The fans voted and Alita: Battle Angel was a much better film than Captain Marvel but why don’t film critics agree? Is it politics or business?
Alita: Battle Angel won over the hearts of move-goers earlier this year when she fought to discover her identity, but not critics. The movie has one of the highest users scores on Metacritic with some even claiming that Alita: Battle Angel was much better than Captain Marvel which only scored 3.4. However, when you look at the critic scores they pale in comparison.
“By the end of this derivative, heartless mess, you’ll conclude that a garbage dump is exactly where writer-producer James Cameron’s new project belongs,” Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post wrote.
Alita: Battle Angel has had a rough production history. Originally announced in 2003, production on the release of the film was repeatedly delayed due to Cameron’s work on Avatar and its sequels. After years of the film languishing in development hell, Rodriguez was announced as the film’s director in April 2016, with Salazar being cast the following month. Principal photography began in Austin, Texas, mostly at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios, in October 2016, lasting through February 2017.
With such a shaky production history the movie didn’t get the marketing it deserved, unlike Captain Marvel. When it came to marketing Disney put all their eggs in Captain Marvel’s basket. They tried to paint her as the Blank Panther of female super-heroes; the definitive female superhero. But still, people thought that Brie Larson’s performance was terrible and in-turn it just made Captain Marvel an unlikable and unrelatable character.
Enter Alita.
In spite of its marketing budget the movie was a huge success among fans. Alita herself, even though she is synthetic, was more human and more relatable than Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel. An entire CGI character managed to invoke more emotion in the viewers than an A-list actress… this was meme-worthy material.
Unfortunately, no matter how awesome the movie was it somehow couldn’t live up to Captain Marvel. When the first lot of reviews rolled in for Captain Marvel it seemed flawless; scoring 9’s and 10’s everywhere. Actual movie-goers, although they enjoyed the movie, did not understand this hype or why the movie scored so high; to them it was just an average superhero film. That’s when the paint dried and peeled.
Captain Marvel was just… average.
A part of the marketing budget went into sending out a bunch of swag to reviewers in an attempt to influence their opinion of the movie, and it worked. The first wave of reviews were amazing. Then came the second wave of reviews which consisted more of smaller publications like this one.. and the score dropped from a 9 to a 6 in a heartbeat.
Mainstream Alita: Battle Angel critics don’t really hate the move, they just don’t like the people that love the movie.
Discussion
Alita had to shine all on her own. Nobody was there to tell us how amazing the movie was, we had to see for ourselves…
Fortunately, those who missed it on the big-screen can pick it up on Wednesday, 10th of July on Ultra HD + Blu-ray™ 3D, Blu-ray™, and DVD.
If you have already seen Alita: Battle Angel and loved it as much as I did you might also want to pick up a copy. It contains some amazing special features that give a deeper look into the story and how they adapted the manga into a feature film!
- Alita’s World – get a deeper look into the world of Alita: Battle Angel with dynamic motion comics
- From Manga to Screen
- Evolution of Alita
- Motorball
- James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez and Cast Q&A moderated by Jon Landau.
- Robert Rodriguez’s 10 Minute Cooking School
- 2005 Art Compilation (2019)
- Scene Deconstruction
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