From The Pages of Manga To The Big Screen: ‘Alita: Battle Angel’

We live in the age of replicated ideas. Where nostalgia folds onto itself like space-time in a time travel movie into a never-ending tesseract of ‘the board game that used to be the YA novel that used to be the movie pitched by some studio head’s nephew’. Enter, Alita: Battle Angel – the movie based on the anime, sourced from the manga, “Gunmu”. I grew up on the manga and the anime and let me tell you: Robert Rodriguez delivers a grand cinematic vision of The Iron City. More often than not, the ‘rich city/poor city’ vibe is forced in cinema. Scenes with no people of color and scenes with suspiciously high amounts of people of color. Folks wearing rags and speaking in outdated colloquialisms, etc. None of the ‘forced’ cliches are present in Alita (although it felt as though black women had so few lines and were easily killed off in this world). In regard to genuine diversity, there is so much Latinx representation woven cleverly throughout the world of Alita. From the three original songs co-written by director Robert Rodgriguez, to the intricate Aztec calendar forged on the back of Ed Skrein’s hunter-warrior character Zapan.  Black and brown people are a part of this universe in an honest way (not many lines though). Keeping it really real, this movie does a lot without trying too hard. An unspoken but well displayed theme of female empowerment via Rosa Salazar’s kick ass female protagonist with a heart of gold. It was a relief to see a ‘never too tough – never too soft’, fu…