Movie Critics Thread

[shockNwave]

I believe I know how Cap. America is going to die in this one based on a certain scene in Infinity War. I won't say anything more, it's too juicy to be spoiled.

[GoktimusPrime]

Could we avoid speculating about future movies just in case they become spoilers? (or at least put potential spoiler warnings and tags?) Thanks.

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So yesterday I finally got around to watching...
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL



Superb film. As nitpicky as I am there's really nothing of significance that I can think of to criticise it. The visuals are just gorgeous, the action is amazing and the overall film and story is genuinely entertaining. Alita Battle Angel is an unapologetic live action anime. It doesn't pretend to be anything else, much like the live action Rurouni Kenshin movies. Sure, there are things changed here and there as you always have with film adaptations, but on the whole it's fairly faithful to the source material. All of the acting was great. The special effects were incredible. I was initially skeptical and critical of the CG Alita character, I will admit, but seeing the movie won me over. The CG character interacts with the live action cast really well - you can believe that it's occupying physical space and interacting with actual people. This pushes motion capture to a whole new level. This has easily been the best movie that I've seen so far this year and it's gonna be a hard one to top.



Now here's the funny thing with this movie - it has a 94% approval rating from audiences but 60% from critics. So I'm going to have a quick look at some of the criticisms laid against this film from critics and weigh in my opinion on them. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but I'm gonna put in a MILD SPOILER WARNING just in case.

Alita is overpowered
She's basically a superhero, much like Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Captain Marvel etc. And this is accurate to the source material. But this doesn't mean that she is without weakness. As with many other physically godlike protagonists, their weaknesses are things that are non-physical, such as emotional or the fact that they are genuinely good people and must adhere to a certain moral code which antagonists can ignore. At the end of the day the important component in story-telling is to present the protagonist complications that they need to work towards resolving, and this is what Alita is presented with. Alita reminds me of Wonder Woman. She is motivated by pure reasons to try and help people. She acts not because she has to but because she wants to.

There is a LOT happening in this story
This is a valid point but also bear in mind that in adapting the source material there is a LOT to unpack. The short-lived anime only briefly touched upon what the original manga presented, but this movie goes into far greater depth that the anime never touched upon. Let's compare this with say The Lord of the Rings (coincidentally both LOTR and Alita had their visual effects done by WETA). LOTR also unpacked a lot of stuff, but it also omitted loads of other stuff and modified some things too which drastically changed the narrative and story compared to the books.
e.g. the Scouring of the Shire never happened, the Elves at Helm's Deep (which logically makes no sense), no explanation for why Aragorn is so over-powered (why does this Man fight like an Elf?) etc. -- these things all differ from the books and were either omitted or changed I suppose to make the film more accessible to a wider audience.
Alita doesn't do that. As I said, it is an unapologetic closer adaptation to its source material. While I agree that it does make the narrative very "busy" with lots happening, I also think that the story doesn't suffer for it. You can still follow along with what's happening. But perhaps I'm biased as someone who's read the manga.



The relationship between Alita and Hugo wasn't convincing
Yeah, this is a fair point. I think that the relationship between these characters was adequate. Could've been developed better, but it was fine. I think it's one of those things that took a hit because the story just has so much happening in it. And I found the resolution of this arc to be really emotionally powerful (just as much if not moreso than it was in the manga). And in all honesty, this movie does compress and chop up quite a lot of stuff from the manga in order to fit it into the film, but I think that it was done well enough that it didn't wreck the narrative.

Lack of an interesting antagonist
The most interesting antagonist was fairly underutilised, and I would agree with this, and the other antagonists aren't terribly interesting characters beyond being menacing threats - i.e. complications for Alita to resolve. This is true but I don't think it's necessarily a huge flaw either. It's not like Steppenwolf who's just some random CG monster and as an audience we just don't give a hoot about his motivations. In Alita we can understand what motivates the antagonists, even if those motivations are pretty selfish ones. These aren't altruistic antagonists like Killmonger or Thanos - but not every villain needs to be a "hero in their own eyes." These antagonists are people who are basically just trying to survive in this harsh dystopia. It's similar to say the Original Star Wars Trilogy; for the most part Darth Vader is your fairly straight up villain but it is the Emperor who is pulling the strings. Alita presents something similar.



Too much world building not enough insular focus on this film's story
True, but the same could be said about The Lord of the Rings. Much like LOTR Alita is unpacking a lot of canonical material from the books and yeah, much of it won't mean much until later on if they make sequels. One big example of this being (SPOILER) Nova, who in this film appears to be like Emperor Palpatine - the main baddie who's manipulating the other villains. But in the manga we know that Nova eventually becomes Alita's ally. So there is clearly more to Nova than meets the eye, (/SPOILER) but it's just far too early to reveal that in this movie which only covers the first four volumes of the manga.



OVERALL: Fantastic film that I cannot recommend enough. Just loved every minute of it. 85%

[snaketales]

Batman v superman ultimate edition is sooooo much better than what we got in cinemas
Also helps if you consider it a conspiracy movie IMHO

[Autocon]

Batman v superman ultimate edition is sooooo much better than what we got in cinemas
Also helps if you consider it a conspiracy movie IMHO

Are there new scenes?

[snaketales]

Are there new scenes?

Yeah - primarily of Lois and Clark investigating their respective story threads - I felt they filled in a lot of details left out in the cinema version. Makes for a more complete story to my mind.

[1AZRAEL1]

Yep. Ultimate edition is the version we should have got in cinemas. Not the movie we need, but the one we deserved. They don't seem to want to make movies too long for theatrical cuts, but sometimes cutting it up butchers it. Nightbreed is a prime example of that.

[M-bot]

I haven’t seen the Ultimate Edition; I don’t imagine I ever will. I’m not at all convinced it’s possible to redeem BVS, no matter how much they add.

[Trent]

I haven’t seen the Ultimate Edition; I don’t imagine I ever will. I’m not at all convinced it’s possible to redeem BVS, no matter how much they add.

I agree. That steaming pile of tripe they call a film is beyond salvation. It had a great cast but they had absolutely nothing to work with.

[SharkyMcShark]

Replicas

Genuinely one of the shittest films I have ever seen. Prior to this I had only seen Keanu Reeves in 5 films (Matrix Trilogy and both John Wicks).

I hope never to see him again now (aside from John Wick 3).

[shockNwave]

Went to see Pet Sematary today. It's a surprisingly good remake considering it has to walk in the footsteps of the original movie which was considered a good Stephen King adaptation at a time when S. King adaptations were usually crap.

If you've seen the original you'll notice the remake follows the original until you get beyond the halfway point and it twists and reinvents quite well.

So it's worth persevering rather than thinking you've seen it all before.