‘Alita: Battle Angel’ and a Post-Apocalyptic Disaster of a Romance

This film is best when it’s NOT focusing on trying to pull at our heartstrings with some insipid teen love affair.

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox

I don’t have much of a history with Battle Angel Alita (as the original manga is called in English). Though I read volumes of the series before, little of the story really stuck with me, but I was still interested enough to see the 2019 film adaptation, Alita: Battle Angel — probably long, long after its relevancy, given that it’s 2021 now.

Alita introduces its namesake when she, a half-destroyed cyborg, is discovered in a dump by a local doctor. Through lucky happenstance, the doctor just so happens to have cybernetic limbs to attach to this junkyard find — and that’s how we come to meet the heroine we’ll be following for the next two hours.

Seeing Alita walk around wide-eyed, full of wonder, makes the beginning of the film inviting — and endearing. Sure, her anime-big eyes take a while to get accustomed to, but you don’t see the desolation of this dystopia she finds herself in: rather, you see her fascination with the crowds and the noise and the promise of possibility.

The worst part of the film is that Alita’s naivete does not last for long. Soon she is caught up…