If you're an avid movie fan, you probably have heard about Alita: Battle Angel which was supposed to come out last year. Well, the movie is finally coming out to the cinemas in 5 February 2019 after a long delay and from the final movie trailer, it sure looks good.
You would probably have also seen some promotional posters around with the tagline "From the producer of Titanic and Avatar", but make no mistake - this is a movie directed by Robert Rodriguez and not James Cameron which probably came into your mind. But anyway, to fully get ready to watch this sci-fi action movie, here are some fun facts about the movie.
1. It's based off a manga
"BUT TECHNAVE, WHY DOES SHE HAS SUCH HUGE EYES AND LOOK SO WEIRD?"
That was probably one of the first reactions that many viewers thought when the first trailer came out, including me. But do you know what else has huge eyes? Anime and manga. Yup, Alita: Battle Angel is based on an old manga series called Battle Angel Alita (lol) which was written by Yukito Kishiro, starting from late 1990 until 1995 in April.
Battle Angel Alita is actually the renamed title for Americans, so it was initially called Gunnm or Ganmu, which means gun dream from the land of the rising sun. Gally was the original name in Gunnm before she became the more well-known Alita.
2. It took 20 years to bring the film to life
Hold up, 20 years in the making? What took them so long?
Well, long story short - James Cameron became a fan when he read the manga, he quickly registered the domain name "battleangelalita.com", which 20th Century Fox also did. It was also decided that he would be the one directing the movie... until other projects came up.
Although the script was partially ready, James never had the chance to really finish it due to other documentaries and projects, such as Aliens of the Deep and then Avatar. You should also know that there will be a sequel following up as well as Avatar 3 so there's that until Robert Rodriguez was brought in by James because he was satisfied with his shooting script. With that, James will serve as the producer along with Jon Landau.
3. Alita is 110% in CGI
In order to make Alita, the main protagonist relatable to the audience, a lot of CGI rendering had to be done to make her as human-like as possible on screen, yet with such big eyes like an anime character. James used the same technology that he used for Avatar such as facial performance capture, Simulcam, Fusion Camera System and others. According to sources, he had spent around ten months developing the technologies, as well as a digital artist, Mark Goerner who also worked on pre-production for a year and a half to make sure Alita and other major characters are presented faithfully from the manga on the big screen.
"The mixture of live-action and CG is a little trickier in 3-D than it is 2-D," said James. "Now we see it's good to have done 'Avatar' first before 'Battle Angel,' because the tricky scenes are where you're blending live-action photography, stereoscopic photography and CG."
4. Behind the scenes (non-spoilers!)
Just for a nice taste of behind the scenes of James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez and others commenting on the movie
5. The "one-man film crew"
Finally, there is some interesting stuff you should know about Robert Rodriguez. Unlike most directors who have a certain style of film-making, Robert directs, produces, writes, edits, supervises sound, visuals, design, and many more which is why he earned the nickname "one-man film crew". With so much involvement, you can expect the movie to be what he wants exactly without any interference from external influences.
The movies he has directed before include a wide variety of genre, this includes the Spy Kids series, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Planet Terror, the Machete series, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and Sin City which was "shot and cut" by the man himself.
It will be really interesting to see how Alita: Battle Angel will turn out. With all the talents mentioned above, the movie could have the potential to break the curse of unsatisfactory "movies-based-on-an-anime" currently going on. We will just have to wait and see and personally, I'm looking forward to watching it!
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