Alita: Battle Angel (2018)

I've only been keeping slight tabs on this thread since it's considerably diverted from a conversation about Alita, but I'll contribute a thought here....watched Bohemian Rhapsody last night which experienced the critic-audience review score disparity similar to what we are seeing with Alita. Though it wouldn't receive a Best Picture nod from me, Bohemian Rhapsody was significantly better than Alita. I would be dumbfounded if Alita were to receive any nomination of that caliber. Alita was neither technically exceptional (though I could see an argument for the visuals) or outstandingly entertaining in my eyes. I do think we are walking on soft ground of objectivity v subjectivity though....

So far, so good...

You do realise this is the same James Cameron whose films are not only well-reviewed by critics anyway but all of their thematic cores involve some variation on the kind of anti-corporate/anti-classism/pro-environmentalism mentality that would theoretically appeal to this particular "identity politics" strawman you've got going here, right? Not the best example is all I'm saying.

Besides, I think target audiences would be a worse measure of a film's objective quality than critics because they would be the most likely to love it without question. If a film flops critically and its creator says "we didn't make it for critics, we made it for fans", then that just sounds condescending towards said fans as it makes them sound like idiots who will eat anything up if it's got the right brand on it.

bruh how you gonna call anyone a nazi with that avatar

But seriously, considering how positive the rest of the review is, I think it comes across as a fair criticism that's at least trying to make sense of this particular issue rather than just thoughtlessly accepting it because That's How It Was In The Manga. That's what critics are supposed to do - think critically. I don't totally agree with it, but I don't exactly disagree either. There's room for nuance on this thing rather than calling a Latina woman an intolerant feminazi simply because she questions how a Latina character is developed and depicted.

Does the vast majority of the world's population also use the term "Anglo-America"?

It's not like white people on the Internet invented this kind of intersectional rhetoric anyway.

look I don't want to keep bringing up the nazi avatar but it really makes it difficult to take you seriously when you complain that totalitarianism is the reason people don't love the big-eyed anime girl movie

As opposed to declaring that the people who disagree with you on how to interpret said works of art are the real intolerant totalitarians?

Calling out the problems with these specific depictions does not equate to finding every single depiction "intolerable". At least do a better job of questioning why people would think that rather than going straight for the insults.

The problem is that Bohemian Rhapsody invokes those hardships for poorly-wrought dramatics and even character assassination (did I not already mention Freddie groping Jim Hutton, an incident that didn't actually happen but only adds to predatory gay stereotypes and looks even more unfortunate considering Bryan Singer's own history of sexual misconduct?). That's without mentioning scenes where the other (straight) members of Queen are shown to be visibly uncomfortable in the middle of one of Freddie's parties and later chide him for it before going home, or how it implies that actively engaging with homosexual behaviour leads to him self-destructing on both a physical and emotional level (to the point where he is treated as the sole irresponsible member of the group compared to his clean-cut heterosexual bandmates), or how it trivialises his AIDS diagnosis by shifting it to before Live Aid for dramatic effect (when he actually received it afterwards), and so on and so forth. In any case, I don't think you can be all "well, I didn't see anything homophobic in the film" when you've spent the whole time arguing that the only people who would complain about homophobia in this or any other film are "identity-politics totalitarians" or whatever.

How exactly does the existence of social stratification not imply class struggle, especially in a film like Alita where so many of the characters' motivations and actions are rooted in the goal of traversing or controlling that extremely literal divide between the upper and lower classes? This is the problem with committing to a line of thinking that will shrug off any dissenting opinions as "identity politics" - you're not just dismissing other people out of hand but you're also refusing to acknowledge that there might be any greater depths to Alita that could challenge your pre-existing opinions.

Doesn't matter if it's in the manga or not, that's what people can take away from it. It's not that much of a coincidence that the most popular cyberpunk film ever made was made by trans women and features significant levels of subtext to that effect.

No sh*t. Critics have to review everything, including stuff for which they're not the target audience. If anything, the target audience might actually be the least useful source of criticism simply because of how biased they are likely to be towards loving a film. I'm reminded of that episode of The SImpsons where Homer becomes a food critic and gives every restaurant a good review simply because he loves eating food so much, thus rendering his criticism useless. There's also the assumption that critics don't try to approach a film on its own terms, which I also think is a broad generalisation - even that review you linked earlier has a critic trying to find worth in what she considered an outwardly promising film (and mostly succeeding in that regard) but you dismissed the whole thing on the basis of one paragraph that inadvertently invoked your dreaded identity-politics boogeyman. I can understand that Bohemian Rhapsody is ostensibly trying to celebrate the life and work of Freddie Mercury and Queen while also acknowledging that the film itself ultimately ends up being an extremely formulaic movie about a band that thrived on avoiding formulas at best and a film that actively disrespects its protagonist for the sake of creating audience-pandering nostalgia bait at worst. Even saying that Alita is "just trying to be a sci-fi action movie" sounds more condescending than anything negative I could say about it

It's one thing to disagree with it, but if that mildly positive review with only one major criticism is "sickening" to you then I don't know what to say.

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Not being a huge fan of novels known as Manga, I've always appreciated the stories they've created in the form of movies of television. Not knowing anything about Alita: Battle Angel prior to watching this film, I was eagerly awaiting this look at a futuristic world and with the talent in front of and behind the camera, I feel a lot of people should have been feeling the same way. While this movies groundbreaking in many ways, I would say the story itself, as well as the side plots, are not. There's a lot to like about Alita: Battle Angel, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Let's dive into one of Hollywood's latest releases. Cyborg pieces are found in a scrapyard by Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) and assembled to form Alita (Rosa Salazar). Now revived and not sure where she came from or what secrets her past hold, she sets out on a mission to find herself, becoming a warrior in the process. The story of someone not knowing who they are, only to become a noble hero, has been told many times throughout many mediums, but it always feels special when it's accompanied by great a great lead performance and visuals that are truly out of this world.

I find it a little weird when people say "the story was not ground breaking" or "the story isn't original. Is the story the film is telling told well? That's all I need to know. Same thing with Avatar. The #1 complaint I always hear is that the story is lacking, but it was told well in my opinion. Is it taken from here and there? Sure, what story isn't these days? It's still an original movie, yet all I hear is how unoriginal is it. It's so odd.

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Suspect's Reviews

Agree with this. Feel it suffers the most in horror films as they always need to outdo the twist at the expense of a coherent story.

I say, focus on the characters, the emotion. Story is no doubt important but not at the expense of other equally important areas.

And yes, a story can be a great if it’s been done before albeit with subtle differences. Art replicates art - humans are creatures of habit and so on. Keep it simple, inject well written characters, emotions and carry on with that to a natural end.

Honestly, I think that quote was probably more an attempt to offer a synonymous statement to not repeat what may have already been said.

I can generally agree with you that it's odd to highlight a story as a negative if the story was at least average. If it serves its purpose then great. In the case of Alita, however, the story was very chunky and haphazard. There was too much happening with weak transitions from point to point. Character moods and motivation flipped on a dime and several choices were made apparently only to move a character from point A to B so that the plot moved forward.

It was very weak, IMO. Compared to how well the effects were, that stood out more in contrast.

Don't get me wrong though. I did enjoy most of the movie. Just I wanted to maybe clarify what I felt maybe the poster meant.

Wow an actual review of the film

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Reviews of the film aren't hard to come by if you really care about them. I'd knock a review out if I thought it was worth the effort.

What a bore you are. Just making a joke that the last few pages didn't have many Alita reviews.

Eh, between how many people have seen this movie and how people don't tend to post reviews in these upcoming threads anyway, I'm not surprised.

I was asking about criticism as a discipline, not how you personally choose to critique films. It's one thing to say you're personally going to approach films holistically and dismiss them based on cultural impact, but it's another to say this should be part of Criticism, if you follow the distinction.

I also don't think someone has to believe themselves above subjectivity to strive for some form of it. If you just say "everything's technically subjective" you end up in a very different place than you do if you say "everything's technically subjective, but we learn a lot by trying to find patterns in what makes certain art good." The latter is how criticism evolves in pretty much every art form, and clearly enhances our understanding and appreciation of aesthetic qualities over time. I mean, all human experience and opinion is subjective, but I'm sure you've talked to more or less objective people, making more or less objective arguments, and that's down to whether or not they actually bother to minimize subjectivity in a given area, or just give up and say, in typical Internet argument style, "THIS IS MY OPINION. IT IS VALID BECAUSE IT IS AN OPINION."

So, with that clarified, I imagine the question is clearer: what is Criticism? What's it supposed to do? It seems not to need to even exist as an idea at all if it's just going to be a rote "I like this" or "I don't like this," either without elaboration, or based on things that have nothing to do with artistic skill. It seems to me the entire idea behind formal Criticism is to try to isolate and cultivate artistic skill, which necessarily involves parsing it out from the even more subjective considerations of whether the critic likes what the film is saying. It seems pretty important that some people think this way, and that they at least not confuse the two.

Amusingly, clarifying terms is exactly the kind of thing you'd want to do if you wanted criticism to be more formal and objective. If we're all just hurling opinions at each other, why even bother?

Sure, but that "picture" lies outside of the bounds of the art. It's missing a "bigger picture" in the sense that every portrait of someone is not also a picture of their family and every landscape stops before it finishes painting the rest of the world. This is what art is. Even art that wants to say something meaningful or cause change is ultimately about using tiny bits of the world to represent larger things.

"All art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."