Alita: Battle Angel

[Girth Certificate]

it's weird that she still has a nose then

[Benny]

I just tried watching the trailer again on a bigger screen. Still full of even bigger nope.

[kerraig UK]

8 hours ago, ZOK said:

I didn’t find the eye thing an issue at all, just looked how it was supposed to be.

It's not how Alita is supposed to the look though is it. I mean. she has big eyes in the comic, but so do all the characters, because it's drawn in that style. In the comic the character herself doesn't have big eyes.

 

It's clearly a stylistic choice they've gone with, but they've then had to shoe horn in some exposition that changes the character too. 

 

I've seen this a few times on here, where people defend a bad decision because it was "obviously what the Director intended". The Director can get it wrong sometimes, as is clearly the case here, judging by the fact more people are turned off the project than turned onto it. Even Alita fans. 

[ZOK]

I don’t agree with those people. It’s one of the more interesting aspects of the trailer. I’m not defending it, as I essentially care nothing for it - I’m expressing my opinion. 

 

But like I said, it looks as good as any other generic superhero / sf crap that clogs up the cinema these days. In all likelihood it will be worse.

[dataDave]

12 hours ago, ZOK said:

 

Isn’t that a good thing? In a world of pointless things, live action anime adaptations are amongst the most pointless. The only one that was ever any good was Tokyo Doomed Megalopolis, and that was totally incomprehensible.

 

Exactly. If people want to experience Akira they should read the manga. Film could never really do it justice otherwise. It'd be too long and drawn-out for a start. 

[Broker]

Why don’t Dario and the other cyborg have giant freak eyes? It looks like they’re trying to have a “she’s special and different” chosen one thing going on, and the eyes are part of that symbolically. Which is a shame because a world where cyborgs are commonplace is a big part of the cyberpunk appeal and between Zapan, long Blade fingers dude and her there’s clearly plenty of them about. So how come she’s the only one with fish face?  

[matt0]

It's a boneheaded, literal interpretation of the visual language of comics. The big eyes in the comic (and manga and anime in general) the technique is to exaggerate emotions and produce empathy in the reader*. Here it looks creepy as hell, it reduces empathy because all the while I'm looking at it my brain is trying to crawl out of my skull.

 

*Doesn't work for everyone, loads of people can't get their heads around anime style big eyes on a gut level.

 

[SeanR]

[SeanR]

[Nespresso]

[James Lyon]

What volume of tears can she produce with those eyes of hers?

 

Spoiler

Alita.

 

[jonamok]

Better than the trailer ^

[Alex W.]

Rodriguez has an explanation for the eyes, but wants us to know it was all James Cameron's idea.

 

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/alita-battle-angel-trailer-breakdown/

 

Quote

It was always Jim's intention to create a photo-realistic version of the manga eyes that we're so accustomed to seeing. We really wanted to honour that tradition and see that look standing next to any human character. To have the right person to emote behind it was really essential. Her origins are in the film and you understand why she looks that way. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, we have some pretty big windows. You can see a lot going on in there! When it gets to the emotional scenes it's really uncanny and striking. And captivating!

 

[jonamok]

And shit.

[Benny]

Once you know the secret reason for her huge eyes you will be ashamed of your words and deeds.

[matt0]

It's possibly the dumbest thing you could do with the source material. Speaks to a mind obsessed with visual details for the sake of visual details.

[Girth Certificate]

[JohnC]

It's been delayed from 20 July to 21 December. I've not heard if it's for eye reduction surgery.

[Broker]

Hopefully they’ll cancel it.

[Treble]

Just a couple days before they announced this date change, I got a Google Survey about it. Now this was a bit of a shock as A) the vast proportion of the surveys are in the manner of, "You walked past TJ Hughes the other day, did you go in?" and other incredibly mundane bits of polling. Also B) you usually get 2-3 questions max.

 

This one was for Alita, and asked about 10 questions, starting with the usual, "Have you ever heard of Alita?" type stuff. In the middle, they'd stuck the trailer in as an unskippable part of the poll. After that, it was all like, "Would you watch this? If not, why?". "It's the eyes, isn't it?! You hate the eyes!"

 

Ok, I made the last one up, but it was clearly fretful about people's reactions. If they pulled this to re-do the eyes, I really wouldn't be surprised.

[JohnC]

 

[RubberJohnny]

The eyes are still weirding me out tbh 

[Broker]

Yeah, I was really hoping there was still VFX work to do on them and they'd look less shit when we saw the movie again but they still look absolutely terrible and really distracting. The dialogue was quite bad as well, and I'm not especially fond of them shoehorning in some chosen one bullshit with her being the one to find the berserker. Looks shite.

[Treble]

One of the biggest bombs of the year in waiting. Did you know the budget for this is £200m?!

[ZOK]

I still don’t find them distracting at all. Looks like a great flick! But I very much doubt it will be, all these films turn out to be disappointments.

[schmojo]

Agreed, it looks interesting and a bit different. I'd rather have people try things and not quite hit the mark than give in to public naysaying all the time.

 

I'll never understand the way people hyperbolise about mainstream films with such negative language. In a worst case scenario, it's not as good as it could have been. these entertainments are never actually 'awful', 'dreadful' or 'horrendous'.

 

Those opinions sound like they must be really stressful.

[gizmo1990]

I think they may have very slightly toned down the eyes, but perhaps I'm imagining it. Anyway, I think it looks interesting. The eyes aren't too distracting at all and in fact, some scenes in that trailer really work very indeed imo. Still a ways to go to fiddle cgi wise too.

[Festoon]

I love " and Robert Rodriquez " - like it's preemptively apologising for him.

[Mr. Gerbik]

2 hours ago, Broker said:

I'm not especially fond of them shoehorning in some chosen one bullshit with her being the one to find the berserker.

We already knew the eyes were the stuff of nightmares, so this is my biggest problem with this new trailer. I don't mind them changing the story up, that's unavoidable if you want it to work as film. Especially if they're going to fit the first two volumes worth of story in it, as it looks like they're doing. But this particular change isn't just seemingly unnecessary, it makes the story more generic and less interesting for it. 

[Broker]

2 hours ago, schmojo said:

Agreed, it looks interesting and a bit different. I'd rather have people try things and not quite hit the mark than give in to public naysaying all the time.

 

I'll never understand the way people hyperbolise about mainstream films with such negative language. In a worst case scenario, it's not as good as it could have been. these entertainments are never actually 'awful', 'dreadful' or 'horrendous'.

 

Those opinions sound like they must be really stressful.

 

Plenty of films are awful. This is an evening out that can cost up to £50 if you have children, and for that price you get two hours worth of entertainment. For it to be worth that it needs to be more enjoyable than something you could do cheaper or for free, and the majority of films aren’t. 

 

What sounds stressful to me is coasting through life sucking up whatever shit the corporate machine feeds to you. You have one life, and your time is precious. Having it wasted by garbage is annoying, but floating along trying to enjoy garbage designed to exploit you is sad.

 

1 hour ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

We already knew the eyes were the stuff of nightmares, so this is my biggest problem with this new trailer. I don't mind them changing the story up, that's unavoidable if you want it to work as film. Especially if they're going to fit the first two volumes worth of story in it, as it looks like they're doing. But this particular change isn't just seemingly unnecessary, it makes the story more generic and less interesting for it. 

 

Absolutely. The story Ido tells about the crashed ship is one of those beautiful simple pieces of world building like Obi Wan’s mention of the clone wars or the Tannhauser Gate. It doesn’t need retconning into something special just for her, that just narrows the world and makes it less exciting.