20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment released the first full trailer for Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron’s Alita: Battle Angel. The two minute long trailer starts in a freaky way, giving potential movie goers a look at the wide-eyed angel.
Rosa Salazer stars as Alita, but she’s been CGI’d to the point where she looks like she took a long, unashamed shower in the uncanny valley before the final edit was cut. Don’t take my word for it, check out the near two minute trailer below and see it for yourself.
If you thought the eyes were a bit distracting, you weren’t the only one. In fact, it’s the one thing people can’t stop talking about in both the comment section of the trailer and on social media.
Battle Angel Alita (2018)
Directed by Robert Rodriguez pic.twitter.com/YhSNc0AvGB— Perry@Training for KiT Jan 5-7 (@experimilk) December 8, 2017
Oh I see how it is, you anime fans cry about Hollywood adaptations straying too far from the source, but Robert Rodriguez gives Alita manga-accurate eyes and suddenly everyone’s throwing a fit. You hypocrites are impossible to please.
— ChorpSaway (@ChorpSaway) December 8, 2017
In an unprecedented move, Robert Rodriguez has become the first director to film an entire movie in a Snapchat filter.
— Matt Schieve (@silverward) December 8, 2017
And in today’s episode of “Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should” we feature Battle Angel Alita: Into the Uncanny Valley. pic.twitter.com/Y2eLASDz3k
— Pat Rothfuss (@PatrickRothfuss) December 8, 2017
Beyond all the discussion about the uncanny valley and weird looking anime eyes brought into a hyper-realistic film – clearly making it known that somethings are best left in the realm of 2D – people are actually genuinely excited for Robert Rodriguez’s take on the popular manga-turned-anime.
As far as cinematic storytelling is concerned, it looks like an almost 1:1 adaptation of the OVA, with the exception of a few characters.
I’m sore some purist might be angry that Jennifer Connelly doesn’t sport the blonde hair, but at least they kept all the main characters’ original races the same, so there shouldn’t be any complaints about diversity or race-swapping.
My biggest issue with most of the films made by Robert Rodriguez is that he has a poor cinematic take on fight scenes, and the fight scenes were a fairly prominent part of the original OVA. So we’ll see how well he does in that department because he’s never been that good of a director when it comes to filming fisticuffs.
Alita: Battle Angel is due out next summer in July of 2018.
