It's been eleven months since we saw the first trailer for the live-action manga adaptation ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, which is coming to us from the team of director Robert Rodriguez and producer James Cameron. At that time, the film was scheduled to be released on July 20, 2018. Then it got re-scheduled for December 21st, and now it's set to come out on Valentine's Day. It can be suspicious when a movie keeps getting pushed back, but when the film requires as many visual effects as this one clearly does, delays aren't necessarily a bad thing.
To help get us hyped for the impending release (hopefully this one will stick), a new trailer (the film's third) has arrived online. That can be seen below, and it makes the film seem very promising to me. Action scenes, emotional drama, dazzling special effects… ALITA is looking good.
Here's the synopsis:
When Alita (Rosa Salazar) awakens with no memory of who she is in a future world she does not recognize, she is taken in by Ido (Christoph Waltz), a compassionate doctor who realizes that somewhere in this abandoned cyborg shell is the heart and soul of a young woman with an extraordinary past.
As Alita learns to navigate her new life and the treacherous streets of Iron City, Ido tries to shield her from her mysterious history while her street-smart new friend Hugo (Keean Johnson) offers instead to help trigger her memories.
But it is only when the deadly and corrupt forces that run the city come after Alita that she discovers a clue to her past – she has unique fighting abilities that those in power will stop at nothing to control. If she can stay out of their grasp, she could be the key to saving her friends, her family and the world she’s grown to love.
Salazar, Waltz, and Johnson are joined in the cast by 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 addition to producing the film, Cameron also wrote the screenplay with Rodriguez and Laeta Kalogridis.
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is supposed to reach theatres on February 14, 2019.