High-end and exquisite performance capture technology, splendid fighting scenes, the climax of the original hot-blooded comics, 20 years of long brewing and waiting, plus the blessing of James Cameron, all these factors together are doomed to "Ah" Rita: Battle Angel will eventually become a film that is hard to ignore in the history of cinematic technology.
Twenty years of long waiting and brewing, the attacking card god
As a fan of James Cameron and a fan of science fiction for many years, I heard that "Alita: Battle Angel" will finally be released. It is impossible not to be excited. It is estimated that many fans have long waited for this film until the flowers have thanked them. Several times. In the late 1990s, well-known film director Guillermo Del Toro recommended to Cameron an animated short film adapted from the cyberpunk manga "Gunmen" by Japanese cartoonist Yukito Kijo. Melonte loved the story, saying, "It resonated so strongly with me because my eldest daughter was very young at the time, and I could see a great story of women's empowerment in this comic. Then I started flipping through the original manga, and I also realized that Yukito Kijo created a world with rich details that has great potential and is very suitable for the big screen."
The "Gun Dream" serialized in 1991 and "Ghost in the Shell" serialized in 1989 undoubtedly have many similarities. Both of them have a strong cyberpunk style, and the time of the works is set in the future apocalypse. Alita is a female character who is fully prosthetic (mechanized) except for the brain and spine. The film has many similarities in the relationship between humans and robots and the awareness of physical memory. The two theatrical animations of "Ghost in the Shell" were fortunately blessed by the great god Oshii, so they were pushed to an unattainable height, and their popularity soared, which also brought great excitement to the live-action version of "Ghost in the Shell". big challenge. In contrast, "Gun Dream" has only two OVA episodes directed by Fu Fubo, with a total length of no more than 53 minutes and a little mediocre. There are not many people who know it, leaving a lot of room for adaptation to real people. The manga-reformed live-action version of Gun Dream has been blessed by Kashen, which will make this manga-reformed live-action movie reach a new creative height.
As early as 2000, Kashen had registered the domain name battleangelalita.com. Five years later, he bought the adaptation copyright of "Gun Dream", and after another four years (2009), he completed the creation of the first draft of the script. It took another six years (2015) to decide that Robert Rodriguez would be the director of the film. The filming officially started in October 2016, and the post-production was more than two years before it was released this year. Twenty years of waiting, brewing and preparing is a long journey, and the finished film can be said to live up to expectations. Compared with the original anime OVA of "Bombshell", the characters in "Alita: Battle Angel" are fuller and the storyline is more ups and downs. Not only has the mobile ball game been added, but also the Berserker mecha body has been changed once more. , and the bar fight scene is also more bloody and explosive than before. In the final mobile ball competition, the scenes of countless transformed people fighting each other for the ball and fighting each other also gradually pushed the story to a climax.
The director of the film, Robert Rodriguez, has been friends with Kashin for many years. He collaborated with Quentin on "Kill Bill 1-2", and has also appeared in "Sin City", "The Torture Chamber", "Killer Elegy", "The Killer" He has multiple identities, such as director and actor of "The Killing Trilogy" and "Planet of Terror", and is well versed in the charm of violent aesthetics, so the countless explosive and bloody fighting action scenes in this film are bloody, violent, and very beautiful. Compared with "Avatar", which has been recorded in film history, the performance capture technology and 3D photography technology in "Alita: Battle Angel" have made great progress, and the development of technology has also made the filming of this film possible.
Film technology upgrades, from motion capture to performance capture
Weta Digital Studio, which created "Avatar", has revolutionized the real-time digital capture system of human faces, which completely maps and interprets the natural expressions of actors, and then converts these unprocessed and non-destructive expressions into CG animation.
During the motion capture shooting, there are dozens or dozens of cameras working at the same time. The infrared light in the photography is transmitted to the actors' costumes with reflective strips, and then reflected back to the camera for capture, which can capture all the markers on the clothes. The positions and movements of these markers are linked with the actor's digital skeletal model to form a CG model. The performance capture is more informative and more advanced, and the expressions of the characters appear more natural and realistic. First of all, we need to capture many details of the actors' facial expressions. In this film, more than 2,500 fixed-frame pictures of the female protagonist Alita's facial expressions are captured to form Alita's various expressions, and then digital modeling is carried out on this basis. The head, muscles, and facial fat are combined with the actor's facial expressions to make a digital face puppet, so that the actor's movements and subtle changes in expressions can be fully presented on the screen.
The eyes and mouths of live actors are used in the film, so the expression changes are rich and natural. Alita's facial muscles move three times more than Nitri in "Avatar", and the production department created 47 hair styles for Alita's hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, with more than 132,000 hairs on her head, 2,000 eyebrows, 480 eyelashes, and nearly 500,000 "peach-colored fluff" on the face and ears; Alita's mouth has been sculpted 176 times, and it's only a short two-minute shot of Alita eating an orange. It took the crew for a year to shoot more than 2,000 versions. The perfection of facial details and the obsessive-compulsive disorder of Virgo-like pursuit of perfection were brought to the extreme, making Alita in the film as natural as a real person. Compared to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, Nitri in Avatar and Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Alita's facial expressions in this film are undoubtedly the most natural and advanced.
The aura performance of young actors and the blessing of three Oscar-winning male and female supporting roles
Doctor Ide found Orphan, a Martian mecha warrior who had been dormant for more than 200 years, in the garbage dump of Steel City. She was captured in battle more than 200 years ago and was punished and thrown back to Earth. After burning through the atmosphere, her limbs were broken. , And because her brain contains a special resin, it triggers a self-protection mechanism in a harsh environment, which makes the brain rapidly solidify. Her brain survives, but she loses her previous memory. Dr. Ide used his daughter's body to repair her into a modified person, and named her Alita. Orphan, who lost her memory, knew nothing of her past identity. At this time, she was just Alita, a young girl who was reborn in the doctor's home.
Alita is played by young actor Rosa Salazar, who trained intensively for the film, learning Chinese martial arts and Muay Thai, as well as practicing various inline skating techniques. I personally think that Rosa is still very good in her interpretation of Alita's growth. The two different stages of performance are clearly layered, which is in line with the image identity of the characters. In the first stage, Alita is just a teenage girl who has lost her memory. She is young and lively, and she is not familiar with the world. The heroine at this stage looks light and has a refreshing temperament. The big eyes of the two comic characters look innocent, and the characters look relatively Simple, the heroine is filled with a bright and fresh girly breath, and she is full of compassion for people and things. She goes to play a motor ball game with the hero, and sits on the man's unicycle to go to the air. Very girly.
In the second stage, he fought with the villain in the bar, and gradually understood his identity as a warrior in the fierce fight. Finally, Alita, who had changed into the body of a Berserker mecha, was completely different from Alita in the body of a girl before. Alita, who lost her body and gained the body of a mecha again, has now become a blackened heroine with a painful growth experience, and suddenly she has matured. Character expressions, body movements, and even the facial features of the characters are specific. The son is several years old, and his movements and voices have changed significantly, and he has grown up in a short time. From a teenage girl to a warrior with rich combat experience and super high force value Strength shows what is the aesthetics of violence.
The fight scenes in the movie are very exciting. The first fight was in a Kansas bar. Alita singled out many bounty hunters in the bar, and the fight with the villain Zapan caught people's attention, and the most intense fight was with a huge stature. Gruishka fights. Gruishka was once the star of the mobile ball competition. He grew up in the sewers of the Steel City. He is the number one lackey of the villain Viktor in the film. Alita in the girl's body was helpless and was defeated by the reconstructed Gruishka. She was beaten until her body was destroyed, and the battle was tragic and tragic.
The second intense fight scene was at the Motorball Contest, where the modders who competed were all wearing rocket-boosted roller skates, chains, spikes, knives, and armor, on a track with lots of hairpins Running at high speed, there are many traps on the track, which can easily destroy the parts that transform people. The rules of the mobile ball contest are not field goals or slam dunks, but the length of time the ball is held in the game. The longer the ball is held, the higher the score and the more likely it is to win. The competition is brutal and can be considered a combination of "NASCAR racing plus WWE plus no-restriction fighting", but the winner not only becomes the hero of the steel city, but also gets the chance to become a permanent resident of the city of sky, Salem . What is even more cruel than the previous competition is that all the transformants in this competition are the killers that Victor invited to kill Alita, but at this time, Alita is not only agile and powerful, she has become a whole person. It is an unmatched weapon, so the brutal fighting scene strength interprets the true meaning of violent aesthetics.
Salem is the only city in the sky that survived the war hundreds of years ago. The steel city where everyone lives is a huge refugee camp. Everything in Salem is high-tech and high-end. The dirty steel city is responsible for Salem provides raw materials and energy, the two are completely different from cloud and mud, so the residents of Steel City all want to live in Salem, and the male protagonist Hugo is one of them. Young actor Keane Johnson plays Hugo, a handsome boy who captures the delicate balance between the fragility and toughness of Hugo, a naive dreamer with a cool, mysterious temperament. In order to survive in the filthy steel city and realize his dream of going to Salem, Hugo is an engineer during the day, and a "looter" who uses violence to snatch and transform human body parts at night, which makes him handsome and youthful. With a hint of darkness, it's hard to fathom.
Although he is passionate, open-minded and hard working, once he has made up his mind, he will try to accomplish something, and he is a very charming young man when he takes Alita on a unicycle for a ride, but fate has put him Pushed in a life direction he can't control, he didn't expect that he would fall in love with the transformative Alita. While playing street ball on the street, he discovered Alita's amazing talent. Alita's agile skills and pure heart all made his heart beat.
In addition to the two young male and female protagonists, the excellent performances of the supporting roles of several gold and big-name stars make this film a great addition .
Plays Doctor Boyd is with "Inglourious Basterds" and "Django Unchained" in the outstanding acting won the two-time Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor of Christopher • Walz , compassion and wisdom he gave Boyd The role of the doctor, with a calm performance, tells a thousand words about the role of the doctor as the father who gave Alita life. Dr. Ellen is played by Jennifer Connelly , the heroine of "Once Upon a Time in America" who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "A Beautiful Mind" in 2001 . Dr. Qilian was born in Salem. In order to treat her daughter, she went to Steel City, but she was still unable to save her daughter's life. In order to escape from grief and stay away from the sadness and loss of Steel City, she regarded returning to Salem as a cure. The painkiller for her own life, she is after all a poor person looking forward to finding happiness. The villain Victor is played by Mahershala Ali , the black actor who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for "Moonlight", the protagonist of the third season of "True Detective" and "Green Book". Much, but roles are also important. The co-starring of the three old actors makes the film shine.
The bloody fighting of cyberpunk, the poignant and poignant love between man and machine, the 20-year obsession of James Cameron, the blessing of the golden supporting roles of big-name Oscars, the smart performances of young actors, and the super-perfect visual and sound effects all make " Alita: Battle Angel has become an unmissable movie of the year.
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