I feel kind of funny about this, but we liked Alita: Battle Angel (2019). Maybe you’ve already forgotten about it - it was that live action anime where Rose Salazar has freakishly huge eyes.
It starts in a huge scrap heap in a dystopian future world. Another, better city, the last of its kind according to the titles, is levitating above the heap, dumping their garbage below. Dr. Christoph Waltz is looking for spare cyborg parts, and comes across a head - still alive.
He puts the head on a spare cyborg body and that’s how Alita, Rose Salazar, wakes up. She doesn’t remember anything - including what food is. Waltz and his nurse Idara Victor take her out for a walk in the rather cool looking city. She meets a unicycle riding street punk (with good manners and a paying job), Keean Johnson. He later introduces her to the sport of Motor Ball (or Murder Ball - I’m not sure if I misheard or if it’s slang), a version of Rollerball.
But this city isn’t all fun and games - there are murderers roaming the streets, killing women and stripping them for parts. And the Hunter-Warriors, civilians licensed to hunt (and war upon) these murderers. And after a little misdirection (is Waltz the murderer?), it turns out that Waltz is a Hunter-Warrior.
As you can guess, Alita figures out who she is and gets to be a hotshot Motor Baller. It’s not much of a spoiler to tell you that she doesn’t make it up to the flying city, but she’s headed there for the sequel, if any.
I guess we liked this for 1) the cool, fun dystopian city, 2) the appealing actors, and 3) the action. The action may have even been a little lower on the list - not as important as you might think. Also, Salazar’s weird eyes are off-putting at first, but after a while, we even got to like them. Maybe it comes down to Robert Rodriguez directing, with an assist from James Cameron on the writing and production teams. At least, that can’t hurt.
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