Alita: Anjo de Combate

Um conto de fada de ficção-científica de ação com coração. A sua força motriz é a Alita digital, surpreendentemente a mais viva das personagens. Supergira! E o bom papá de Waltz é muito fixe, também. Eu teria investido mais tempo aos outros personagens, teria ajudado a complexidade do filme, essa que é um pouco inexistente. E não me refiro apenas à profundidade das personagens do super-milf Connelly e dos personagens igualmente importantes, mas também ao espaço para os engraçados ajudantes como o cowboy Fahey. Tinha definitivamente mais espaço no argumento. De qualquer modo, o filme alterna emoções como uma montanha-russa, ação espetacular, e as batalhas, com a transformação de uma rapariga frágil na derradeira lutadora são de tirar o fôlego. Pela minha parte, estou satisfeito, e ficaria feliz com uma repetição em Atmos ou IMAX. Os japoneses vão ficar entusiasmados. (08/02/2019)

I wasn't expecting much, but I was hoping it would turn out to be a fun and nice looking piece of crap. And in the end, it did. Alita probably won't appear on my list of the best films of the year, but the two hours in the cinema went by faster and more pleasantly than I would have guessed a few weeks ago. The visual effects and production design are top-notch and it's a really good watch, but this sci-fi epic gets the most points for its heroine. Rosa Salazar is great as Alita, she's both endearingly freaky and spectacularly deadly at the right moments. Robert Rodriguez keeps a surprisingly low profile and his action scenes are lucid and milk Hollywood's current technological capabilities to the max. The whole thing may be a little cheesy and 90s in both the good and bad sense of the word, but they are clearly aware of that. A lot of the themes aren't fleshed out enough (and shouldn't have been) and at times Alita turns into a sci-fi romance for teenage girls, but it still works. Personally, I had no problem tuning in on the same wavelength as Rodriguez and Cameron and enjoying the fact that it's big, beautiful, action-packed and fun. And basically, that was enough to satisfy me. (13/02/2019)

A tarted-up lot of nothing that’s nice to look at. The visuals are unsurprisingly superb, Rodríguez’s direction is surprisingly solid and focused, and the robotic/computer generated main character is very likeable. I wouldn’t have a problem with it overall, if, somewhere in the middle, I hadn’t realised that the film not only wasn’t moving towards the central clash, but that it would also elegantly avoid it. To be continued, basically. (08/02/2019)

I think that on paper, it must have seemed as a huge risk to put Robert Rodriguez in charge of such a gigantic project with a gigantic budget. But taking risks sometimes pays off, and I must say that Rodriguez has done a really good job with Alita. A beautiful cyberpunk movie from the distant future, which is imaginative, beautifully animated and, above all, full of bizarre (almost b-rated) ideas, which no one else but Rodriguez would have come up with. I had a great time and I think this movie turned out really well. An exemplary blockbuster with all the goodies that a blockbuster can offer. This includes actors, where I was the most pleased with, albeit animated, the leading actress Rosa Salazar, as well as her dad played by Christoph Waltz. Rodriguez put a bit of everything he’s made so far into this film. Absurdity, emotions, animated beauty, but also some Spy Kids vibe which I can forgive him for. Alitais simply a success and I enjoyed it to the fullest. (22/11/2019)

Alita pushes computer acting to a new level, aided by a story whose straightforwardness and naivety (most painfully rising to the fore in the development of an extremely hollow romantic subplot) that have their charm, but it’s not enough for a two-hour film. I would rather suppose the basis of the film to be a young adult novel by an American author who loves Japanese culture and James Cameron films (at least the latter bit about James Cameron, who wrote the screenplay, is probably true), rather than a Japanese cyberpunk manga comic book. Christoph Waltz with a rocket-powered pickaxe, describing a martial art called Panzerkunst, philosophising about whether one can love a cyborg, and Mahershala Ali as Blade don't help much. Nevertheless, Rodriguez has not been so focused in his storytelling for a long time. Even more so than in the patient building (or revealing) of the world from the lowest floor, this can be seen in the uncluttered action sequences with very complex choreography (I would not shy away from a comparison with Ready Player One). I wouldn’t be surprised if it is such a failure that we won’t see a follow-up, but I also wouldn’t mind if a sequel was made. 65% (08/02/2019)