Cool movies are usually not rated very high by me, unless they are cool to a certain extent.
My requirement for a cool movie is also very simple, that is, you really have to be physically and psychologically cool to me at the same time.
Alita: Battle Angel clearly fits that criteria.
Usually, watching a cool movie once is enough. But I watched "Alita" twice in a row. Although I admit that it is relatively simple in terms of play, and the emotional transformation of the characters is a little thin, but in the film's visual effects and violence, it is not. It "hit" me firmly, and punched to the flesh.
A director who has an idea is in control from the first second the screen is lit.
At the beginning of "Alita", the factory logo of 20th Century Fox appeared, but the number was changed to 26, and the label was rusted. Immediately afterwards, the screen entered a vast wasteland, and the surgeon Ide was rummaging for parts in the junkyard.
The film quickly transports us into a future situation where the world is a wasteland.
Usually directors like to use fixed shots when dealing with large scenes, and it is best to show a magnificent space from multiple angles and all directions.
But Alita doesn't.
What left a deep impression on me was that the scene of the ruins was deliberately shot with shallow focus, the Ide in the foreground was very clear, and the background was all virtual, and the towering excavators were vaguely raging in the ruins.
This is the director's confidence, not deliberately showing it to the audience, but to let the audience discover it in the narrative and spy from the depths of the scene, so as to build the entire space.
The follow-up film also made a lot of use of the scheduling of depth of field, which is the part of "Alita" that caught my eye from the very beginning.
"Alita" is adapted from the representative work "Gun Dream" by Japanese cartoonist Yukito Kijo.
What is a "gun dream"?
Yukito Kijo explained this: "gun" represents violence, which is a material level, "dream" represents the heart, and "gun dream" is the fusion of physics and mind.
Although I haven't read the original book, I can imagine that the original book should focus on the eternal theme of science fiction: between technology and human nature, between matter and soul, what is human?
Any works involving prosthetic people usually can't get around this topic.
The same is true of Alita.
From a purely textual point of view, the story of "Alita" is extremely simple, telling the story of the prosthetic girl Alita regaining herself.
The film builds a two-layer world, the upper layer is a sky city called "Salem", and the lower layer is a dilapidated steel city.
Connecting the upper and lower floors is an unexplained pipe, like a steel cable, but no one is allowed to pass through.
If Salem is a "dream", Steel City is obviously a "gun".
The film does not show the appearance of "Salem" from beginning to end. It can only exist as a dream, just as people at the bottom can't imagine the life of people at the top.
And Alita's head was thrown from Salem like garbage.
She may have been there before, but now, she is abandoned in the Iron City - a place that is like a "gun" that portends icy cruelty.
At first glance at "Alita", you may even think of the "Bourne Bourne" series, which also tells the story of a person who forgot his identity, found himself possessing stunts and was hunted down, and finally regained his identity.
Throughout the process, the two men who influenced Alita the most: Ide and Hugo. The former assumes the role of father, the latter assumes the role of lover.
Just as a person finally establishes "self", it is realized from the mapping of other people's relationships.
At first, Alita identified herself in the mirror, and later, she identified herself in the eyes of others.
With Ed, she became a daughter. Although at first, she was just a stand-in. But in the end, she destroyed Ide's daughter's prosthesis, put on the prosthesis once again, and called out "father" for the first time. This process is like a revolt and reaffirmation of patriarchy: "I don't want to be your dead daughter's stand-in, I'm your other daughter."
In Hugo, Alita first tasted the taste of love.
Taste is how Alita knows the world.
Oranges and chocolates with peels are also bitter and sweet, which is what girls taste when they grow up.
This growth started from the first tear in the face of Ide and ended with the last tear in the loss of Hugo. In the non-stop flashback, Alita finally found her destiny and rushed to the final battlefield.
ok, after a brief analysis of the text, let's talk about the most shocking part of "Alita".
Let's go back to the word "gun dream", let's change the way of counterpoint, and match them to the two creators of the film, you will find that Rodriguez is "gun", and Cameron is "dream".
And "Alita" is a film that uses technology to create dreams and present violent aesthetics.
Can first talk about Cameron's "dream".
Cameron is undoubtedly the most technical director in the current film industry.
Just get a little behind-the-scenes look at Alita and you'll see a bunch of scary numbers like:
The CG model of Alita's eyes is composed of 9 million polygons, the fine hair on the face is more than 500,000, the hair has 132,000, and the mechanical torso is composed of more than 7,000 parts... To achieve such complex special effects rendering, all the The film used a total of 30,000 computers to run at the same time, and took a total of 432 million hours.
Is it scary?
But in fact, these numbers are not important, the important thing is to implement the numbers into the visual experience.
In this regard, the degree of completion of "Alita" is extremely high.
Don't say anything else, just say the scene where Alita wakes up soon after the film starts, a close-up, where Alita slowly opens her eyes, her hair, eyes, and skin are clearly visible in the lens, and there is a natural little nose on her nose. pit.
When I saw this shot, I was reminded of "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle". The film started with a rough picture taken by a mobile phone, and then entered a high-definition picture of 120 frames.
This is of course Ang Lee's deliberate technique. From the first minute, he wants to let the audience deeply experience what 120 frames means.
And this shot of "Alita" has the same effect.
You may think that Alita's big eyes are a bit inconsistent, but in fact, it is a marker made to distinguish it from a real person. Cameron just wants to let you know that this is not a real person, but she is not a real person everywhere.
The so-called "real-person expression motion capture plus CG rendering" technology has developed to the extreme, isn't it the same as real people?
But "Alita" must first let you see the difference, and then through the follow-up realistic expressions and actions, you will finally be convinced that she is no different from people.
Technical cattle, special effects cattle, this has nothing to say. Just look at it and you'll know.
In addition, I think it cannot be ignored is the violent core that director Rodriguez injected into the film.
I personally like Rodriguez, as a Mexican director outside of the Mexican triumvirate, Rodriguez has been ignored.
He has been making low-budget plasma films all the year round. This is also the first time he has directed a big-budget film, which may usher in a career turnaround.
As long as you have watched any of his works such as "Sin City", "Killing the Dawn", "Scimitar", "The Teacher is Not a Man", etc., you will know Rodriguez's "violence" more than his friends. Quentin is going crazy.
Specifically in "Alita", the film cleverly uses the concept of a prosthetic person to avoid the bloody feeling of blood, but at the same time, the fierce and pure "pain" is undiminished.
The torn body, broken limbs and broken arms, half of the face cut off, the head rolled down... The scenes of "cold violence" that could not be described, followed one after another.
Of course, this is not a blind output of violence, but an implied meaning.
First of all, "violence" is the background color of the entire Steel City.
In this disorderly city, violence is the only pass for all the noble and the mean.
The film is to use this kind of sudden, involuntary violence without leaving no room for it to render the cruelty of this world.
Secondly, it is also a setting that makes me particularly excited: "Violence" is Alita's destiny.
Throughout the film, it is not so much that Alita is looking for herself, it is more that she is looking for a reason to fight, to find out why her full fighting power exists.
Although she forgot who she was, she never forgot the battle.
She was fighting the boys to the death in the motorball arena; she once suspected Ed's identity, followed him and killed the real murderer in the alley; she was in the tavern, fighting the bounty hunters; After she was dismembered and revived, she continued to fight...
The battles this time seem a bit sloppy, but it's better to understand it this way: Alita was born for the battle, but she temporarily forgot the reason for the battle, but retained the muscle memory of the battle. So she got up and fought again and again, just to find it.
Until the end of the film, she finally woke up, and saw that she picked up the knife and stood on the ring, pointing the knife to Nova in Sky City, pointing to an arrogant and decadent system.
That scene was very burning. It was not only a harbinger of a fierce battle, but also a sense of tragic and solemnity for a person to finally see his fate.
It should be said that the "violent" core that runs through the film brings both visual and psychological shocks.
Still from the previous point, you don't have to treat "Alita: Battle Angel" as a sci-fi movie, and you don't have to try to dig out the deep meaning behind it.
It is a cool film, a violent action film supported by technology.
From this dimension, it is really good enough.
I remembered the scene at the beginning of the film again. On the ruins, Ide held up Alita's head with both hands. At that moment, the light came as if thinking of the ruins again.
After sleeping for 300 years, Alita re-entered her own destiny.
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