WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Alita: Battle Angel, in theaters now.
Alita: Battle Angel is a visually inventive film, full of immediately memorable characters and settings. The universe of the film feels lived in and real in a way that only certain, well crafted sci-fi stories ever manage to pull off. As a testament to the skilled worldbuilding of Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron (working from the landmark manga by Yukito Kishiro), Alita is great.
But as a movie? The film is overstuffed with characters who go nowhere at best and completely disappear at worst. Too much time is spent on setting up future conflicts instead of making us care about the ones happening right now. The story of Alita is so focused on setting up the next entry in the series that it fails to properly make us care enough to really even want a next one. Alita: Battle Angel doesn't work as a standalone movie, and would be considerably better as the pilot for a television series.
RELATED: Alita: Battle Angel Opens Strong in Asia Ahead of US Release
Leaving The Door Open
Most of the problems with Alita aren't even really flaws, just examples of mishandling the material. The universe of Iron City is confident and casual in its sci-fi tweaks to modern society, while still being close enough to reality to resonate with audiences. The early sections of the film are the most well crafted in the entire movie, establishing everything we need to know about the world and the things that make it tick. Stuff like pick up games of motorball are terrific little touches.
But that seamless construction gets sloppier as the film progresses and starts dropping hints about the war that ravaged the Earth and what kind of role the villainous Nova played in it. Character development falls by the wayside and the story takes a backseat in favor of Alita (Rosa Salazar) having more flashbacks about her mysterious past and the connections it has to the modern day. That wouldn't be as annoying if they went anywhere, but most of those visions ultimately just serve as setup for a potential sequel. While a television series would have the time and space to accommodate these questions and tease them out over time, they come across as rushed and forced in the context of a single feature-length film.
RELATED: Battle Angel Alita Creator Yukito Kishiro Is 'Super-Honored' By the Film
Characters appear and then promptly disappear without any warning, especially the Hunter-Warriors. Zapan (Ed Skrein) is certainly the most important of the hunters in the narrative, but almost none of the others make any major appearances at all following the scene where Alita meets them at the bar, Kansas. Only McTeague (Jeff Fahey) and Nyssiana (Eiza González) play any real role in the story, and even that is just reserved for helping Alita out of trouble or being among the otherwise nameless Hunter-Warriors trying to kill her, respectively. After those brief scenes? They're gone.
NEXT PAGE: Alita Spends A Lot of Time Building Up a Sequel That May Not Happen
It feels like the sequence at Kansas was intended to introduce all these interesting and compelling characters, and in a television show it would have been a frequent location to set up exciting new plots. The movie introduces each Hunter-Warrior as their own character and then does absolutely nothing with them. Even Zapan is removed from the narrative after Alita damages his face, with no attention paid to him in the climax. He gets his face cut off, screams about it and then does nothing. He's probably meant to come back in the proposed sequel, but that just makes it another thing the movie leaves unresolved.
REVIEW: Battle Angel: Alita Is Technically Perfect (If Narratively Lacking)
Probably the biggest structural problem with the film stems from the story's inability to just tell a single story without getting bogged down in future setup. Just look at the the climax, or rather the lack of one. When Alita confronts Vector (Mahershala Ali) and Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley), there's no real tension to the sequence. Alita is so powerful by this point that she bisects Grewishka with ease. There's not even any emotional payoff, because Grewishka has been nothing more than a recurring henchman by this point. All the potential animosity between the two has gone nowhere.
When it comes to Vector, Alita should be addressing all the things he did so he could "rule in hell," as he described his position earlier in the movie. The movie could draw parallels between him and the other characters, and make the confrontation matter on an emotional level as well as a physical one. Instead, the movie uses its ending as a chance for Alita and Nova to discuss their plans for one another, then Alita stabs Vector. The end. He doesn't even get a dying moment, he just expires on the ground under the control of Nova.
RELATED: Alita: Battle Angel's New Trailer Heads to the Motorball Track
There's no emotional through line for the film, just lots of setup, which could potentially work in long form storytelling. The characters would have time to explore their emotions and relationships with one another. Alita would have the time to interact and form actual relationships with the full cast. But this is a film. The movie has a finite running time, so to an extent it needs to be more focused. Unfortunately, in this format the film fails to deliver the promise of its own story. It doesn't reach a conclusion, it just sort of ends on a "we shall meet again" cliffhanger for a sequel that, let's be honest, may never come to be.
Alita: Battle Angel has all the makings of a great series, but it's wasted as an attempt to build a film franchise, and the way it's structured would have been more conducive to a format like television. Here's hoping the creators learn their lesson, and that any potential sequel pays more attention to itself instead of what might follow it.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Alita: Battle Angel stars Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Keean Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Lana Condor, and Eiza González. The film opens Feb. 15 nationwide.