UPDATED - with full trailer!
Big Eyes back
Geeks! Another anime/manga adaptation into a LIVE-ACTION AMERICAN movie! First, we sorta had “Evangelion” told in “Pacific Rim”, then we had an adaptation of “Ghost in the Shell” earlier this year. (Can’t judge the latter because I never got around to it, heard it was a stinker, but I think I’ll get to watching it today.) These movies came from an epic era in anime films that were often cyberpunk, and this trend pushes forward with “ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL”!!! Adapted from the manga/anime “Battle Angel: Alita”
Holy shitballs, you guys! I remember as a kid holding the VHS of the anime movie “Battle Angel: Alita” in my hands, only to have my friend who was like an older sister tell me that I was too young for it. Rightfully so, by 90s standards, “Battle Angel: Alita” was gory and brutal a heck! Years later I got a hold of the manga where I read about a cyborg girl named Alita that was found in a scrap heap by a scientist named Ido. He gave her new prosthetic body, and she fought another cyborg who was a junkie...FOR BRAINS. It’s been over a decade since I read, but I believe he was after the dopamine or DMT in them. The art is stunning, in both the manga and the anime. “Battle Angel: Alita” is from a time of anime where they still used realistic dark shadows, and didn’t try to feed into modern otaku culture and make everything cute or “waifu” material, where the women were strong badasses and would take down the enemy while covered in blood!
The 80s and 90s were an epic era of anime films, but before the hyper connectedness of the internet we have today, it was very difficult to find a community with those who even knew what these films were. Sci-Fi played some of these movies at Midnight on Fridays, so obviously the people were out there! They grew up, and they’re making these movies real!
Hopefully director Robert Rodriguez will do ALITA justice!! According to IMDB there’s a full cast already, including Rosa Salazar (“Maze Runner”) as Alita and Christoph Waltz (“Django”, “Inglourious Basterds”) as Dr. Ido.
I don’t know what in the heck the teaser means by “Her journey begins tomorrow” when all of the sources I check say that the movie is set to release July 20th, 2018. Perhaps we’ll get a full trailer by then, and you can bet I will be ALL OVER IT. My inner child-weeb is starting to reawaken and I could not be more excited!
~Big Eyes
