Adapted from the classic Japanese manga “Gunnm” by Yukito Kishiro, “Alita: Battle Angel” is a surprising action movie with incredible stunts, parkour sequences and fight scenes.

Produced by James Cameron and directed by Robert Rodriguez, the groundbreaking special effects create a more immersive and engaging experience for the audience, but it distracts you from the actual convoluted plot.

Set in the 26 century, Dr. Dyson Ido, played by Christoph Waltz, finds Alita, played by Rosa Salazar, in a junkyard. Alita is a broken female cyborg who Ido repairs and chooses to become her surrogate father.

However, her memories are lost and she must work with Ido to discover her past.

Alita’s animated face shows little details that look impressive, such as her large eyes and realistic skin textures. The animation quality and the level of detail humanizes her character.

Salazar’s motion capture performance captures her powerful and strong personality as a flawed cyborg lost in her past.

When Alita battles against the numerous cyborgs hunting her down, her personality changes dramatically to fight back against them which is perfectly shown with the CGI fight sequences.

However, the over-usage of this uncanny CGI makes it impossible to tell if any acting went into the performance of Alita, or any of the characters for that matter. It makes the overall acting of all the characters feel unrealistic and downright cheesy at some moments.

Because the motivations of each character lacked sufficient depth, their respective lines and behaviors seem confusing to follow along. It is hard to understand why there are so many non-fleshed out characters along with the city of Zalem, which has little to no background history at all to explain its origins.

Watching the movie in 3D however, delivered great performances and really drew into visual aspect of the characters.

“Alita: Battle Angel” is a marvelous film to look at, but suffers drastically from its detractive poor plot. Cameron’s incredible work on portraying a beautifully crafted world and its animation is near perfect, but its cheesiness and weak characters made the film suffer.

The movie still displays an impressive amount of visual detail, which is still worth the watch.

3/5