Alita: Battle Angel rises above its ugly ads, flies to a cloud city of awesome

Enlarge / There's just no getting around the eyes, huh, 20th Century Fox? So be it. (credit: 20th Century Fox)

Alita: Battle Angel lands in theaters on Thursday, February 14, with-if my own pessimistic assumptions are any indication-some significant baggage attached.

I know I'm not the only person to sigh after seeing the oversized, Avatar-esque eyes in Alita's trailers. Worse, those eyes are attached to a James Cameron script that adapts an early '90s Japanese manga into a multimillion-dollar film that casts zero Asian actors as leads. Nothing about that bullet-point trio, which reminded me of the 2017 ScarJo stinker Ghost in the Shell, got me excited ahead of Alita's press screening.

But the name "Robert Rodriguez" made me interested. Could one of my favorite directors of the past 20 years strike gold again, even while saddled by so much apparent baggage?

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