Battle Angel Alita (Gunnm) has to be my favourite comic book series ever. It has everything I could ever want in a manga, great art, layered characters, oddball cultural references, and grand philosophical ideas. It is a sweeping modern myth about power, technology and self actualization. For years now, James Cameron has held the movie license to the Battle Angel, and many were outraged at his announcement that he was now in the “Avatar” business now, delaying a film version for years.
You see this Cameron? This is not for you!
I for one, couldn’t happier. James Cameron is great at making billions of dollars, but there is no way he could muster the nuance and subtlety to make Battle Angel Alita the way it should be. Take this scene over here with Alita and Shumira. It’s a giant spoiler, so I’m not going to give any context, but look at that mix of hurt, regret, guilt, and love in Alita’s eyes. This scene right here was a triumph of Yukito Kishiro’s artistic ability. We won’t see something like this in James Cameron’s Battle Angel Alita.
The problem with strong female characters in Cameron’s movies is that they all seem to be on some kind of pedestal for bad-asses. Remember the TV series Dark Angel, James Cameron’s first attempt at something Battle Angel Alita-like? It was like a TV version Kate Beaton’s “Strong Female Characters” team. The main character couldn’t go five minutes without making some overture about what a bad-ass she was. The moral dilemmas she had to deal with were nothing but straw men she could high-kick down like it was “no big dealio”. It was patronizing, annoying, and boring. Real heroes, the kind that stay in our collective unconscious, don’t just run around punching people. They have to make painful decisions, face their fears, and look weak like the rest of us, despite any fantastic powers they have or three point landings they accomplish.
Source: GeekTyrant.
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