Valentine’s day, 2019, will see the release of the (hopefully) awesome Hollywood adaptation of Battle Angel Alita, titled (backwardsly) Alita: Battle Angel.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau, this movie has all the making’s a major blockbuster. However, the source material is pretty obscure. Back in the day, I was a huge Battle Angel Alita fan, as were some of my friends (we were all into anime and manga in the 1990s), to the point that I even wrote a little world book for the GURPS role-playing game systems. I still have the nine original manga graphic novels, which I’m now in the process of re-reading. Even so, Battle Angel Alita is almost completely unknown outside it’s limited fan base, and I fear that will work to the detriment of the movie.
The movie appears to loosely cover the first four graphic novels, which is good, since there probably won’t be a sequel. I honestly wish this was a streaming series for Netflix or Amazon, or maybe HBO or Starz, as it could be so much more than a one-shot movie. But it is what it is, and the latest trailer looks absolutely marvelous, and shows that the movie will at least touch on most of the key elements and themes of the manga.