If your lead character is going to be called a "battle angel", she better have some fighting skills. A trio of clips recently released online serve to assure us that the lead character in director Robert Rodriguez's manga adaptation ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is indeed capable of handling herself in battle.
Written by Rodriguez, Laeta Kalogridis, and producer James Cameron, ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is set several centuries in the future. The story begins when
the abandoned Alita is found in the scrapyard of Iron City by Ido, a compassionate cyber-doctor who takes the unconscious cyborg Alita to his clinic. When Alita awakens, she has no memory of who she is, nor does she have any recognition of the world she finds herself in. As Alita learns to navigate her new life and the treacherous streets of Iron City, Ido tries to shield her from her mysterious past.
The film stars Rosa Salazar as Alita. Salazar played the part wearing motion capture gear so her appearance could be altered, as her cyborg character looks different from the humans around her. Her co-stars include Christoph Waltz as Ido; Keean Johnson as her street smart friend Hugo; Mahershala Ali, who plays two different characters, one of whom is Vector, who "runs and fixes matches in a gladiator-style combat game called Motorball"; Jennifer Connelly as one of the villains; Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as a friend to Hugo; Jackie Earle Haley, Ed Skrein, and Eiza González as villainous cyborgs; Leonard Wu as another cyborg; Lana Condor as an orphaned photographer; Marko Zaror as Motorball player Ajakutty; and Michelle Rodriguez as the cyborg Gelda, who is a mother figure to Alita in the manga.
In the clips below, Alita demonstrates some martial arts moves in her bedroom before moving on to actual fights with other cyborg characters. If you want to avoid SPOILERS, you might want to skip the second clip, because it seems to give away the fate of Eiza González's character.
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL arrives in theatres on February 14th.