ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL (vt. BATTLE ANGEL ALITA). Robert Rodriguez, director, co-script. James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis, Robert Rodriguez, script. Based on the graphic novel series Gunnm by Yukito Kishiro. Canada, Argentina, USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Lightstorm Entertainment, Troublemaker Studios, in association with TSG Entertainment (production) / Twentieth Century Fox (US and most places, distribution), 2019.[1] Caylah Eddleblute and Steve Joyner, production design. Not to be confused with AELITA: QUEEN OF MARS (1924).[2]
Post-apocalypse cyberpunk movie, featuring a female-gendered cyborg.
For IMDb Storyline: here[3]
Opening of plot summary from Wikipedia:
In the year 2563, a catastrophic war known as "The Fall" has left the Earth devastated. While scouting the junkyard metropolis of Iron City, cyborg scientist Dr. Dyson Ido discovers a disembodied female cyborg with a fully intact human brain. Ido rebuilds the cyborg, who doesn't have any recollections of her past, and names her "Alita" after his deceased daughter. Alita befriends a teenage boy named Hugo, who dreams of moving to the wealthy sky city of Zalem. Hugo introduces her to the competitive sport of Motorball, a battle royale race wherein cyborgs fight to the death.[4]
The players also try to score goals in the manner of Rollerball, very much in the manner of Rollerball, as a kind of cinematic citation.
Whatever is happening in the graphic-novel ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is "recombinant cinema," putting together a number of relevant motifs and referencing a range for earlier works.
• For Motorball, cf. and contrast ROLLERBALL (1975) and its source story "Roll Ball Murder" (1973). • For Alita as female-gendered construct, note tradition going back to Robot Maria in METROPOLIS (1926) through the female terminator T-X in TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003).[5] • Note postmodern "Industrial" and "Brutalist" mise-en-scene in "the junkyard metropolis of Iron City," on the surface, presumably contrasted with the floating sky city of Zalem and definitely contrasted with a few shots of the cleaner, more Modernist decor of the lab/workshop of the film's surface-world antagonist. • For the stealing of body parts, in this case prosthetic and literally parts, cf. and contrast Max Headroom (US television). For extreme prosthetics generally, cf. and contrast Limbo. • For the floating city, cf. and contrast the tradition going back to Laputa in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726),[6] Sky City of the Flash Gordon comic strip and movies (1934/1936),[7][8], Cloud City in the Star Wars Galaxy,[9][10], and more recently.[11] • Note large to huge security robots, for which cf. and contrast the clunky but still far more elegant ED-209 in ROBOCOP (1987) and note suggestion with some of them of arachnoid legs and movements, for a variation on the theme Thomas P. Dunn and Richard D. Erlich called "The Ovion/Cylon Alliance".
RDE, Initial Compiler, 13Feb19 f.