition to food and being the source of their income, Zalem gives the people beneath it a goal to aspire to, even if they know they will likely never achieve it. If I were to carry this metaphor to its logically conclusion, it provides a bleak glimpse at what the film suggests. By the end of the film, Alita has resolved that she is going to destroy Zalem. The unaddressed problem is that the destruction of Zalem will also destroy Iron City. Even if Alita somehow prevented this, killing Zalem's leaders but keeping the city intact and allowing the residents of Iron City to finally move up, Zalem would still rely on the resources Iron City provided it. In either scenario, the film seems to imply that the relationship between the rich and poor can't be broken. The lower class will die without the upper class, and vice versa. The sequel (if it does happen), might offer a resolution to this deadlock, providing a less bleak message, but I'm not entirely convinced that it will.
All in all, while the film is incredible to watch, I feel it what it lacks is a nuanced take on the issues it presents. Maybe it simply wasn't really intending to do so, which I would argue is perfectly acceptable. Have your own take on Alita: Battle Angel? Be sure to head over to my Twitter and let me know what you thought of it. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!
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