Alita: Battle Angel

About

Alita: Battle Angel refers to James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez's photorealistic adaptation of the manga Battle Angel Alita. Because the film is not animated, the decision to digitally manipulate lead actress Rosa Salazar's eyes to be unrealistically large, as they would be in an anime art style, prompted strong responses online.

History

On December 8th, 2017, 20th Century Fox uploaded the trailer for Alita: Battle Angel to their YouTube channel. The trailer gained over 286,000 views (shown below). The film is said to lift the "spine story" of the first four issues of the manga.

Online Reaction

Quickly after the trailer was released, much of the discussion centered on Alita's eyes, particularly how many found the eyes unsettling. The Verge^[1] wrote:

The character looks like an anime doll come to life, or like a Disney character that’s just a hair off from normal. It’s probably a deliberate choice, meant to remind viewers at every moment that Alita isn’t human. But after so many years of CGI animators trying to mimic convincing human faces and not entirely succeeding, it’s still unsettling to see a character hovering this close to realistic, while staying this far away from it.

Kotaku^[2] brought up the eyes but also expressed nervousness about the dialogue and the screenplay penned by Cameron. Meanwhile, commenters on Reddit and Twitter expressed mixed opinions about the trailer and the eyes. A thread about the trailer posted to /r/movies^[3] gained over 23,000 points. Kotaku^[4] covered the range of opinions within about the trailer, with some expressing optimism and others pessimism about the film (examples shown below).

On Twitter, reactions also ranged from excitement to pessimism. User @TheJWittz tweeted that the big eyes only work when drawn, gaining 90 retweets (shown below, left). Others supported the commitment to faithfully adapting the art style. Twitter user @spookypixels tweeted an image of the "source material" to make that point (shown below, right).

Others joked about the controversy itself. User @TheJordanRoss jokes that the eyes would be replaced by Christopher Plummer, a joke about how Ridley Scott replaced Kevin Spacey with Plummer in his film All The Money In the World after the backlash surrounding Spacey's alleged sexual assault (shown below, left). User @pvponline joked that while others were talking about the eyes, he was most concerned about just how faithful the film would be to the manga (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References