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James Cameron's Alita: Battle Angel Released After Sixteen Years (rottentomatoes.com)
Slashdot reader Drakster writes: Hollywood producer and writer James Cameron, who is best known for his first two Terminator films, Titanic, Avatar, and Aliens, has released his most recent film this week, Alita: Battle Angel, to mostly mixed to positive reviews. First announced in 2003, based on Yukito Kishiro's Gunnm manga series, it was stuck in development for several years, finally starting production in 2008. Slashdot last discussed this fifteen years ago, so now that it's finally here. For those who have seen it, what did you think? Met or surpassed your expectations, or not worth the wait?
or other shitty minorities?
Did anyone else notice the heroine's name is ATILA spelled backwards?
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You really wasted all that time just to post such idiocies? I hope you feel better after getting that off your chest.
... the reality is, the movie suffers from westernization. The reality is whenever you have a western movie director try to adapt japanese anime or manga related stuff you usually get a disaster.
Western movie directors are fucking horrible at understanding the source material and the fans of japanese cultural works in general. Hollywood generally sucks at understanding anime and videogames as has been proven by countless bad videogame adaptation movies so why would anyone expect them to correctly adapt manga/anime related properties?
They suck at understanding nerd culture to an extreme degree. There's only been weak signs western writers/producers understand the game worlds build by game developers and manga/light novel artists. The Castlevania anime adaptation by netflix is one of the few barely passable adaptations of worlds based on the videogames. The worst part is castlevania games are so open ended you can literally create entire worlds around the mythos and no one has proven brilliant enough to do it.
I went to see an early screening about 2 weeks ago in IMAX 3D. It's a fairly entertaining film. Probably the best 3D visual effects I have seen, vertigo inducing in parts. Without the 3D I imagine it would lose its entertainment value somewhat with some cliché scenes and gaps in the story. Good overall, I'd give it 7/10 in 2D and 9/10 in 3D
James Cameron is probably better known for directing films than for writing or producing them. Alita: Battle Angel was directed by Robert Rodriguez, not Cameron. The last thing Rodriguez directed that wasn't critically panned was the original 'Sin City'.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Don't worry. Main focus of western directors is to introduce n1ggets and shitty sand monkeys as saviors of humanity. Plot is irrelevant.
The first posts on the 15 year old Slashdot article linked here suggest something darker and more interesting than what I watched last weekend.
This Alita was a remix of Pinocchio, Ben Hur and a few others. It looked very well made but to me it didn't feel really new. I'm just too old compared to the target audience, I guess.
The movie suffers from JAmes Cameron. Nothing to do with Westernization. HE churns out nothing but shit.
Just got back from watching it, submitting the story before I did.
Overall, I was very impressed with it. When seeing the first teaser, I’ve got to say, the eyes of the lead was a bit much, but coming back from seeing the entire film, they ended up blending in very well, not at all being the distraction I thought they could be.
From the current review score, expected a generic Sci-Fi movie, but it surpassed my expectations, having good characters, story, setting, and action. Due to the nature of the story, had a good deal more heart to it as well.
Been a while since I’ve read it but diverts from the source material a bit, but overall, it's a faithful adaptation of the first few volumes.
I’d recommend it for any Sci-Fi fan.
I disagree.
Unlike something terrible like Ghost in Shell or Dragonball? Alita doesn't do a 1:1 adaption if that is what you mean. So we skip over the magical girlfriend arc that Alita started around, various enemies got mashed together, Motorball arc was rushed ahead and radically altered. Dr Nova even shows up to have a dragging angle to stage a sequel, even if his location and job seem to be altered drastically. If movie 2 skips over the Wasteland revolution arc in favor of the Tiphereth madness i will also be sad. Mostly because we will miss out of cloning, bodyjacking and marriage sheenigans.
As for what is enjoyable?
We got a movie where Motorball is the bloodsport it is, and so is Bounty Hunting. Alita's literal lust for blood also survived the adaption.
And junkyard is the shithole its suppose to be.
Its a great movie.
What i find most terrible about the adaption is that you get exposition being replaced by Hollywood language. Pacific Rim do suffer the same, but its far more blatant when you have read the orignal script and seen how its replaced. Pacific Rim also has a far simpler exposition, meaning easier to make it terrible and yet not too Hollywood.
In Alita a lot of the exposition sounds like terrible injokes to make fun of the characters ignorance. The Fall is a good one, because by the time Alita is around they have gone trough at the least 3. Yet the Hollywood script sounds like they are poking fun at each other for ignorance.
Father/daughter relationship didn't survive the language that well.
There is also some questionable changes, like she being named Gally until she remembers her name is Alita. Which seem a straight error by using the Viz translation instead of the source material. Tiphereth vs Salem is another one, which is easier to be indifferent to.
Too busy swooning over the guy in the title who neither directed the movie nor wrote the original material.
Holywood, if you want my money please stop making movies with cultural agendas. .-...what will be next? Gay women? and then?
First gay men, then blacks, then women, now black women,
They seem to have used Gollum as an actor for Alita... :D
With just a wig and some makeup
CYA
It is, here the idles, of Januar, which must be, bewared upon -- ay tu Bluto!
I still think they should have used Bjorks face. :-(
and Suugesting these challenges
First of all, they tone it all down to fit the lowest age rating the board could decide on, which means the only connection this movie has to the comic is mostly in name only. In the comic, Ido kills for the thrill of it, and he goes hunting with Alita, and they bond in a lot of ways that shows how their sort of weird relationship is growing, and evolving.
Admittedly the comic itself is not the best story-wise, but at least it has interesting characters. Again, since they toned it down the characters are lame, and the cast of Waltz as Ido would be perfect if he got to be the Ido that was in the comic, not this chained-to-the-wall imitation we see on the screen because THEY GOT TO KEEP IT PG-13.
I could go on forever about this, but let me just say I am not that impressed. They should have gone Deadpool on this and stick to the source material. It has better designs, better character portrayals, and is better overall for this kind of silly sci-fi.
Maybe it's not Hollywood, maybe it's the target audience. If Hollywood was making the movie ONLY for manga/anime fans, they would focus heavily in that direction. If they want to make it for everyone, they Americanize it. They change things that may please the fans but puzzle the non-fans. The question is whether they can do that and still make it enjoyable for everyone to watch.
went to see it. ... ... ooh spoiler ... city walls but i doubt they have the (city) organisation and funding to keep that going ... :P
it was a pretty dense story. "cram" is a bad word, but they definitely put in a lot of story, so good for them.
the graphics are amazing.
i couldn't 100% enjoy it because i read the b&w manga, so i kinda knew what was coming
not a directory or artist but i would have made the world a bit more distopian: the below-city was a bit too organized for me.
nice grafic w/ the
i guess some people won't like it because, as mentioned above, it's a pretty dense story line so it might be tooo "exhausting" to follow
the movie "ends", so no horrible feeling when leaving the cinema but has "connectors" and could be continued without too much wrangling.
So, it was a great Imax experience - if you have a Giant Imax screen near you (not those small Imax Digital ones), like the 26m wide Laser Imax I had close to me, the way it looks alone is worth the admission. I don't like 3D in general, but this was actually shot in 3D so it looks good overall and the action sequences are gripping and well shot.
Now, the story is not very "original" nowadays, as we've seen a lot along similar lines these days. A friend asked me if it is a bit derivative to things like Ghost in the Shell - I had to point out the original manga was contemporary to the Ghost in the Shell manga, so you can't say it came a lot later. And in general this movie it is not very close to the manga (which I guess might be a good thing for the general audience - bad for those who like manga/anime).
But overall I would recommend just for the giant Imax screens which make it a great spectacle, for a small screen it is just a decent sci-fi but nothing to write home about...
PS. The part-CGI character is not annoying/uncanny at all - it helps that it is supposed to by a cyborg anyway and that cgi is more advanced than 15 years ago when this was first discussed on /.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Every time anyone anywhere does a medium shift of a story you lose something. Book to movie, movie to book, game to movie to book to comic to manga to light novel to movie etc, etc, etc. Every time you lose something.
You also have the chance to GAIN something.
Don't tell me the obvious, sport. I know something was lost. Tell me what we gained.
Foreign movie directors are just as bad as getting American Culture correct too.
Heck look at Doctor Who. When ever there is an American, there is some guy with a Gun, usually overly confident and rude.
If they take American Stories, they will rewrite them so it matches the culture of the country involved.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Ug, Alita kinda sucked, GitS kinda sucked, [insert american attempt at live action manga, anime, NES movies] kinda sucked.
no superheroes, no spandex, not marvel or dc movie ?... what the hell ?
They suck at understanding nerd culture to an extreme degree.
Anime is not made for nerds in the first place. It's just Japanese TV, made for a broad audience. Most is aimed at either teen girls or teen boys (thus the appeal to basement-dwelling manchildren).
Like TV anywhere, there are some real gems among the dross. Hollywood fails at adapting almost everything with a fan base, never bothering to understand what people liked in the first place. The exceptions are very rare indeed (and made quite a lot of money): the Marvel movies, especially the early ones; the LOTR movies, though they went downhill as Jackson added more of his own BS to each in turn. I'm struggling to think of a third example from the past 50 years - Fight Club maybe.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Nobody cares about nerd "culture". Nobody. Producers and directors aim at the mainstream, socially well-adjusted demographics. Nobody wants to be associated with the ugly and the losers.
And yet somehow he has the top TWO highest-grossing movies of ALL time. Gee, I wish I could "fail" like that! /s
Since you are "obviously" such a talented director with a "proven" track record what was he supposed to have done differently in your "professional" opinion?
What have you produced aside from bitch about Quantity != Quality, criticize without offering ANY details, or worse offer no solutions?
And while stuff like Avatar is basically a modern rip-off of Dances with Wolves in space what he has produced has resonated very well with the general populace in spite of him producing "nothing but shit" as you claim. Was Avatar formulaic? Yes, extremely derivative. Did it have archaic tropes of "Might makes right"? Yeah, it was another dumb action "shootout at the O.K. coral in space." However, it sounds like you are jealous of his financial success, think that the _other_ types of success are the ONLY ones that matter, and don't see the value of his movies contents raising the consciousness of what is possible. Specifically, in Avatar there was social commentary on the blatant greed with unsustainable strip mining ("unobtainium"), plants having feelings and emotions, plants effectively forming a planet wide brain due to the large quantity of neuron connections (IIRC Grace Augustine commented on this), everything is connected a.k.a. Gaia Theory ("Eywa"), OBEs, and the future ability to transfer consciousness from one body to another. It sounds like you weren't paying ANY attention to the deeper narratives being presented.
Movies often are multi-dimensional. Do you even understand the difference between the literal story and the allegory??
Instead of just whining about Cameron producing "nothing but shit", in your opinion, why don't you actually have a discussion on WHY you think Cameron sucks -- or are you just too fucking lazy and intellectually dishonest to even attempt that?
Speaking of LOTR, Peter Jackson, and The Hobbit (which I 100% agree with you) -- have you seen Lindsay Ellis' excellent 3 part documentary analyzing what went right (and wrong) with The Hobbit?
https://youtu.be/uTRUQ-RKfUs
I think you'll enjoy it -- it summarizes basically all the same criticisms I had with The Hobbit movie adaption.
I have been a fan of the Manga for a decade or so. I just saw the OVA a month ago - it was OK. This movie really puts the source material through a blender, but the results are pretty good. You will not find yourself getting bored! It is also very rewatchable.
Rodriguez did the same thing he did with "Sin City". Many of the frames looked so much like the manga, it brought tears to my eyes. I've been waiting to see this version of Gally and was not disappointed (except for the ending!).
I don't see how taking something popular with nerds then squatting all over them, leading to terrible reviews and word of mouth, seems like a good thing to deep pocket investors.
Are you sure you aren't just a troll?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Avatar was CG trash and people still liked it. They'll like this too, but its probably not much substance. Cameron is venerated on a pedestal he doesn't deserve.
Mod parent up. And let's add the more obvious and more practical lesson that "All our past imperialism and land/resource grabs from indigenous peoples looked like THIS EVIL from the other side", before we list the speculative possibilities.
Yeah, I was surprised how much the problem with the Hobbit were direct studio interference. But then, it's only one sign of a great many that Hollywood has lost touch with viewers.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
>>> American, with a gun, overly confident and rude
You mean "overpaid, oversexed, and over here"? Well, yeah.
And yet somehow he has the top TWO highest-grossing [wikipedia.org] movies of ALL time.
Titanic was awful pablum and was fed by a pumped up media cycle and awards season timing, resulting in many lonely women watching it multiple times.
Avatar was similarly pumped up to be THE GREATEST TECHNICAL MARVEL OF ALL TIME, at the height of the most recent 3D craze. It was shit.
Further, gross sales don't mean shit. Look at the number of tickets sold. Ticket costs go up, up, up as sales (number, not value) go down, down, down everywhere but Asia. Comparing gross sales (value) is disingenuous. If you release a movie and sell tickets for twice the price and buy the marketing to get an audience, then you only need half the audience. (You buy the marketing anyway - modern marketing budgets for major studio films are in excess of the actual production budgets.)
And finally, you need to control for inflation.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm This controls for inflation, but does not control for ticket price beyond that. Additionally, it obviously can't control for the reach of the overall market (population, distribution, access to foreign markets, etc.)
Compare that list to https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm or https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/ .
Do you really think Avatar, Jurassic World 2, Incredibles 2, and Fast & Furios 14 are anywhere as good, impactful, or significant as Jaws, Star Wars, ET, The Lion King, etc.?
Well, that escalated quickly.
Yup, you gotta laugh at the irony!
AC: Cameron produces shit!
Me: WHY?
And *I* get modded Flamebait. Yup, let's shoot the person asking for clarification. Stay classy /. !
Moderation should eventually fix this knee-jerk slashtard abuse. (If it doesn't then its just another sign of how broken moderation has become.)
C'est la vie.
> Do you really think Avatar, Jurassic World 2, Incredibles 2, and Fast & Furios 14 are anywhere as good, impactful, or significant as Jaws, Star Wars, ET, The Lion King, etc.?
Quit trying to move the goal posts. The OP argument was "Cameron produces shit." I called the AC out with "WHY?"
Getting this back on topic: Were you not paying ANY attention to the impact of Avatar??? Despite having a shallow story it definitely had a social impact:
1. "Avatar depression" shows lots of people were effected -- can you name any other movie that had this effect?
2. It's high box office performance is proof that A LOT people went to see it, and
3. As a result it got a lot people talking about the environment, sustainability, and how we are currently (mis)managing the planet in the name of greed.
Avatar had a deeper layer to it. The "tech" angle is a red herring to its popularity. People who say Avatar was shit are generally clueless about its META narrative as I discussed before.
SW:TLJ, ranked at #11, proof that Quantity != Quality, ALSO got lot of people talking -- specifically at how shitty it was. There have been numerous YouTube reviews dissecting and analyzing it to death such as Maulers, Wisecrack , MisAnthro Pony, etc. It ALSO had an impact on Han Solo and FUTURE Star Wars movies in the franchise. i.e. This one movie potentially killed Star Wars for good -- MANY fans have given up on Disney.
> gross sales don't mean shit
Doesn't change the fact that popular movies are having an impact on culture and on what kind of (future) movies get made. Usually, formulaic ones. :-/ So yeah, popular movies "matter."
The real question is: Will any of these popular movies have any LASTING impact? That remains to be seen. Most of them will probably be forgotten in 40 years as most of them are shallow, mindless violence with little substance.
For convenience here is a list of the movies:
1. Avatar, $2,787,965,087
2. Titanic, $2,187,463,944
3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, $2,068,223,624
4. Avengers: Infinity War, $2,048,359,754
5. Jurassic World, $1,671,713,208
6. The Avengers, $1,518,812,988
7. Furious 7, $1,516,045,911
8. Avengers: Age of Ultron, $1,405,403,694
9. Black Panther, $1,346,913,161
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows â" Part 2, $1,341,511,219
11. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, $1,332,539,889
12. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, $1,309,484,461
13. Frozen, $1,290,000,000
14. Beauty and the Beast, $1,263,521,126
15. Incredibles 2 film currently playing, $1,242,808,192
The argument was NEVER "Popular movies good" but I provided a counter argument to "Avatar is shit and has no impact".
> are anywhere as good
Who claimed they were good???
Did you ignore the part where I said:
Was Avatar formulaic? Yes, extremely derivative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Apophenia is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things.[1]
Originally, character's name was Gally.
Name was changed during translation in order "to appeal to more than just the hard-core manga and anime crowd".
https://www.animenation.net/bl...
Actually, the discrepancy between the names Gally and Alita comes courtesy not of AD Vision, but from Viz.
In the October 1993 issue of Animerica, Fred Burke, co-translator for the Viz Comics Battle Angel Alita manga explains that, "For a Viz Comic to work, it's got to appeal to more than just the hard-core manga and anime crowd;" therefore there were several alterations made in the translation of the manga.
Yukito Kishiro's title Gunnm, a compound of Gun Dream, was re-named Battle Angel Alita.
Gally, the protagonist, had her name changed to Alita, a name, Burke explains, means "noble": a name that he discovered while searching through a book of baby names.
Burke also explains that, for no reason given, the floating city Zalem was re-named Tiphares: a name meaning "beauty", taken from the Qabalah and the mystical Tree of Life.
Furthermore, Yugo's name was given a cosmetic change to Hugo for American readers.
Also...
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Saw this yesterday and unless you like random jump cuts and nonsensical plot twists don't waste your time and money. This should be a series not a movie. For example Alita suffers a horrible personal loss, the next scene is 6 months later supposedly after 6 months of entertainment combat and she has not one scar, looks no different, except she is at the pinnacle of the sport. In another part she should be betrayed by someone she cares about and 2 seconds later before seemingly he has had a chance to betray he's being killed? About zero character development, she has no memory, has 2 total flashbacks which answer no questions, and... Voila she is the most skilled fighter ever, one who can pluck your eye out when she only has one limb. This one movie should be around 100 episodes. But instead nearly everything seems to be left on the cutting room floor. Or in the animators computer. It jumps from plot thread to plot thread like Tarzan swinging through the trees. And it's story is about and contiguous as if it was written by the Blair witch film crew.
Gunnm is actually one of my favorite mangas of all time (Yokohama Kadaisho Kikou being the other one). I'm going to see Alita in about and hours time at the local cinema, and apparently they have Masaaki Yuasa's 2018 movie playing too so I guess I'll see that tomorrow too.
I kinda need to see it, just hope that they didn't mess it up too bad. Also, it's promising that they changed the English title around from "Battle Angel Alita" to "Alita: Battle Angel". This implies they're leaving things open for sequels and they're not going to try and cram all 9 books (of the original story run) into a 2-hour runtime or anything dumb like that.
Blade Runner, perhaps? There are probably more novel-based examples than anything that can be seen as successful film adaptations.
Western Directors don't even understand Western Anime...
See Avatar.
Cheap storage VM.
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