Critic Reviews

Alita: Battle Angel is [Rodriguez’s] best film since he brought Frank Miller’s graphic novel to the screen, a sci-fi epic that does something rare in an age of endless adaptations and reboots: lives up to its potential while leaving you wanting more.

Alita lays out her empathetic groundwork early and rarely diverges from it. How wonderful to have a hero that always follows through with what she fights for. How wonderful to have a blockbuster that aspires for so much and mostly delivers on those ambitions.

Alita: Battle Angel is Robert Rodriguez’s best film in many years. It’s an ambitious, impressive, visually spectacular production with great performances that make its strange world seem real.

Not without flaws, but nothing to get too worked up about, Alita: Battle Angel is cynicism-free, first-class popcorn entertainment spearheaded by a knockout performance from Salazar. A star is born.

If you’re in the mood for a movie like “Alita,” “Alita” is the movie you’re in the mood for.

True to its origins, Alita is a living cartoon of a film, which only makes its ridiculousness easier to absorb.

"Alita” is an action movie, and some of that is who-cares. But the bigger thing about this film is that it makes us think about humanness, what it means, what it is, and what it might be in the future.

The film crams in so many plot lines that it risks being overstuffed but somehow stays true to its mesmerizing vision and emerges as a sci-fi success, if not a triumph.

The only reason any of this works at all is Salazar and, I hate to say it, those goddamned big eyes. They’re the windows to the soul, after all, and this ungainly, lurching cyborg of a would-be blockbuster has more of that than meets the eye.

If you approach Alita: Battle Angel like a standard action film, where you’re there just for the stunts, you will have a good time. The world created by James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez is visually stunning. Rosa Salazar is fantastic as Alita, and she shines in her mocap performance.