Salazar has been digitally altered in the role, with bizarrely big eyes (no one else has these) that make it tricky for the actress to express Alita's emotions with any subtlety, because everything, including her tears, looks digital. This eliminates real complexity from the role, which needs a stronger sense of female empowerment as she takes on the hyper-masculine status quo. Also sidelining this is the way she goes so doe-eyed whenever she's around the Johnson's blandly hunky Hugo. Acting wise, Waltz, Connelly and Ali skilfully inject some dramatic oomph into the movie.

Otherwise, everything is bright and in motion. The street motorball sequence is good fun, but when it moves into the arena it becomes Transformers-meets-Rollerball animation with robots bashing each other. But then, much of this film is actually a cartoon, albeit a strikingly crafted one. It looks awesome on an Imax screen (although the 3D is, as usual, distracting), and Cameron and Rodriguez have constructed the world so thoroughly that it's hardly surprising when they reveal at the end that they're already planning a franchise.

themes, violence, language

31.Jan.19

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