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Alita: Battle Angel

  • 08-09-2005 1:18am
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 350 ✭✭_Turismo4


    Where in the hell did Jim Cameron go since his last feature film Titanic. Ok, here’s the answer.
    James Cameron’s next project will be a feature length 3-D digital film called Battle Angel, a Japanese graphic novel.... according to reports, It will be live action combined with CG, and hopefully will be ready for release in 2007.
    It will be a combination of the 1st and 3rd books.
    According to Cameron he will be casting the part of Alita, with an known actor, And most of Alita will be CG. Cameron also say that he’s waited to do Battle Angel in digital 3-D because of Digital Cinema, it will be due for release in summer of 2007.
    In the first volume of Yukito Kishiro's book ,Daisuke Ido discovers a badly damaged cyborg in the trash heap beneath the floating city of Tiphares, which he rebuilds and names Alita. She has no memory of her previous life, but when she is drawn into a battle with the monster Makaku, Alita realizes that she must uncover the dark secrets of her past.
    Kishiro's story is much more than a science-fiction adventure. Woven into the violent, roller-coaster plot is a strand of philosophical speculation. Battle Angel Alita takes us to a world where technology blurs the boundaries between human and machine, begging the question "What makes us who we are?"
    When Doc Ido, a talented cyberphysician, finds Alita's head in a junk heap, she has lost all memory of her past life. But when he reconstructs her, she discovers her body still instinctively remembers the Panzer Kunst, the most powerful cyborg fighting technique ever known. In the postapocalyptic world of the Scrapyard, as the secrets of Alita's past unfold, each day is a struggle for survival.
    """""Sounds good"""""
    I’m a big fan of Cameron’s past work, and I hope he pulls off a great film with this one.
    fa1f9c309af8cd704d100c3f61094adb.jpg


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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,767 ✭✭✭Hugh Hefner


    Can't say I liked his past work, though Point Break was all right and Terminator 2 was the best in the series (I think), but this Battle Angel sounds like it could be very good. Sounds a bit like it has "borrowed" elements from Ghost In The Shell.




  • hugh surely you liked Terminator 1? is there anything unlikeable about that flick? what about Aliens?


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,109 ✭✭✭sutty


    Can't say I liked his past work, though Point Break was all right and Terminator 2 was the best in the series (I think), but this Battle Angel sounds like it could be very good. Sounds a bit like it has "borrowed" elements from Ghost In The Shell.


    If i remember right, Battle angel is a bit older than ghost in the shell. Battle angel already has a manga film series if I remember correctly. I know I seens the first one, many, many years ago


  • Registered Users Posts: 23,216 ✭✭✭✭monkeyfudge


    I've seen the anime of Battle Angel Alita.

    It was pretty good.

    The floating city Tiphares is where all the rich and important people live, while the rest of civiliasation has to live off their garbage down below on the Earth.

    Certain key characters in the story were exiled from Tiphares and are desperate to get back.

    It could make for good film... although I think he should really go with an unknown actress...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 26 little boy blue


    I’ve read a lot on Cameron and the way he make’s his films, he’s very much into Perfection and big into good stories with good characters, so I’d say he’ll do the same job with this one.


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  • Subscribers Posts: 9,716 ✭✭✭CuLT


    I was ecstatic when this was announced a few months back; I've always been happy with Cameron's films, some of my favourite films are his work, plus he's an avid anime fan :)

    The project is currently on hold afaik, as Cameron has another project he's working on, so 2007 might be optimistic.

    The BA manga is one of the few manga I've read and it's fantastic, there's a lot of powerful imagery to harness and if Cameron plays his cards right he could well be looking at a few oscars.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 350 ✭✭_Turismo4


    Yea I read on some sites that Battle Angle was on hold but there’s a lot of shady information on it.
    From what I’ve read, Godspeed staring Harrison Ford is what Cameron’s doing at the moment.
    Other then that, there’s know more info published that i can see.?


  • Registered Users Posts: 272 ✭✭Rcuomo


    he's been doing documentaries for the last few years, ghosts of the abyss and aliens of the deep i think, after the success of titanic i guess he just did what really interested him...

    this should be a great film, im really looking forward to it aswell.
    when cameron sets out to do something he usually gets it spot on.
    as in titanic, most successful movie ever...
    true lies, great entertaining action film
    aliens... a classic
    terminator 1&2, genre defining, ground breaking (effects wise) films...

    piranha 2!! need i say more


    p.s didnt katherine bigelow direct point break?


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,501 ✭✭✭✭Slydice


    Well he didn't rush it anyway :)



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,975 ✭✭✭conorhal


    As a huge fan of the manga...... ugh...just.. ugh..

    What the hell is with the creepy, awful digital 'Big Eyes'?
    I know what rationalization will be offered, "but look at the manga! she has big eyes in that, and she's a robot!", yeah, so does everybody in manga and there's a whole host of cyborgs in that comic, but to 'manga eye's' just one live action character, while the others look normal just looks ...weird. Besides, if you're going to make the argument for authenticity and keeping the comic book aesthetic, Alita should in fact be Japanese.
    I can understand changing her ethnicity if you're casting a 'name actress' who's bank at the box office, but changing her for a no-name actress is just a great big, why?

    Not only do the eyes look weird, that the CGI is pretty awful make it look worse. The eye's are the window to the soul, they're an important tool for an actor. This seems like a strange choice.

    I can't say my expectations were high when James Cameron passed this property off to a hack like Robert Rodriguez, the only man with a tin ear for dialogue worse than Cameron himself. When I heard that news I just threw my hands up and this trailer, with it's bizarre aesthetic choices, awful, cringy on the nose choice of song, and weak CGI just makes me sad that this great manga series clearly isn't going to get the treatment is deserves.
    Jesus Cameron, your ex missus Kathryn Bigelow would have been perfect to helm this movie!


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  • Registered Users Posts: 10,501 ✭✭✭✭Slydice


    ouch my brain

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Angel_Alita
    The story takes place in the former United States. According to a map, printed in the eighth volume, Scrapyard/Tiphares is near Kansas City, Missouri, and the Necropolis is Colorado Springs, Colorado. Radio KAOS is at Dallas. Figure's coastal hometown is Alhambra. Desty Nova's Granite Inn is built out of a military base – NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Colorado

    Robot.. no..
    Alita ("Gally" in the original Japanese version), an amnesiac female cyborg

    trailer of the anime:


    yeah the eyes looks odd alright. if the story is like the anime.. that ain't the half of it


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,975 ✭✭✭conorhal


    Slydice wrote: »
    ouch my brain

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Angel_Alita


    Robot.. no..


    trailer of the anime:


    yeah the eyes looks odd alright. if the story is like the anime.. that ain't the half of it

    Uhg, I meant cyborg, I referenced her as a cyborg later in my post, I was talking about the misconcieved justifications that would get offered for this aesthetic choice, which I think is a bad move, they should have just used the actress, because this is just Uncanny Valley: The movie, and judging from the online reaction, I'm not alone in thinking that. If Ghost in the Shell made one good choice, it was not going with a CGI lead.

    As to her ethnicity, her real name is Yoko.




  • Robert Rodriguez? It'll be schlocky as f*ck.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 35,723 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    Well I know nothing of the source material, I'll presume they're taking huge liberties with the original version (and not just in the casting), but I can predict right now that good, bad or mediocre all the discussion and eventual reviews will focus on the distracting CGI applied to Alita's face. I mean sure, as still images the exaggerated look of her is striking and simply from a technical viewpoint it's amazing what they can do with CGI these days; as a human being watching a film though I just see creepy doll FX.


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,822 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    I can never get umph'd by a James Cameron film. I'll always love 'The Terminator' and 'Aliens' and the second half of 'Titanic' is grand once the ship starts to actually sink. But, everything else I couldn't care less about.

    This looks no different. I can't put my finger on it.




  • It's not a James Cameroon movie. He's producing it, sure, but it's directed by Robert Rodriguez.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,027 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    Tony EH wrote: »
    This looks no different. I can't put my finger on it.

    Possibly that it's from a different director ;)


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,822 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    It's not a James Cameroon movie. He's producing it, sure, but it's directed by Robert Rodriguez.
    Possibly that it's from a different director ;)

    Ah, well that explains that then. :D

    Still usually non plussed by Cameron though.

    Maybe the topic title should be changed.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,975 ✭✭✭conorhal


    pixelburp wrote: »
    Well I know nothing of the source material, I'll presume they're taking huge liberties with the original version (and not just in the casting), but I can predict right now that good, bad or mediocre all the discussion and eventual reviews will focus on the distracting CGI applied to Alita's face. I mean sure, as still images the exaggerated look of her is striking and simply from a technical viewpoint it's amazing what they can do with CGI these days; as a human being watching a film though I just see creepy doll FX.

    As somebody familiar with the source material, apart from the casting of the main character, I can see a lot that is directly referencing the first two collected volumes of the manga, down to several iconic shots lifted directly from panels in the comic, just as Sin City did.
    As we learned from Watchmen however, slavishly faithful doesn't always mean good, comics and cinema are two very different mediums and need to be their own thing.
    IMO they should have gone either all CGI and made it an animated film or all actors. As you say, the combination, no matter how good the CGI, is distracting and a poor choice that a lot of people won't gel with.
    Imagine a Simpsons movie that looked like this...
    RealToons002.JPG
    That IMO was the first of many poor choices, starting with the director. Has he made a movie in the past decade that wasn't garbage?
    Apart from the CGI lead (Tarkin: The movie!) it's hard to put a finger on exactly what's wrong with the trailer, the tone fells off to me, perhaps because it's faithful but encumbered with Rodriguez vision of what faithful means, to him it seems to mean the superficial stuff like, big manga eyes and implausible fight physics which may not work for a cinema audience in quite the same way it works on a page. It's the small things that feel off, like, why change the title from 'Battle Angel Alita' to 'Alita, Battle Angel'?
    You might say, "well that's a small nit pick", to which I'd say, exactly! What does it tell you about a movie that some exec somewhere is nitpicking the order of a three word title?

    There is one major possible change that is worrying me however, if Jennifer Connelly is playing who I think she might be playing, then the movie has completely screwed the pooch by inexplicably removing the manga's most iconic character after Alita (Given her character name in IMDB she's playing the same character from the anime version which also made this bizzare choice for the sake of having a character to deliver a shed load of exposition and plot motivations less esoteric and interestingly weird then the character I'm thinking of.)


  • Registered Users Posts: 23,082 ✭✭✭✭J. Marston


    The eyes will turn loads of people off the movie. Creepy.

    Edit: Just go with Rosa Salazar's normal eyes. They're big enough without going +75% zoom on them!

    rosa-salazar.jpg


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  • Registered Users Posts: 6,975 ✭✭✭conorhal


    J. Marston wrote: »
    The eyes will turn loads of people off the movie. Creepy.

    Edit: Just go with Rosa Salazar's normal eyes. They're big enough without going +75% zoom on them!

    rosa-salazar.jpg

    If he wanted to go in that direction he should have just cast Amanda Seyfried.... :pac:

    amanda-seyfried-glamour-magazine-spain-november-2015-issue_1.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,501 ✭✭✭✭Slydice




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 35,723 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    It'll be interesting to see if any changes were made to the CGI; seemed like the chatter over the 'big eyes' probably wasn't the reaction the studio were gunning for. 8 months since the last trailer is quite a long time of radio silence, so plenty of time to rejig things


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 35,723 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    Yup, looks like they've tweaked the CGI eyes a little; some scenes look more convincing than others mind you. The 'full body' cyborgs look better IMO, maybe because the faces have been left untouched vs. Alita's bug-eyes.



  • Registered Users Posts: 10,501 ✭✭✭✭Slydice


    Looks good. More than the anime I've watched in it I think.

    All the talk about eyes.. reminds me of make-up ads

    Maybe she's born with it
    Maybe she's mostly machine


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,982 ✭✭✭KilOit


    Looks class, don't know the story really.
    Who's copying who with the 2 big mech baddies straight out of Deus Ex human revolution?


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,501 ✭✭✭✭Slydice




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 35,723 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    Another new trailer; now with more ... Rollerball? :confused: Alita's CGI still distracts, her eyes in particular.



  • Registered Users Posts: 10,501 ✭✭✭✭Slydice


    Much improved trailer!


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  • Registered Users Posts: 84,319 ✭✭✭✭JP Liz V1


    It's not a James Cameroon movie. He's producing it, sure, but it's directed by Robert Rodriguez.

    Did Cameron do the script or was that Rodriguez?


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