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by Oscar O'Sullivan Hollywood seems to love adaptations, right? It is fairly easy to see why. In theory, throwing together a new version of an existing property is much simpler and more convenient than creating another franchise from scratch. You also get a built-in fanbase, who will surely turn out in droves to see your film. So why is it that Hollywood has a track record of fumbling these sure things? Maybe it is because adaptation is not quite as easy as it seems. Appeasing existing fans while drawing in new viewers, staying faithful to the original while still differing enough to be worth making in the first place, adaptation is a series of balancing acts in which failure is far easier and more common than success. Hollywood’s latest attempt has come in the form of Alita: Battle Angel (2019), based on the 1990 manga series Gunnm. If you want to talk about difficult adaptations, no medium has had a rougher time on the big screen than anime and manga. Part of this is due to the outlandish visuals common to the medium being impossible to recreate faithfully in live action. Another factor is the difficulty of compressing serialized, weekly plotlines with bustling, rotating casts of characters into two-hour films with a few central protagonists and villains. Having seen Alita for myself, I can confidently say that it is the best Hollywood adaptation of a manga property, hands-down. As a movie by itself, Alita is not brilliant, but it is leagues ahead of disasters like Ghost in the Shell (2017) or Dragon Ball Evolution (2009). Its success where others have failed can be boiled down to the mechanics of how it was adapted (mild spoilers ahead for the film and the manga): The film adapts Gunnm’s first four volumes into a two-hour film. The film is mostly faithful in its approach to the story, simply changing the order of some events and introducing characters earlier than in the original work. The restructuring does work in many places. The most significant example of improvement is the film’s handling of Alita’s second body, the Berserker. In the original manga, the powerful Martian body is given to her by Ido in the second chapter. The film instead has her discover the body herself while exploring a wrecked spacecraft, and only has her attached to it after the halfway point. Rather than a gift, the Berserker body is now something that Alita earns through her own agency. The movie’s withholding of the upgrade until later in the story also raises Alita’s badass cred. The purpose of the brawl in the Hunter’s bar is completely changed by the adaptation. Originally, the scene served to demonstrate the power of Alita’s new form, as she effortlessly manhandles dozens of hardened cyborgs. The film’s version of events plays out almost exactly the same, but with the crucial difference being that Alita is not using the Berserker body. Instead of highlighting the Berserker’s power, the fight now highlights the inherent power and skill of Alita herself. Changes like these, while benefiting the protagonist, can take their toll on the plot. Grewishka in the manga was the main threat for the entire first volume. His defeat at the beginning of volume two marked the end of that plotline, the beginning of Alita’s growth into the warrior she would later become, and the three-chapter fight is a suitably epic send-off for Alita’s first rival. However, the jumbling of events in the film takes away from Grewishka’s significance. He is one of four villains that are active in the plot, and having to share the spotlight with more developed or entertaining villains like Vector and Zappan, both of whom come after him in the manga’s story, greatly reduces Grewishka’s significance. Instead of Alita’s arch-nemesis, he is essentially The Heavy for the film’s villain ensemble. There is no time here for his backstory, or for any exploration of his motivations. The Grewishka of the film is a glorified goon, with barely enough dialogue and screen time to distinguish him from the nameless cyborgs Alita slaughters by the dozen during action set pieces. Inevitably, the process of adaptation has created as many problems as it has fixed. Most of the film moves at an acceptable pace, but the fact that it amalgamates two successive plotlines from the manga while mashing in parts of a third muddles the structure. The first volume’s plotline is sprinkled with elements of volume two, specifically Alita’s romance with Hugo and the presence of Vector. As I mentioned, the Grewishka plotline ends abruptly about halfway through the film, only to be resolved in under a minute after the film’s climax. The remainder of Hugo’s plotline is amalgamated with the later Motorball arc, replacing a short duel between Alita and a samurai-like Hunter with a visually stunning chase sequence, with Alita evading and obliterating an array of distinctly designed and deadly pursuers. This set piece works well as a replacement for the original battle, which would have necessitated the introduction of yet another under-developed villain. After this high-stakes sequence, the film limps to its conclusion, cramming two chapters of events into the final minutes of the film, then ending on a sequel hook. The ending squashes multiple resolutions together in a rapid-fire barrage, and none of them have half of the impact of the original. The conclusion feels rushed, which may be partially due to how much longer the movie’s opening feels when compared to the opening chapters of the manga. Changes made to characters can also be a mixed bag, but are positive on the whole. Hugo suffers the most from adaptation, and is undoubtedly the movie’s weakest character. The film’s decision to introduce him at the start is a good move on the surface, ostensibly giving the audience more time to get to know him, and making his romance with Alita feel less rushed and unbelievable. In this case though, the serialised structure of the manga worked better for Hugo’s story. Hugo was the pivotal character of volume two, and Alita was essentially a supporting character in his plotline. Film Hugo is a supporting love interest, bland and underdeveloped. His backstory from the manga isn’t so much as alluded to, so the tragedy of his struggles and solid motivations are completely lost on the audience. Hugo’s likeability is further damaged by a bland performance from Keean Johnson, who plays the character as the generic YA fiction teen heartthrob. Manga Hugo was a cheeky, Aladin-esque scamp, whose optimism and hope is worn down and shattered by the harsh reality of his situation in life. Film Hugo is utterly unmemorable, a plot device for Alita’s growth as a character. Other performances in the film are much stronger on the whole, and other characters fare much better from the changes made for the film. Zappan, who was an arrogant, minor foe in the original work, is given more prominence in the film as the Hunter-Warrior who chases down Hugo in the climax to get to Alita. Ed Skrein plays him with an entertaining smugness, making him a perfect love-to-hate character; you despise him, sure, but he’s always entertaining. The other major villain of the film, Vector, is played by Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali, who brings a real gravitas to the character that the original work simply lacked. Manga Vector was a huckster, a conman, who was never a real threat to any of the characters, pretending to be more important and connected than he really was. Ali’s Vector is connected, and he is dangerous. He is still a liar and a coward, but he is far better at hiding it. Similarly, the character of Dr Ido is elevated by Christoph Waltz’s performance. Manga Ido is a stock mentor in many ways, the only substance to his character being the secret pleasure he takes in violence, a trait which is never truly elaborated upon. Waltz’s Ido is inherently more likeable and interesting, partly thanks to Waltz’s effortless likeability, partly thanks to the film’s most major backstory change: the addition of Ido’s deceased daughter. This addition to the backstory is the films most significant and effective change. For one, it adds more nuance and sympathy to Ido’s character. Manga Ido built Alita’s body out of scraps and named her after his dead cat. In the film, Alita’s body was originally created for Ido’s late daughter, and he is very clearly using her as a substitute for his child. When manga Ido forbade Alita from becoming a hunter, he seemed to be treating her like a pet or a doll, like she was his property. When Waltz’s Ido becomes overprotective, it is far more understandable. Of course, he would not want his new “daughter” in danger. The film successfully adds far more emotional weight to the relationship between Alita and Ido than was present in the original. The reason for his profession is also changed from sadistic pleasure to righteous vengeance, a change which softens his character further.
What sets Alita apart from other manga adaptations then, is the way that it has managed to make these changes to the characters and plot, while still remaining faithful to the tone and spirit of the source material. Instead of toning down the outlandish visuals, it plays them for all they are worth, embracing the exaggerated character designs and hyperactive fight choreography that people love about anime and manga. The film tells the manga’s story faithfully, perhaps too faithfully in some ways, but makes changes that don’t feel disrespectful of forced. Is Alita a perfect film? Not at all. At best, it is a fun sci-fi romp, an entertaining action spectacle. At worst, it is an uneven story with clunky dialogue. What Alita is, then, is the new gold standard for live-action anime adaptations, and that is the hill I will die on.
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by Oscar O'Sullivan Anyone else remember when the first you knew about a movie was when you saw the trailer a couple months before it hit cinemas? Studios had control over audiences’ initial reactions back then. They could decide exactly how much they wanted audiences to see. In the digital age, that power is gone: Online releases of trailers come into play much earlier than in the past, so audiences have longer to build their expectations. Even before a trailer is dropped, set leaks and photos often surface online with alarming regularity. Studios suddenly find themselves with less control over the first impression of their films than ever before. Birds of Prey (2020), a new film in the DCEU franchise, is set to release in February of 2020. Production of the film has only recently begun. One really has to wonder, then, what business Warner Bros. has putting out a teaser over a year before the movie is set to hit cinemas. Surely they have jumped the gun with their marketing campaign? I’d disagree with that assessment, even if I understand the sentiment. This teaser is very much that: a tease. Its 20 second runtime consists of nothing but brief shots of the principal cast in costume. The “trailer” lacks footage because there is no footage to use. This is a glorified photoshoot that tells us nothing about the tone or content of the product it is advertising, and is a brilliant move by a studio known for bone-headed marketing disasters, such as its tonally inconsistent trailers for Suicide Squad (2016), which left audience utterly confused as to what kind of movie the finished product would be. To explain my point, I will give you a contemporary example. Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) recently released its first trailer, giving fans their first look at Spidey’s new costumes and Jake Gyllenhaal’s appearance as Mysterio. Unfortunately, instead of my first impression of Mysterio being his dynamic entrance in the official trailer, I had already seen photographs of him standing limply in the middle of some street. The potential surprise was gone. This is why I think Birds of Prey has done so well. They have beaten leakers to the punch by taking back control of that pivotal first impression. Instead of being introduced to the characters via amateur snaps of them chatting on set, our first look has been a dynamic, atmospheric and, most importantly, professional introduction. I believe that this marketing choice was a direct response to the prevalence of set leaks in superhero movies. Last year, when leaked set footage of Joker (2019) hit the internet, it prompted a spike of interest in the project that had been absent before. DC seemingly jumped onto this opportunity by posting the first official look at Joaquin Phoenix as the titular clown. Similar to Birds of Prey’s abbreviated teaser, it is a simple, 15 or so second clip of Phoenix looking at the camera. This clip built upon the buzz that the leaks had created, showing that studios are becoming aware of the way leaks like these can affect the all-important pre-release period. Sure enough, the Spider-Man leaks were swiftly followed by Tom Holland officially debuting the costume on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Studios are making a concerted effort to take back control of the first impression, and Birds of Prey’s marketing demonstrates the next evolution of that. If you are still wondering how effective this kind of teaser can be, consider that I am sitting here writing about a movie that I have not even seen footage of yet. Sure, people were discussing this movie before the teaser, but that kind of blind speculation is inevitable. This teaser has moved Birds of Prey to the top of the superhero speculation pile, if only for a few days. As I write this article, set photos have surfaced online of Margot Robbie standing about in costume. DC’s teaser beat the inevitable leaks by a day. This kind of teaser could well become the standard for superhero marketing going forward, especially when it comes to characters who have not been brought to the screen before. Once again, our first impressions will be in the studio’s hands, and that is just fine. I give the Birds of Prey teaser an 8/10, because arbitrary ranking is how you end an article these days, right? Yeah, that seems right. |
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