Coming Not So Soon: Battle Angel

I would like to intorduce a segment I call "Coming Not So Soon" which will profile and showcase movies coming out in 2008 and beyond. My first entry in this segment will be James Cameron's Battle Angel

Battle Angel is based on a popular Manga in Japan. It tells the story of Alita, an amnesiac female cyborg. This cyborg's intact head and upper torso are found in a state of suspended animation by the cybermedic expert Daisuke Ido while he is out searching for useful scrap. Amazed by his discovery, Ido quickly returns home and works to revive her. Upon finding that the girl has lost her memory, Ido names her Alita, the name of his recently deceased cat. The rebuilt Alita soon discovers that she possesses instinctive knowledge of a legendary martial art, although she has no other memories of her previous life. Alita must learn to navigate, exist, and fight in the Scrapyard, whose inhabitants themselves live in the shadow of the tantalizingly close floating city, Tiphares. Her journeys take Alita across the Scrapyard and surrounding areas, as she tries to recall more of her past.

The manga spans through nine volumes, and James Cameron plans on adapting the first three for the first movie (and then the next three for a sequel, and so on and so on) Alita will be a CG character that will be performed by a real person (i.e. I,Robot). Filming will be made with the new digital 3D system Cameron has developed for Avatar.

I'm excited for this movie for more reasons than I can list. First of all, as some of you might not know, I'm a huge anime fan. Maybe not as huge as some of the other anime fans, but I grew up watching a lot of anime on Television, and I still enjoy watching a few now that I'm older (namely Naruto, and Bleach). Anime and mangas tend to have these very complex and usually unorthodox stories, but when it all comes together it results in a story that is truly remarkable. Americans were given a taste at how great and complex these stories can be with the smash hit Spirited Away.

People are already excited about Avatar just because James Cameron is involved, and people should be, because James plans to supposedly reinvent the way movies can be made with Avatar. However, I consider Avatar to only be the eye of the storm in his eventual comeback. Battle Angel appears to have the potential to have the thrills and action of Terminator, but also have a touching and emotional story like that of Titanic.

This movie could end up being what Spiderman was for Comic Book movies. It may be the movie that brings Hollywood to adapting more animes and mangas onto the big screen, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. The stories that are told are very different than anything out these days. It would be very refreshing to see adaptations of such great animes as Gundam Wing, and Ghost in the Shell, whose stories are more mature, sophisticated, complex, and meaningful than the average comic book adaptation these days.

As far as awards go, or how the movie could go, James could end up doing one of either two things. He could go the action movie route, which will probably have critics saying this is the return of the Rated R action movie (The movie will be rated R, since the manga is very graphic and violent) or he could go the sentimental way (sort of like Pinocchio meets Frankenstein) which critics would probably like even more. Although I doubt it will match Titanic's box office, I do think, best case senerio, it could match the Titanic's success award wise and basically sweep the Oscars (which hasn't been done in awhile). But, anything could go wrong. So this next big hit can be destined to be nothing more than trash. Only time will time...