Alita: Battle Angel (new Cameron/Rodriguez SF epic)

The original was published between 1990 and 1995, according to it's Wikipedia page. They would have to write a completely different film if they have to discard the whole idea of a girl cyborg battling. I'm not the right person to defend it, and I'm not a anime/manga fan, but it's not Cameron's fault that other people have ransacked the place.

 

No but you can take the basic story and get clever with it. Twist it up. Especially after you’ve seen countless similar story films.

 

Well, as I said, I haven't seen it yet and I don't read manga or watch anime, so I'll be looking at this fairly fresh. But Cameron presumably paid for this story, and had the misfortune to have to wait until computer graphics had caught up with the way he wanted to tell this particular story.

 

Probably not huge numbers but number 1 beating Lego 2.

 

For us, there were seven total people in one of the biggest theaters near Beverly Hills on a Saturday night at 10:30PM. Not an auspicious start.

 

What really isn't "derivative"?

So, it has CGI, we know that, we knew it before, not surprise here.

I seriously don't see any connection to Avatar, Blade Runner, Pinocchio, Road Warrior, Robocop, Rollerball (OK, maybe Rollerball), Spy Kids, Star Wars, Valerian, and Wizard of Oz,

OK, if that is the case, then we don't need to have any more adaptions from manga comic's, no more space alien's, no more artificial enhanced people (should had perhaps stopped at the Six Million Dollar Man on TV?), dystopian future movies (Tomorrowland), android's/ robot's/cyborg's, tin men, green screen performance capture, live action/performance capture...

Which of these sci-fi action movies doesn't have "clunky dialogue" and bad acting?

It is a movie based after comic book's and comic book character's. What exactly were we expecting?

The Rotten Tomatoes Audience Review's (who I think count more than the critic's, except for the 37% that the critic's awarded Glass) had this to say:

Giving Alita a 92% approval rating.



Which look like these reviews, all 106 pages of them.

Paying particular attention to audience review #1.



For a movie that many are dooming to be a failure, through Saturday night, it has a worldwide gross of over 130M.

It has yet to open in Japan and China.

I was also reading that this Presidential Weekend was extremely weak in general, being off about 60% over last year, for whatever reason.

Because a movie doesn't have a huge opening weekend that some 3rd party predicted, does not mean that the movie will not be successful in the long run.

Seems to me that last November, they were saying the same thing about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, which cost 30M more to make than Alita and ended up earning just over 650M.

I think it is a wee bit early to be counting Alita out. We shall see...

 

Topped the weekend w about 36.5 million

 

You asked, here we go:

Avatar: CGI animated people with giant eyes; CGI people's heads stuck in mechanical suits
Blade Runner: dystopian future with a lot of discarded technology, repressed people, and humanoid robots who want to be human
Pinnochio: craftsman creates a little boy out of wood so he can have the son he never had; boy comes to life dreaming of being a "real boy" and being in the real world
Road Warrior: dystopian future with a lot of discarded technology and characters involved in a massive race, competing to the death
Robocop: part-living/part-robotic creature who begins to regain past memories of who they were before
Rollerball: come the F on!
Spy Kids 2: the whole middle act had a scene where the kids had to climb a long rope to a high platform and kept sliding or falling off (done much more elaborately in Alita)
Star Wars: pod race in Episode 1 and design steals from C3P0
Valerian: visual style, youthful protagonists after corrupt officials
Wizard of Oz: visual style, Tin Man, lead character makes a journey against difficult odds to solve mysteries and ultimately get home.

I see you omitted A.I., Eylsium, District 9, Incredible Hulk, Jupiter Ascending, and Ready Player One, but those have strong connections with the plot, style, and characters of this film. I left out Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, which also involve deadly competition between teenagers who are desperately trying to get out of one dystopian world and get to a better place, as well as huge class distinctions between the riff-raff "regular humans" and the upper-class wealthy citizens.

 

silly comparison , Grindelwald opened to 62 million over the 3-Day , and even with 650+ mil worldwide , and about 160 domestic , it is still looked at , as a "big miss" .....this is going to be lucky to do 1/2 of this , with the same budget
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) - Box Office Mojo

 

unless a comic book adaption , has the magic words "DC" or "Marvel", in 2019 , you are going to have to be really special to breakout---with the number of films DC and Marvel , now produce ( ++ the TV stuff ) , fans pretty much have their "fill" of comicbook films/TV...

 

Derivative?! Good grief the Rotten Tomatoes reviews are fraught with derivative superlatives, but then they might be marketing bots.

This is all the educated masses can come up with? Sad.

I skipped "Alita" and went for "Cold Pursuit", a surprisingly original and entertaining film. Coen Brothers style parody on revenge killing movies.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing Alita, but it will have to wait for home video..

 

No Black Panther this year, it made $242 million from Feb 16-19, if you take that number out of last years box office then 2019 is actually better if that makes any sense.

 

Weather issues in many places and people staying home during the National Energency.

 

What National Emergency?


The three-day President's Day weekend last year saw the top twelve gross over $270 million, the bulk of which was due to the over $202 million three-day opening for Black Panther, accounting for nearly 74% of the combined top twelve gross. This year didn't have such a monster release, and while expectations were muted, the top twelve's combined $109.1 million makes for the worst three-day President's Day weekend since 2004. Leading the charge was Fox's Alita: Battle Angel, delivering $27.8 million for the three-day. Elsewhere, while Universal's release of Blumhouse's Happy Death Day 2U fell short of expectations, it has already grossed more than its production budget and WB's release of New Line's Isn't It Romantic took advantage of Valentine's Day leading into the weekend and delivered a third place finish. Fox's Alita: Battle Angel topped the weekend box office with ease, outperforming expectations and delivering an estimated $27.8 million over the three-day weekend

 

The US national emergency announced on Friday. Panic in the streets. Folks afraid to go to the movies.

Can’t discuss here so you need to Google it.

 

Fox's 'Alita' Leads Worst President's Day Weekend in 15 Years

 

I know, my point was that 2018 would've been much worse if not for Black Panther.

 

Kind of stupid I think, looking at at movie that brought in 650M on a 200M budget and calling it a near miss.

Wanting it to do more, did not mean that it was going to do more. Considering that #2 (or #1) was not based on any book, or really anything else except a tie in to HP, that is a lot of money to be made. Maybe even more so, since it was not based off of a comic book and has the magic words "DC" or "Marvel".

Since it's final budget figure's are 170M, or 30M less than FB #2, it could do 550M total and be on par with FB #2.

Here is the RT scorecard for FB #2.



Both the critic's and the audience scores of Alita are 50% more for Alita than they were for FB #2.

It also took FB #2 a long time to reach these number's after the opening weekend.

Since FB #2 and Alita are both relatively unknown properties, I think that it is a very fair comparison between the two.

 

The math that could lead to a sequel is not looking good for Alita, at this point I think they would be happy if the entire project breaks even after everything is said and done (Theatre/post release $$).

 

I omitted them because I didn't see them, where I saw the other's, but I did see A.I.,

So, take Alita out of the picture, aren't the others that you mention copies of each other too, in that respect?

We know what a dystopian future movie is going to be, as we have seen this covered in movie after movie.

Don't pretty much all of them have have the same CGI elements and everything else?

Come on, android's wanting to be more like human's goes back to Star Trek TNG with Data.

All future type stuff has synthetic's melding with human's. How about Alien?

These are generalizations of the genera.

Aren't most romantic comedies about the same (don't answer that, it is mostly a rhetorical question)?

Anything new in the superhero department?

One thing that I will comment on is that I am about over movies with dystopian future's.

You mention The Wizard of Oz. Even Return to Oz (1985), had a dystopian future for Oz.

I prefer other world's and exploring other universes. And while we are at it, enough with the Planet of the Apes remakes, OK?

At least Avatar is in a different time and a on a different planet, dealing with a different civilization.

Growing up in the 60's, I've had enough of the "after the bomb" post apocalyptic societies.

 

I see the critics are tearing it a new one. We went over the weekend and I enjoyed it, decent action flick directed with some nice clear action by Rodriquez. Was quite surprised that

Spoiler

Edward Norton appeared uncredited as the character Nova.

 

Let's see where everything shakes out in three months time.

I really don't think that they are hoping that the project breaks even.

I see a franchise...

 

Regarding the comparisons to other movies, I certainly see A.I. and Pinocchio here, obviously, along with the obvious Blade Runner comparison (i.e. killer cyborgs as well as an "off world" or place in the sky that everyone is trying to get to; not to mention the registering as a "hunter / killer" thing). Overall, none of this spoiled my enjoyment of what the movie is, and I think many of the nods were intentional.

 

Cameron is interested in pushing the envelope (he's been the keynote speaker at SIGGRAPH, the computer graphics conference), and he wanted to see if it was possible to make a totally believable character. Now that they have her, it would be silly to not use it again.