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Alita: Battle Angel

Punished Miku

Gold Member
That’s fine with me @90s.

So what’s the last order? Is that like a continued story or another arc? Should I read only this one? I’m confused :messenger_confounded:
The Last Order is season 2. It explicitly takes place after the first series. And yes it's a must read to at least get the first several books of it. It basically is just tons of answers to the most pressing questions of the entire series.

Mars Chronicle wraps up in April. It's a prequel, season 3.
 
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sol_bad

Member
Do we know if they'll do hard cover releases of Last Order?

Very happy to read all the positive impressions here btw.
:messenger_beaming::messenger_beaming::messenger_beaming:
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Do we know if they'll do hard cover releases of Last Order?

Very happy to read all the positive impressions here btw.
:messenger_beaming::messenger_beaming::messenger_beaming:
No idea. I haven't been following the hardcover book lineup. If they did, it would be pricey as Last Order is much longer. After the first several books it moves into a lot of other avenues storywise. It's 19 books long. Mars Chronicle looks like it'll wrap up on book 6.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member


This is some next level marketing. I am kinda shocked this didn't go viral. James Cameron remains a real engineer. Pretty damn awesome. Can't believe it only has 47k views.

Definitely better than Brie Larson asking for other people to donate money to send girls to see her movie and profit herself.
 

Ailynn

Faith - Hope - Love


This is some next level marketing. I am kinda shocked this didn't go viral. James Cameron remains a real engineer. Pretty damn awesome. Can't believe it only has 47k views.

Definitely better than Brie Larson asking for other people to donate money to send girls to see her movie and profit herself.


This is beautiful and amazing. Thank you for sharing this! ❤

I may have to go see the movie again for a third time. I absolutely loved it.
 


This is some next level marketing. I am kinda shocked this didn't go viral. James Cameron remains a real engineer. Pretty damn awesome. Can't believe it only has 47k views.

Definitely better than Brie Larson asking for other people to donate money to send girls to see her movie and profit herself.

Brie Larson can eat it. What James Cameron did for this girl was a real kind thing to do. But because she is a woman she will get way more press. I wanted to go see the movie again yesterday but I was saidly sick. This just makes me want to support this movie even more 😊
 
That’s fine with me @90s.

So what’s the last order? Is that like a continued story or another arc? Should I read only this one? I’m confused :messenger_confounded:

don't worry about Last Order just yet. take your time and finished the original series first and then decide. like I mentioned in another post up top, Last Order was the product of the arthor's frustration due to being force to create an ending for the original that he didn't like. so after a few years working on another story (Aqua Knight), he went back to doing Gunnm (Alita) again. Gunnm: Last Order basically expanded the last couple of chapters from the original series into a 19 volumes extended series. gave a lot of back story to the whole universe. some people don't like it since there's a large chunk of it dedicated to a fighting tournament arc, but over all I like it. the art work has a some improvement from the original and it introduced lots of interesting character.
 
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pr0cs

Member
Took my family to watch it tonight since it's cold as fuck outside and we're all tired of being cooped up. My daughter loves it (pre-teen) which is what I was hoping for. Visually it's very good the main character is incredibly impressive from an animation perspective. I enjoyed it but it suffered pretty bad from pacing and not enough world building. It felt pretty japanesey from some of the dialog and story elements but not so cringy that I wouldn't recommend it.
Even to just go to see the future of animation is worth the price of admission,will go see the sequel if it does well enough to constitute it
 

cryptoadam

Banned
Never read the comics so I don't know how key this guy is to the whole thing, but I would of just gotten rid of Hugo all together. Him and the "love story" didn't work for me. More Waltz, more robots, more world building, less YA uncharismatic romance.

All though Cameron knows to draw in the larger audience you need a love story. Worked with Titanic and Avatar. Looking at the audience response it seemed to have worked but not sure how its doing at the Box Office.
 
Never read the comics so I don't know how key this guy is to the whole thing, but I would of just gotten rid of Hugo all together. Him and the "love story" didn't work for me. More Waltz, more robots, more world building, less YA uncharismatic romance.

All though Cameron knows to draw in the larger audience you need a love story. Worked with Titanic and Avatar. Looking at the audience response it seemed to have worked but not sure how its doing at the Box Office.
We will know the state of the box office after this weekend but it’s looking like China needs to save this movie.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Never read the comics so I don't know how key this guy is to the whole thing, but I would of just gotten rid of Hugo all together. Him and the "love story" didn't work for me. More Waltz, more robots, more world building, less YA uncharismatic romance.

All though Cameron knows to draw in the larger audience you need a love story. Worked with Titanic and Avatar. Looking at the audience response it seemed to have worked but not sure how its doing at the Box Office.
There were only two real criticisms I had of the movie, as a huge fan of the manga and anime.

In the comic, Hugo becomes much more demented and basically loses his mind completely and goes insane when he loses his body. It is much more clear that his desire to get to Zalem is an unhealthy obsession that borders on crazy. After he is decapitated, he is disgusted with his robot body, as its a representation of the scrapyards of Iron City consuming his humanity, the thing he was trying to flee by escaping Iron City. He climbs the tubes to Zalem and is basically a laughing, and demented insane person. Most of that is lost in the movie for some reason. In the comics, it comes across more clearly that everyone is fucked up and they all have far darker psychological issues. Alita hands Hugo her heart (literally) because she is also partially crazy and her love for Hugo is also an unhealthy obsession. The Iron City is portrayed as far, far darker. Even the hulking giant Grewishka has far darker psychological motivations, as he grew up living in the sewers and is actually an incredibly tragic character. Most of these small details are just lost in the interest of time since it's only a 2 hour movie. In the comic, Hugo's story works well. They got like 95% of it on screen.
 
We will know the state of the box office after this weekend but it’s looking like China needs to save this movie.

Hopefully it does.

A sequel would be awesome

It’s too bad that, from a financial perspective, it feels like the movie never had a chance and I don’t fully understand why
 
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cryptoadam

Banned
There were only two real criticisms I had of the movie, as a huge fan of the manga and anime.

In the comic, Hugo becomes much more demented and basically loses his mind completely and goes insane when he loses his body. It is much more clear that his desire to get to Zalem is an unhealthy obsession that borders on crazy. After he is decapitated, he is disgusted with his robot body, as its a representation of the scrapyards of Iron City consuming his humanity, the thing he was trying to flee by escaping Iron City. He climbs the tubes to Zalem and is basically a laughing, and demented insane person. Most of that is lost in the movie for some reason. In the comics, it comes across more clearly that everyone is fucked up and they all have far darker psychological issues. Alita hands Hugo her heart (literally) because she is also partially crazy and her love for Hugo is also an unhealthy obsession. The Iron City is portrayed as far, far darker. Even the hulking giant Grewishka has far darker psychological motivations, as he grew up living in the sewers and is actually an incredibly tragic character. Most of these small details are just lost in the interest of time since it's only a 2 hour movie. In the comic, Hugo's story works well. They got like 95% of it on screen.

The spoiler part sounds more interesting, all though I can understand why they toned it down to reach a wider audience. For me Hugo just didn't work and since I didn't read the comics his characther stood out a bit like sore thumb. It felt like a teen age YA movie shoved into this sci-fi fantasy. Reading the spoiler I see he was a part of the original story so I think they needed to play it a different way in the film, and probably hire a different actor. I don't know push the love story further into the back burner and make Hugo out to be more of an Ahole and more that he is using Alita instead of puppy love.
 

lifa-cobex

Member
Really surprised me how much I enjoyed this.
Had a VHS of the old anime from when I was a kid so I could only remember certain scenes.

Defiantly recommended.
 
Just got back from watching it, really liked it. Not the biggest fan of the Hugo love story (manga version was better as someone else already stated), but it is what it is and gets the motivation done for the sequel, that hopefully gets made.
 

n0razi

Member
I want more sequels just to see how they deal with this character from the manga

WR8XCxw.jpg
 

Pejo

Member
Well OP, finally caught this movie over the weekend, and it was pretty much how you described it. I really enjoyed myself.

That sequel bait ending though, I mean come on. I had never read the source material on this one, but I think I might go check it out now.
 
Read if you never got to the Vilma arc yet.... it was honestly the high point of Last Order/ZOTT for me.

BAALO_08_cover.jpg

yeah, Vilma's arc is great for adding some more background to the history. plus the fights in there are awesome and it breaks up the tournament arc nicely.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
I just noticed there's Imax version of Alita - is it worth watching over normal one ?
I enjoyed it. The bigger the screen, the more detail you see. Stuff like the motorball scene that moves super fast just looks better on a bigger screen. Its not a gigantic difference. I saw it once in IMAX and once normally, both in 3D. The IMAX is a little bit better.
 
I just noticed there's Imax version of Alita - is it worth watching over normal one ?

I always catch imax screenings when available. Great screen near my house. Has a Dolby Cinema theater too, with the rumble recliners. Both are great movie watching experiences. Hard to go back to normal
 
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Keylime

Spoiler Tag Abuser
JareBear: Remastered JareBear: Remastered Dolby Cinema is the way to be. Between IMAX/RPX/Dolby I vastly prefer Dolby over all of them.

Ended up buying the AMC A-List subscription and there's a Dolby Cinema theater about 40 minutes from my house that you can bet your ass I'm going to trek out to for any major movie releases.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
It's a solid movie and I'm in line with most of the opinions here. PG-13 hurts it, the Hugo romance is thin and grating (far less interesting than the manga), Iron City seems overly quaint, and it has a questionable end point, but overall it's a fun action-adventure romp that nails most of the action set pieces. Alita's a memorable protagonist here as with the source material. I'd be down for sequels and I'm glad audiences rejected the critical reception and are giving it legs at the box office.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
Saw it Saturday night and I´m pretty disappointed. I´m not familiar with the source material so I´ll not go in to that, but as the Movie stands it was pretty weak. My main complaint is that Cameron and Rodriguez set it up for sequels, with an unfinished storyline that begs for more. It has too many characters, with some of them being outright boring (main villains, Chiren). The romance between Alita and Hugo was too thin and not very well written, but I can give it a pass since it does somewhat what it requires in a basic sort of way. Iron City (and the world and lore itself, with the floating city above) was mostly left unexplored, which I saw as a missed opportunity. The main villain should have been Zapan and not Grewischka and Vector (in fact I hated them, boring and predictable as fuck).

The good parts were Alita. She was definitely the highlight of the Movie and I was Mighty impressed with the animation, looked almost real. Insane level of detail there. Iron City as well, spectacular World building which Rodriguez didn´t seem to keen to explore. The action set pieces were very exciting and fast-paced, and the relation between Alita and Ido were touching and sincere.

Overall, I don´t regret seeing it and two hours Went on fast and painless, but I expected more. It´s inconsistent and bloated, ugly design on some of the cyborgs and the ending (and whole story) is just a cheap setup for sequels. Sequels that might not happen due to the Movie not performing as expected (or so I Heard). And if Cameron and Rodriguez doesn´t get a Another shot at expanding the story with Alita, then the direction they were going for was just a big fucking waste of time.
 
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I think foreign box office will save it; https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=intl&id=alita.htm

Hasn't been released in China yet, should do another ~$200 million there easy. They are suckers for robots and anime eyes. I predict by the end ~$400 million foreign, $70 million domestic. Might even approach $500 million in total.

I'll agree that the story/world building was weak, but not because it utterly sucked. Chiefly because it felt incomplete/sparse. Pre-planned trilogies can end up this way often. They have to hold back for subsequent films. The fact that the namesake of the film is the best and most interesting element is a saving grace imo.

And if Cameron is attached, there will be funding. You don't not give him funding.
 
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Fascinating to me that many reviews praised the world building as “triumph” but many here not impressed with that aspect


It's an easy thing to praise when you're shitting out a review for something you don't actually care about.
I thought Jupiter Ascending had a way more interesting universe.
 

Javthusiast

Banned
I just hope that we, if there won‘t be movie sequels, get a new anime adaptation for the whole manga series. Netflix, just dumb cash onto a reputable japanese studio and animate that shit.
 

manfestival

Member


This is some next level marketing. I am kinda shocked this didn't go viral. James Cameron remains a real engineer. Pretty damn awesome. Can't believe it only has 47k views.

Definitely better than Brie Larson asking for other people to donate money to send girls to see her movie and profit herself.

This is really cool and I was completely unaware of this. Thank you for posting this.
 

rivv3r

Banned
I can see what people meant when they said this was an anime come to life. I knew nothing of the source material and actively avoided trailers (as I do for movies that seem interesting.) It's a shame I didn't realize going in that it was meant to be the first in a series of movies, because the ending was a bit underwhelming.
 
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Update: Alita has made a $65 million opening debut in china. I stand by my $200 million prediction for that market. International audience overall digs this film; Americans not so much.

As part of the former, I see the appeal. Many here are burnt out on the Marvel formula. This was fresh imo.

Alita is looking better than Pacific Rim, and that got a sequel. Rest assured there will be a part 2.
 
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lifa-cobex

Member
As part of the former, I see the appeal. Many here are burnt out on the Marvel formula. This was fresh imo.


Yup.
I really wasn't sure if I wanted to go to the cinema for Alita. I realised on the drive up that it might be because the last few times I've been were for Marvel films.
Aside from the people who wouldn't shut the fuck up I really enjoyed it. It was an old feeling of wanting more that I haven't felt in ages.

End game will be the last MCU film I'll see just to put a bow on it.
 

cryptoadam

Banned
What is the obsession with roller ball and dystopian futures?

No one cares about stupid roller ball and it will never catch on as a sport no matter how many mutants or cyborgs we have.

Roller ball died in the 70's get over it.
 

McCheese

Member
The sequel will cost less to make as well because most of the special effects technology & assets have already been created.

One of the reasons this film looks better than it's budget is due to both Avatar and Alita sharing a separate piggy bank for research and development, so most of the cool tech was co-funded for by Avatar.

Hopefully Alita 2 doesn't suck balls like Pacific Rim 2 did.

You joke, but if China does save Alita's box office then a similar thing could happen. PR did surprisingly well in China and so when Legendary got sold (to Chinese investors) they green-lit the sequel, and also interfered by ditching the original script for the sequel and forcing a few locations and casting decisions on the project, mostly to cater for the Chinese markets.
 

sol_bad

Member
You joke, but if China does save Alita's box office then a similar thing could happen. PR did surprisingly well in China and so when Legendary got sold (to Chinese investors) they green-lit the sequel, and also interfered by ditching the original script for the sequel and forcing a few locations and casting decisions on the project, mostly to cater for the Chinese markets.

Is this factually true? Like, is there any proof that this actually happened?
 
What is the obsession with roller ball and dystopian futures?

No one cares about stupid roller ball and it will never catch on as a sport no matter how many mutants or cyborgs we have.

Roller ball died in the 70's get over it.

I'm not a big fan of roller ball myself but MotorBall mix the speed of F1 racing (or NASCAR if u like that better) and the violent carnage of ancient gladiators into one, so it seems to be a perfect sport for a dystopian future where the elite high tech people trying to keep the people down low entertained and compliant.
 
Is this factually true? Like, is there any proof that this actually happened?

Yes, but he who has the money does the dictating. They simply tweaked PR2 for the intended market.

However, alita is fantasy grounded in a different reality. And it was already turned into a PG-13 affair. Nothing more the Chinese censors could do to the sequel.
 
Just got back from cinema and I have to say I really loved the movie. Creation of the world and Alita herself were done amazingly well , and while there were some deviations from the chapters I have read it still was solid and kept the spirit. There were few cringe worthy scenes with Hugo but they didn't impact my enjoyment much.

Also much like in last Blade Runner music did amazing work in building atmosphere.

Highly recommended for me it was one of best sci-fi movies I have seen in recent years just after BR2049 and Edge of Tomorrow.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for our Chinese friends that they give us a sequel :) and although few euros we are paying here for ticket won't matter much I might go second time with diffrent group of friends :)
 

0neAnd0nly

Member
You like action? like decently shot action that isn't shaky cam and lasts longer than a few seconds? This film has full on 'anime power-levels' fights that go on for so long that if you held your breath you would be dead. It also has a sport which is basically Speedball on a race-track, which results in one of the coolest sequences I've seen in a very long time.

So, admittedly I hadn’t really had any interest in seeing this, did not watch the OVA/ read the manga and had no background knowledge. I didn’t really have interest until 4 nights ago while bored browsing and clicking the thread just out of bored curiousity.

This quote of yours, combined with trailer #3 definitely helped light a flame of interest and sell me on seeing this. I have you and your OT to thank for that!

the usual 'Hollywood filter' isn't present and it's all the better for it.

The other quote of yours that helped me strengthen my desire to see it. Some of the most fun I have had with movies over the last 5-10 years are movies that tend to not be Hollywood films. I enjoy stuff that has a different source material than that purely of h-wood writers.

I like the cast, a lot

Understatement! There are one or two that are so-so, but the main group was dynamite IMO. Even with what is certainly too short of a time to truly form the relationship between the characters, the characters were so well portrayed and likeable (in most regards) that it completely made up for it!

Overall you guys can gather from my replies that I went and saw it. The replies in here and especially McCheese McCheese OT is what sold me, completely. I don’t go to the movies much, but decided to give this somewhat underrated gem a shot and ended up impressed. Not perfect by any means, but it was fun and felt fresh and certainly had the visuals and sequences to help really make it enjoyable.

Went and saw it in IMAX 3D, happy I supported a movie that did some cool stuff for people with prosthetics as well (thank you again GAF, another selling point for me to see it that I forgot to mention^).

Also I just want to say - I thought that the eyes were great!

Team #LeaveAlitasEyesAlone

Thanks for the awesome movie suggestion, GAF!
 
So, admittedly I hadn’t really had any interest in seeing this, did not watch the OVA/ read the manga and had no background knowledge. I didn’t really have interest until 4 nights ago while bored browsing and clicking the thread just out of bored curiousity.

This quote of yours, combined with trailer #3 definitely helped light a flame of interest and sell me on seeing this. I have you and your OT to thank for that!



The other quote of yours that helped me strengthen my desire to see it. Some of the most fun I have had with movies over the last 5-10 years are movies that tend to not be Hollywood films. I enjoy stuff that has a different source material than that purely of h-wood writers.



Understatement! There are one or two that are so-so, but the main group was dynamite IMO. Even with what is certainly too short of a time to truly form the relationship between the characters, the characters were so well portrayed and likeable (in most regards) that it completely made up for it!

Overall you guys can gather from my replies that I went and saw it. The replies in here and especially McCheese McCheese OT is what sold me, completely. I don’t go to the movies much, but decided to give this somewhat underrated gem a shot and ended up impressed. Not perfect by any means, but it was fun and felt fresh and certainly had the visuals and sequences to help really make it enjoyable.

Went and saw it in IMAX 3D, happy I supported a movie that did some cool stuff for people with prosthetics as well (thank you again GAF, another selling point for me to see it that I forgot to mention^).

Also I just want to say - I thought that the eyes were great!

Team #LeaveAlitasEyesAlone

Thanks for the awesome movie suggestion, GAF!
Your welcome! Glad you liked it. Team Alita baby!
 

VulcanRaven

Member
This movie was great. I hope it gets a sequel. Would be stupid if it didn't.
I want to see what happens. I really wanted to see the city. They shouldn't end a movie like this if the sequel is not guaranteed. I haven't read the manga.
 
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